Russia 122 for 2 at Lunch

[cooks1st100]

Idea of considering confidence for timing window is pretty good. I wonder whether we can consider form in the confidence level. I guess form will come into picture while playing career mode. But I dont understand how can we calculate form when playing casual matches, online etc. As these matches are played based on the skill level (like high rated batsmen, tailender etc.,) and the confidence is related only to that match.

Please correct me if I am wrong.

If playing casual matches, online etc then confidence would just be at a base level, but it would come into effect with form if playing career mode, a series, leagues or tours.

 

[kurtkz]

Alright, I had a read through the thread and there's lots of really good ideas (most of which we've incorporated into CH). Our player stats are set up as follows:

Bowling:

Height
Skill (0 / can't bowl - 100 / Dale Steyn on steroids)
Control (0 - 100)
Form (0.75 - 1.25)
Strength (0 - 120)
Swing / Seam / Spin / Reverse
Dynamic Control (0 - 10) <- this is calculated as you play as a function of how well you're bowling
Dynamic Stamina (0 - 10) <- players tire as the game goes on and this also affects your bowling

Batting:

Height
Skill (0 - can't hold a bat - 100 / Don Bradman)
Form (0.75 - 1.25)
Strength (0 - 120)
Placement (0 - 100)
Hand-eye coordination (0 - 100)
Touch-player (? not idea how to name this one)
Swing / seam / spin / pace modifiers
Leg / off / back / front
Dynamic Control (0 - 10) <- this is calculated as you play as a function of how well you're batting
Dynamic Stamina (0 - 10) <- same as above

Characteristics <- these are programmable scripts that can be assigned to players. So far we've implemented:

maverick
irresponsible
technician
stone waller
slogger
rhythm bowler
old ball bowler
new ball bowler
nervous starter
nervous bowler
low stamina bowler
golden arm bowler
finisher
death bowler

No players actually have zero ratings in the game (unless it's for players who strictly shouldn't be allowed to bowl).

Now, CH differs from DBC in how the game flows:

1. the ball is delivered and reaches the batsman, but no determination has been made yet as to what the result will be (as I understand it, DBC calculates this as soon as you press the buttons to play a shot)
2. the batsman now plays a shot and the game determines what should happen by basing it on (simplified) physics

I'll elaborate on some of the finer details tomorrow.

 

[T.J.Hooker]

I would suggest "lbw candidate" and "early lbw candidate" might be useful for ai batsmen.

Some players who are strong through midwicket, like KP (and Ponting? I think I'm remembering that right), are vulnerable lbw early on before they get their feet moving and their timing set. Others, like Shane Watson or Ian Botham, just have a technical issue playing around their front pad which means they're always more vulnerable there.

Sometimes it's a particular bowler who exploits it, though. Gooch was a massive lbw candidate to Terry Alderman but didn't have as much trouble with anyone else.

 

[cooks1st100]

Touch-player (? not idea how to name this one)

Would this be playing with soft/rigid hands at all? That would be my interpretation, or would it be a batsman who plays dabs and guides the ball as opposed to playing shots in front of square?

 

[T.J.Hooker]

I think of touch players as guys like David Gower, Zaheer Abbas, Mark Waugh, Damien Martyn. Guys with exceptionally sweet timing who can hit boundaries with minimal bat speed.

eta

actually Zaheer should probably be filed under "wristy".

 

[kurtkz]

@cooks1st100 yeah, it's something like that. It generally refers to players who seem to have all the time in the world when playing shots.

 

[blockerdave]

@kurtkz i love that you've got some of the things i've been talking about like differing skill with swing/reverse for bowlers, or vs swing/reverse/spin/pace for batsmen and it really shows where DBC should be going.

it's worth looking at this image, a screenshot from the RLL3 steam page:

look at the wealth of different skills/attributes there in comparison to the relative paucity we have in DBC.

whilst i'm by no means a game developer, it seems to me that Rugby would be harder to deal with multiple stats, since you don't know what play is gonna happen so you don't know which stats might be relevant and everything has to be accessible on the fly.

in cricket, you'd know what stats would be applicable either before the game (if you had stats based on format), or the delivery (since you'd know the state of the pitch, ball, pressure, if the bowler is a pace, medium or spin bowler etc) and so the only stats needing to be accessible on the fly would be relating to pace, length and movement. we should therefore be able to increase the options, increase skills/stats variations without creating too much processing overhead that's gonna break the game

 

[cooks1st100]

With these in mind, what attributes and skills do you think there should be?

