Ashes Cricket 2013 General Discussion

[Pakistani Army]

@Mike:- Is there any chance you will take a leaf out of BLIC and include the much loved "Classic Matches?" Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

 

[isrararrafi]

Not sure what people are expecting today. Mike only said he will share what the team is gonna be working on this week and he will share how much they have progressed at the end of the week. This is not something to get excited about. Although i do appreciate the constant communication.

 

[Mike Fegan]

We are aware of this but we all want to know why. It was like this in 2009 too.

When you got the Ashes licence, let's say for the first time back before 2009, they would have said "but the players cannot be edited". Surely your company wouldn't have just said "okay" but would have at least asked for a reason why. Why is the CA and ECB licence so restrictive when pretty much all other sporting bodies so not impose such a thing?

Over the years I have dealt with various licensed sporting bodies in the USA, Europe and Australia. All have differing rights when it comes to players names & images, some are comprehensively covered, some are not i.e. AFL versus FFA. So you have to take what the license comes with good or bad.

If I had a choice between generic or licensed obviously if the budget allows I would go with a licensed IP every time, from a commercial perspective you now have to appeal to a mass audience from outset to hopefully make a reasonable ROI on the game. With AC2013 we are hoping to appeal to both the hard core audience and the mass audience at the same time so any money we make we can re-invest in more cricket games down the line.

----------

Cricket 07 had the whole eng and aus license including their domestic teams. . But ashes 09/13 just have ashes license that's why u can't use them anywhere else I guess! Maybe Mike could tell us more

As previously outlined the Ashes license covers the Ashes Tours between England & Australia. I suspect in the Cricket 07, Codemasters took a separate license to cover domestic teams and competitions.

----------

Either your being sarcastic or stupid... why would Brian Lara be in an ashes game? Hes not english or australian

Spot on!

----------

@Mike:- Is there any chance you will take a leaf out of BLIC and include the much loved "Classic Matches?" Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

We would love to do this but we simply don't have the time or budget to do it in AC2013 as our focus is to get this game out in November and we locked down content weeks ago.

 

[JasXI]

I've not being following much of AC13. Can anyone tell me what can we expect today?

 

[glenny134]

Hopefully Sir Mike Fegan will let us know soon

 

[dadarocks]

Spot on!

Not exactly. Not sarcastic, and not stupid (atleast from my point of view, no one'll ever admit that). I think you didn't quite get it. I found that attached image from the AC09 game's async.big.w32 inside the "final" folder.

That proves that you even had the idea to take the Brian-Lara franchise forward to the 2009 game with ashes license and named it so. (Can't be a dev playing with the old logo and the new one ) Not a very bad idea actually, as Lara's name would've given a minimum garuntee to the product, and make it a part of the BLC series.

I just wanted to know how the naming of the game went, from you Mike, and you kindof ducked the question...

 

[glenny134]

They probably came to their senses after making that image. It wouldv been OK to release it as 'Brian Lara Cricket 2009' but stupid having his name attached to the ashes as he cant even be in an ashes team.

 

[Mike Fegan]

Not exactly. Not sarcastic, and not stupid (atleast from my point of view, no one'll ever admit that). I think you didn't quite get it. I found that attached image from the AC09 game's async.big.w32 inside the "final" folder.

That proves that you even had the idea to take the Brian-Lara franchise forward to the 2009 game with ashes license and named it so. (Can't be a dev playing with the old logo and the new one ) Not a very bad idea actually, as Lara's name would've given a minimum garuntee to the product, and make it a part of the BLC series.

I just wanted to know how the naming of the game went, from you Mike, and you kindof ducked the question...

Hmmm... The only thing i can think of was at one stage we were planning to release a Brian Lara/Ricky Ponting International Cricket 2008 game but that idea was dropped to focus on the AC2009 title instead which went onto to be No.1 on the UK charts for six weeks and ended up selling over a million copies so I guess Codemasters made the right decision. I think this could be one of the artists have a bit of fun with the logo treatment but it doesn't make sense to me why you would have BL on a predominant English & Australian cricket game title. I also could not see the ECB or CA approving the name either so it is a mystery. Anyway, it was over 5 years ago and there has been a lot of water under the bridge since then.

 

[dadarocks]

Ok, that's all about it, it's truly water under the bridge . You said something'll be revealed today right Mike? When can we expect that?

