Deep analysis of the Ashes cricket game

silverthorne

Club Captain
Joined
Dec 4, 2013
Online Cricket Games Owned
Hi,

I did a deep analysis of the game. There is no game-logic in this game. The game is full of demo/example codes (see attachments) from the Unity vendors.


There is a 3rd party other than Trickstar games, 505 Games, anyone heard of this? - Gunn & Moore for which this game was promised or sold to?


The disassembled game has references to a new game called GunnAndMoore Cricket 2014.
 

Attachments

  • gunn.png
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  • test2.png
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  • test3.png
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silverthorne

Club Captain
Joined
Dec 4, 2013
Online Cricket Games Owned
The game is full of demo or sample codes such as:


PHP:
using System;
[DBStruct]
public struct TestMe
{
	[DBObjectProperty(defaultValue = 0, toolTipText = "Just a test int")]
	public int elephant;
	[DBObjectProperty(isName = true, min = -50f, max = 50f, isASlider = true, defaultValue = 0f, toolTipText = "Test Slider")]
	public float b;
	[DBObjectProperty(defaultValue = "", toolTipText = "Just a test string")]
	public string c;
	[DBObjectProperty(toolTipText = "Just a test string")]
	public TestMe2 d;
	[DBObjectProperty(toolTipText = "Just a test value2")]
	public TestMe2 e;
	[DBObjectProperty(defaultValue = null, toolTipText = "Just a test value2")]
	public TestMe2[] f;
}

PHP:
using System;
[DBStruct]
public struct TestMe3
{
	[DBObjectProperty(defaultValue = 0, toolTipText = "Just a test int")]
	public int ff;
	[DBObjectProperty(defaultValue = 0f, toolTipText = "Just a test float")]
	public float gg;
	[DBObjectProperty(defaultValue = "", toolTipText = "Just a test string")]
	public string hh;
}

PHP:
public class ExampleScript : MonoBehaviour
{
	private string stringToDisplay = "Plugin Example\nPress A or B on your Xbox 360 controller\n";
	[DllImport("DLLProject")]
	private static extern int GetSomeNumber();
	[DllImport("DLLProject")]
	private static extern long HowMuchMemoryAmIUsing();
	[DllImport("DLLProject")]
	private static extern void DisplayMessageBox([MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPWStr)] string title, [MarshalAs(UnmanagedType.LPWStr)] string message);
	[DllImport("DLLProject")]
	private static extern IntPtr GetSomeText();
	private void Start()


There is no point open-sourcing this game as it contains a collection of vendor examples used for the vendors to show or demonstrate their products.


The game itself, is not a game. It is a collection of demos from several vendors - such as Photon Cloud, NGUI (library that works with Unity).

----------

The graphics is immensely huge.


The menu - the artwork for the menu, consumes 10MB for just the menu itself.


The players - more than 80mb per player. The textures consume almost 50mb per player.

----------

The way how this game works, it is not a normal game where a person sits down, has many years of experience, is accomplished developer.


This game, is scripted using a visual scripting system. The whole game is scripted in such manner.


The closest equivalent is similar to Blocky, an open-source visual programming language:
https://code.google.com/p/blockly/


The game starts by loading PlayMaker, then initialise or provide seed values or startup values to the visual scripting language.


The game codes provides the seed values or startup values. There is nothing there. Just that. :lol


After it loads, it attempts to save the game. As it is a visual language, there is loss of control, or loss of quality.


For example, you can code a game, you can precisely tell it what to do, what to do next, what the game logic should be.


In visual scripting language, you lose such controls and have to spend lots and lots of time making logic using visual scripting.


Variables are usually private. Variables are things like score values (1, 2, 3...) or names of the players.


As the variables are global (available to all the graphical codes inside the visual scripting language), there could be confusion, opponent's team become the player's team, resets or things not initially intended could happen.


Even if you make the sources open-source. There is none. It would be great embarrassment to see all the stupid things that were made.


Thus, all the errors you see - the batsman doing endless rounds, the player going through each other, - are limitations of the visual scripting language, not the limitation of the game engine.


