Don Bradman Cricket 14 - World Premiere Discussion

[WhiteCat]

just a couple of things to bear in mind:

the videos where users are bowling, remember both animation and speed are heavily reliant on user input - the better we get at the game the better/smoother it'll look.
most of the videos are on easier levels and have default attributes which makes even AI bowling quite slow
some of the issues you mentioned like the edge are down to an old build that turned up as a third machine which sadly was the one matt mostly played. we're told these weren't an issue on the other machines (final build) and further there is a day one patch (nobody outside Big Ant has played with this yet) which should resolve more issues.

Yeah I didn't read anything into the user bowling; the AI bowling still seemed really slow, but as I (and you in your post) said, hopefully it'll be less of an issue on higher difficulties. I routinely find the actual delivery stride and release slow on cricket games though - literally every cricket game I've played seems to go into a time warp as the bowler hits his stride. This isn't a problem unique to DBC14 but something that does grate me a bit.

Excellent to hear that an old build was the cause of some of my issues though.

 

[radders12]

Liked the game play, but again - don't have time to run through 120+ pages.

Few questions

A) What players and teams are going to be licensed on there? I like the idea of custom players, teams and leagues - IE Career mode but the entire point to a cricket game is that I can play with the English County teams, play the IPL, tour the Australian scene. If I can't do that, it's not really a cricket game - it's like playing stick cricket on the PS3 with more detail.


Any release date yet? It's the 19th of November now.

 

[Biggs]

All your questions are answered in those 120 pages you despise. Reading the internet is tough.

 

[cricfan11]

Liked the game play, but again - don't have time to run through 120+ pages.

Few questions

A) What players and teams are going to be licensed on there? I like the idea of custom players, teams and leagues - IE Career mode but the entire point to a cricket game is that I can play with the English County teams, play the IPL, tour the Australian scene. If I can't do that, it's not really a cricket game - it's like playing stick cricket on the PS3 with more detail.


Any release date yet? It's the 19th of November now.

Your 16yr old will have to prove lot to get into big stages like IPL, and other international scenes.

 

[T.J.Hooker]

and of course "bowler's action is in super slow motion and the ball takes forever to get to the other end" make yet another appearance.

...

I'm also hoping the bowling will seem quicker on higher difficulty levels

I'm also hoping it feels significantly quicker than it seems from either the gameplay vids or the pro cam vid - the pro cam demo looks like a delivery of about 70mph. Which is cool but I'd love to have the option for something crap-your-pants-quick.

I'm enormously encouraged by the fact that they made behind-the-bat cam the default and built the control system around it, though. I always felt behind-the-bat was crucial if you're going to make batting feel realistic.

The main thing about edges for me is whether they relate to my performance with the controller in a comprehensible and satisfying way.

And now I think about it, this gets to the heart of my feelings about batting control systems - that fundamentally the aiming at the ball bit of the game isn't simulated, and that's actually the most important and fun bit in real life.

So just hypothetically, let's say we design a batting simulator where you aim as in a fps, in fp view with some sort of sim 3d floating target sight. So effectively the target sight represents the point at which you expect the middle of the bat to intercept the ball.

In this simple model, how well I hit the ball is directly linked to my input, and would seem to offer a reasonably accurate sim of the effect of ball movement on my ability to hit it.

In any batting control scheme that doesn't involve aiming at the ball, there's no analogue in the user input for reacting to ball movement, no data you could directly map to it, so you're left (as far as I can work out) either with the option of making edges a penalty for timing mistakes, as probabilistically determined events based on degree of movement and batsman skill, or some kind of combo.

Well I've kind of wandered off the point but anyway, hopefully Big Ant batting has the sort of meaningful, consistent skill components that encourage epic repeat play.

 

[ricky87]

I am going to reserve my judgment about the bowling speeds because one, I don't think we have seen enough yet to warrant a definite conclusion and two, what we have seen is on lower levels of difficulty. Having said that, I don't see myself getting beaten by out and out pace from what we have seen so far. An element of fear and indecisiveness needs to be there when facing quick bowlers.

Maybe what appear to be reduced speeds and I say appear because when you look at a 130 kph delivery from behind the batsman camera it looks faster than the 150 + Kph deliveries in the ApocalypseGamesCnl video which are bowled from the bowler camera, which probably explains Ross' expert view when he told us that the ball travels a few cm vertically and then loses size, but if the speeds have indeed been slowed down then perhaps it is to accommodate the pro cam because otherwise the behind the batsman camera is just perfect for playing proper fast bowling!

And I disagree about the bowling actions, they are brilliant and loss of momentum through the crease is barely noticeable if at all.

 

[NoLeName]

And I disagree about the bowling actions, they are brilliant and loss of momentum through the crease is barely noticeable if at all.

I guess this must be a topic that will divide opinion; I personally don't think the bowling animations look extremely realistic, and although they don't look particularly unrealistic, I definitely agree with the whole 'loss of momentum' concept. If you watch the videos from the bowler's point of view, you may see what we mean. The delivery stride looks like its in slow motion; the animation takes a lot longer than a realistic stride would. Not a massive problem, and easily overseeable (not entirely sure that's a word), but the issue definitely exists.

 

[BigAntStudios]

Bottom line - if you preset line and length then you can "press play" on a canned, pre-recorded animation.

If you allow the ball to be calculated at release then you cannot.

It would be really easy for us to record animation and simply play it back... dance dance cricket.

 

[angad]

Bottom line - if you preset line and length then you can "press play" on a canned, pre-recorded animation.

If you allow the ball to be calculated at release then you cannot.

It would be really easy for us to record animation and simply play it back... dance dance cricket.

The animation looks fine....dont worry about it. If we see this video (at about 02:39):

the bowling animation looks perfectly smooth and fine. Infact its awesome to see the variability in the bowling runup and action caused due to the variable user inputs!

 

[MattW]

the bowling animation looks perfectly smooth and fine.

That's AI bowling to AI though - the times where you'll see the slight slowdown are when you're bowling - but the good thing about that is that while you're bowling, you're bowling, and too busy actually controlling the game to worry about how the animation looks.

 

[NoLeName]

That's AI bowling to AI though - the times where you'll see the slight slowdown are when you're bowling - but the good thing about that is that while you're bowling, you're bowling, and too busy actually controlling the game to worry about how the animation looks.

And that must have been what I saw to give the slow motion impression.

 

[cricketrulz]

Mattw

The scoop shot is the only one I tried/saw because I'd rather play cricket and not helicopter.

Yes racism is exactly what this forum needs right now. Awesome
And someone made him an administrator... lol

 

[Biggs]

Talk me through the process on how you got to racism...

 

[NoLeName]

Yes racism is exactly what this forum needs right now. Awesome
And someone made him an administrator... lol

I'm sorry but I just had to bite... How and in what insane world does that constitute as racism? He implied that he prefers traditional forms of cricket. In no way whatsoever did he allude to any race. NO WAY WHATSOEVER. Contemporay society has become so sensitive about racism. Chill out everyone...

EDIT: Appears Biggs beat me to it, but point still stands.

 

[Snowy]

I would love cricketrulz to find an earlier example of the scoop shot than this.