I'll start with attributes for seam bowling.

Pace/arm speed
Effort ball pace
Slower ball pace
Inswing
Outswing
Reverse Swing
Seam
Off-cutter
Leg-cutter
Slower ball
Stamina
Accuracy
Natural line
Natural length
Rhythm
Aggression

The first twelve are self explanatory. Natural line would be an attribute to set a bowlers line, (off-stump, outside-off, etc.). I think this would be a good addition from the AI perspective but also from the human aspect in that currently all bowlers bowl the same line so each bowler would have a slightly different feel about them. Natural length would obviously be the same but for length.
Rhythm could be linked to confidence in a similar way I mentioned in my previous post regarding batting confidence. A player with a high rhythm rating would see his confidence increase at a faster rate than one with a low rating. Similarly a high rating would see a smaller decrease than a lower rated one when things are not going their way. Maybe a bowler with a low rhythm attribute could be more susceptible to picking up niggling injuries also.
Aggression would be for the AI, a high rating would see more bouncers and yorkers being bowled, whereas a lower rated bowler would mix the line and length up less.

 

[oliryan33]

Bad Rhythm could also mean more no balls/wides or maybe pulling out of a delivery more for the AI

 

[Dutch]

@cooks1st100 yeah, it's something like that. It generally refers to players who seem to have all the time in the world when playing shots.

Kurt can you give some insight as to how CH models for dynamic gameplay, how it takes into account all the factors governing the outcome of a ball played....how does the game dynamically account for the players skills, both bowler and batsman, attributes, conditions, state of play etcetera.....

 

[cooks1st100]

Bad Rhythm could also mean more no balls/wides or maybe pulling out of a delivery more for the AI

I would have rhythm as a fixed setting in-game, while confidence would be the attribute that would vary according to performance and in turn would be what affected the things you have mentioned, as well as pace, accuracy, swing, turn, etc. A player with a low rhythm attribute would bowl more poor deliveries and extras due to confidence taking longer to increase.

 

[Langeveldt]

@kurtkz i love that you've got some of the things i've been talking about like differing skill with swing/reverse for bowlers, or vs swing/reverse/spin/pace for batsmen and it really shows where DBC should be going.

it's worth looking at this image, a screenshot from the RLL3 steam page:

look at the wealth of different skills/attributes there in comparison to the relative paucity we have in DBC.

whilst i'm by no means a game developer, it seems to me that Rugby would be harder to deal with multiple stats, since you don't know what play is gonna happen so you don't know which stats might be relevant and everything has to be accessible on the fly.

in cricket, you'd know what stats would be applicable either before the game (if you had stats based on format), or the delivery (since you'd know the state of the pitch, ball, pressure, if the bowler is a pace, medium or spin bowler etc) and so the only stats needing to be accessible on the fly would be relating to pace, length and movement. we should therefore be able to increase the options, increase skills/stats variations without creating too much processing overhead that's gonna break the game

That's great, but do these attributes actually do anything?? I think we have more than enough sliders in DBC 14, it's just nobody has been able to tell us what effect that have, if any.

 

[Dutch]

That's great, but do these attributes actually do anything?? I think we have more than enough sliders in DBC 14, it's just nobody has been able to tell us what effect that have, if any.

This seems to be the problem: either parts of DBC aren't talking to each other or something generic is overriding everything....all the ingredients seemed to be there.....but you gotta take the things out of the packet to bake a cake......right? @Biggs?

 

[grkrama]

something generic is overriding everything.

^this is what i feel is happening the most......

 

[Gamer Pradosh]

@blockerdave : Does the attributes and skills in RLL3 does what it says or that is also behaving the same way like DBC??