There is lot of unused codes:

- a chat manager - presumably so you can type & chat to other people using your keyboard,


- multi-player option - something like a cricket MMORPG game, but it is so poorly done I do not think anyone wants to play this MMORPG game :)


- demos and example codes compiled into the game. Presumably they were using the demos and example codes, then extended them for their own usages.
 

grkrama

National Board President
Joined
Sep 2, 2007
Location
Chennai
yup,Basically i think their original Devs Awoled for some reason and they had new hires to do stitch up job of available things. those guys must be amateur i think cause instead of scripting their own stuff they have just messed around with a bunch of plugins esp NGUI scripting errors are quite a few.:facepalm

Like barmyarmy has said thats just a function for calling bat manufacturers that Gunn & Moore thing.:cheers

Regarding opensource its more about those assets than scripts that would be great help like animations & models,its easier to smooth it out.right now with unityexplorer only textures are accesible,but even then its not legit to use them unless trickstar make it open source.

Just found this at unity forums,
TRICKSTAR have been hiring developers in Early September

Unity Coders wanted at Trickstar Games | tsumea

:spy
Trickstar About page says "The team has established a solid Unity technology based production pipeline and have made quality the foundation of the studio.
":lol
 

silverthorne

Club Captain
Joined
Dec 4, 2013
Online Cricket Games Owned
The game graphics are sub-par.

It will be pointless to use them.

2mb buttons? 4mb menu sliders? 1mb circular button?

80mb unoptimized batsman?

100mb stadium.


you might as well get expert modellers and artists re-do the whole thing again.
 

silverthorne

Club Captain
Joined
Dec 4, 2013
Online Cricket Games Owned
Let me explain what is wrong.


In the older games AC 2009, the game logic in an encrypted DLL which the game would call extensively.


The company that did the game - presumably - CodeMasters - they took a whole load of time to make the logic for that.


As time passed, the encryption for the DLL began to fail - Windows Vista, Windows 7 implemented NX (no-execute) and other security features to prevent you from getting infected by viruses, trojan horses, and other malware.


In other words, the game AC 2009, would be like AC 2013 if not for that encrypted DLL.


For more than 4 long years (2009 to 2013), the developers at Transmission (now TrickStar) there have attempted or tried to replace that DLL to no avail.


What that encrypted DLL does, is that it starts up, loads a circular plane at 180 degrees (simulating the playing field), simulate the logic for the batting, wickets, computer players around the field.


They did not do directly. They used some white-papers the scientists publish about game AI and game logics and coded the implementation of the algorithm inside it - navigation logic, crowd logic where one computer player would sense and then move around the other computer player instead of going through it.


None of that is in Ashes Cricket 2013. For open-sourcing it, it would serve nothing but embarrass them further. I do not think they would that, vindicating what I wrote earlier.
 

silverthorne

Club Captain
Joined
Dec 4, 2013
Online Cricket Games Owned
The game International Cricket 2010 has similar set of files to the AC 2009. It can be assumed that the game IC 2010 is an off-shoot of the AC 2009, minus the licensed content.


IC 2010 = icensed-logic from outsiders minus AC 2009 licensed content, added all original content and artwork.

AC 2009 = licensed-logic from outsiders with licensed content.


So I think what the guys did, was AC 2009 was split into two teams - the development team and arts team. The guys at transmission got some outside help, but they didn't bother to get the full source for the cricket engine.

As time passed by, they must have figured in the span of more than two years, they could make their own engine, but succumb to their own greed and stupidity.

The game itself is like a ballon - lot of hot air, lot of excitement and actual logics is less than 10 megs.


Who-ever did the licensing, they were very smart, took the sources of that DLL and then gave back to Transmission a DLL (and set of auxiliary helper DLLs) for which all the patches update everything else inside the game, except that DLL (and auxiliary DLLs).


As for whether it is shrewd move, the management at Trickstar could have paid the full rights of that DLL and unlock the game, continue development, instead of ripping-off the other party.


Four years has passed, those scientific papers which I refer to, they are now part of game engines, in various implementations. Unity has it, but the developers were so stupid they never used it, or there is no evidence of usage of this knowledge in their AC 2013 game.


The navigation game logic is found in Unity, UDK and Crytek CryEngine. The crowd game logic is found in Unity, Crytek, UDK and other professional game engines (not the baby ones)... but they never used it.
 

Biggs

This guy gets it
BGZ..
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Profile Flag
New Zealand (Silver Fern)
Online Cricket Games Owned
  1. Don Bradman Cricket 14 - PS3
  2. Don Bradman Cricket 14 - Steam PC
The menu - the artwork for the menu, consumes 10MB for just the menu itself.