 

[MattW]

The main point of the branding discussion is probably to ask, do you plan on 'International Cricket' releases in between Ashes series, or just a game for every Ashes series while you hold the license?

I certainly think the comparative lack of success of IC2010 might be down to the box having no mention that the game is a followup to Ashes 09, with the slight similarities in the logo the only real hint to it being a series.

 

[angad]

As previously outlined the Ashes license covers the Ashes Tours between England & Australia. I suspect in the Cricket 07, Codemasters took a separate license to cover domestic teams and competitions.

Codies made Cricket 07?????? LOL!!!

 

[Pat]

Codies made Cricket 07?????? LOL!!!

May be he was referring to Brian Lara International Cricket 2007? Not sure if that game had a Ashes license.

 

[Mike Fegan]

Hi Guys,

As promised here is my weekly WIP update on the production side from last week's activities in layman's terms:

Memory leaks - We made some good progress on the console memory leak issue that has plagued us for a few months now. Our art team has produced some really nice HD assets for the game but the challenge has been trying to turn them on in the game with impacting frame rate or causing system crashes through not having enough memory. We are also trying to balance these things to make the game look really good without impacting frame rate and try to eliminate any class A crash bugs caused by memory leaks. We have also significantly reduced the loading times for the game and the memory leak resolution work will continue again this week as we endeavour to get everything turned on and running at an acceptable frame rate and well within memory in the next few weeks.

Bugs - We have created a number of crash bugs & other bugs in the process so we are addressing these daily which will continue right up to submission.

DLC content - The guys are currently working on including all the planned DLC content into the game over the next few weeks.

Graphics - We are working on improving lighting/shaders in the game to make everything sharper in the game. Unity are also assisting on this front so we expect to see a marked improvement in the overall graphical look of the game.

Bug Fixing/Optimisation - This work continues with 505 Games helping us greatly appointing two external QA companies to be involved in this process. Shortly, we will have 24/7 QA up & running on daily game builds which will no doubt help us produce cleaner code going into submissions.

Multiplayer - The programming guys are also busy on multiplayer implementation and testing for consoles.

This week's priorities - memory leak resolution, more content inclusion, improve graphics, fielder logic update, multiplayer work continues and general bug fixing and optimisations.

Further updates to follow and I will continue to answer questions as they arise.

Cheers,
Mike

 

[Security]

Hi Mike

India is one of the biggest teams after winning the World Cup and the champions trophy, why are they not licensed?
India being licensed will sell millions more copy's just in India?

 

[raza439]

Hi Guys,

As promised here is my weekly WIP update on the production side from last week's activities in layman's terms:

Memory leaks - We made some good progress on the console memory leak issue that has plagued us for a few months now. Our art team has produced some really nice HD assets for the game but the challenge has been trying to turn them on in the game with impacting frame rate or causing system crashes through not having enough memory. We are also trying to balance these things to make the game look really good without impacting frame rate and try to eliminate any class A crash bugs caused by memory leaks. We have also significantly reduced the loading times for the game and the memory leak resolution work will continue again this week as we endeavour to get everything turned on and running at an acceptable frame rate and well within memory in the next few weeks.

Bugs - We have created a number of crash bugs & other bugs in the process so we are addressing these daily which will continue right up to submission.

DLC content - The guys are currently working on including all the planned DLC content into the game over the next few weeks.

Graphics - We are working on improving lighting/shaders in the game to make everything sharper in the game. Unity are also assisting on this front so we expect to see a marked improvement in the overall graphical look of the game.

Bug Fixing/Optimisation - This work continues with 505 Games helping us greatly appointing two external QA companies to be involved in this process. Shortly, we will have 24/7 QA up & running on daily game builds which will no doubt help us produce cleaner code going into submissions.

Multiplayer - The programming guys are also busy on multiplayer implementation and testing for consoles.

This week's priorities - memory leak resolution, more content inclusion, improve graphics, fielder logic update, multiplayer work continues and general bug fixing and optimisations.

Further updates to follow and I will continue to answer questions as they arise.

Cheers,
Mike

Mike: I am glad you guys are making progress. That's the bright side!

On the other hand, as a software engineer, I am confused how you guys still have seemingly serious memory leaks this late into your game release. Memory leaks can be avoided via good coding discipline and conventions, and there are so many good tools that can be used to catch them early.