Good god. There's absolutely NOTHING there that should demand that... it's just a blank screen.

Fascinating stuff though, keep it up... Genuinely baffling.
 

silverthorne

Club Captain
Joined
Dec 4, 2013
Online Cricket Games Owned
Good god. There's absolutely NOTHING there that should demand that... it's just a blank screen.

Fascinating stuff though, keep it up... Genuinely baffling.


If you look at the memory usage, it consumes more than 500mb on the menu screen themselves.


The coin toss is 1mb, the sliders is 1mb. The reason why it is so large is the graphics are at 32-bits PNG with alpha and various button states - hot, depressed, disabled, normal.


The menu-bar on top:

Hot state button - 512kb
Normal button - 512kb.
Disabled state button - 512kb.
Active state button - 512kb

Total = 2mb.

The logos of the cricket team - 2mb each.

The sliders, window overlay - 1mb each.


So this must be a high-class game :lol
 

BigAntStudios

@Ross
Big Ant
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Location
Melbourne
Online Cricket Games Owned
  1. Don Bradman Cricket 14 - PS3
  2. Don Bradman Cricket 14 - Xbox 360
  3. Don Bradman Cricket 14 - Steam PC
My 2 cents. All fact, no supposition.

Ashes 2009, years late, was developed 100% internally at IR Gurus/Transmission, Big Ant Studios supplied some programmers to help them out.

Transmission wound up, became TrickStar Game, much of the talent left for greener pastures. A patch was made for 2009 and it was released as the full game 2010.

The rights to the code and art remained with Codemasters.

TrickStar decided to develop Ashes 2013 using Unity, yeah they said they created an engine from scratch, but that was bogus as you all now know.

505 paid an incredible amount for the license, an incredible amount for the development, everyone got sold down the river except the management of TrickStar who are now planning fantastic holidays around the world, First Class I hear.

It was a "swindle"... and all that was lost was Cricket gaming's dignity and Australian game developers reputation.
 

silverthorne

Club Captain
Joined
Dec 4, 2013
Online Cricket Games Owned
It would be incredibly stupid to sell the rights and source-code to a third-party, and then somehow lose the sources or knowledge of it. :D


It is the most dumbest mistake or greed that caused their downfall.

----------

@BigAntStudio,


If I were you, I would just rebuff them and let them sink in their own mess. The deep analysis suggests it has no elements of any semblance of any good software engineering design, no cricket logic, not even anything useful to continue or anything meaningful to continue or further develop of the current game.


It is as though they put a nice cart without any horse to pull it. They sold the horse away and excepted the replacement horse to take the same load, not knowing any wiser.
 

BigAntStudios

@Ross
Big Ant
Joined
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Location
Melbourne
Online Cricket Games Owned
  1. Don Bradman Cricket 14 - PS3
  2. Don Bradman Cricket 14 - Xbox 360
  3. Don Bradman Cricket 14 - Steam PC
Hmmmm "nice cart" you say... I think you're being very generous and kind.

"The players are the stars of the show"
 

silverthorne

Club Captain
Joined
Dec 4, 2013
Online Cricket Games Owned
@BigAntGames,

If I was to do a cricket game, I would have to first setup the AI correctly and motion for 11 players. You can use either the NavPower thing Navpower or the PathEngine or the C++ recast. Then implement a hierarchal planner or state planner. Personally, I prefer using a hierarchal planner because the FSM (Finite State Machine) and BT (Behaviour Trees) would be much more shorter and compact.


Spend some serious time implementing the rules of the cricket game, make sure the game AI works correctly, the fielders work correctly, avoid each other :cheers, move in splines or curved motions, get the physics correct and so on...


This Ashes 2013 has none of the above. It seems like a rush job. I especially love the visual scripting part :lol
 

barmyarmy

Retired Administrator
Joined
Mar 12, 2003
Location
Edinburgh
The fielding system (including batting running) is the biggest problem. From what I know it was re-written in July for reasons unknown.
The build I saw in May did not have overthrows, runouts and teleporting.
 

silverthorne

Club Captain
Joined
Dec 4, 2013
Online Cricket Games Owned
I think the idea was:

Let's use this Unity to replace the graphics, navigation and physics parts, use this add-on PlayMaker to replace the Behaviour Tree, Finite State Machine, AI Planner!
 

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