Developer Diary #4

[Lonamer11]

from what i can see from the my player trailer, is that there are only 3 kinds of backhands en 4 kinds of forehands and only 2 service motions. shouldnt they put some more variety on it. What i do like is that there service return motions. That should make returning more interesting. hope for a block return or something. The career mode looks very interesting tho. aaw man i will be missing much sleep soon

[dahltennis]

kinda random, but does anyone know if players will actually celebrate when they win a match? That was always a big pet peeve of mine from ts3, when they'd win the match point, but act like they had to play another point.

[Mack2300]

kinda random, but does anyone know if players will actually celebrate when they win a match? That was always a big pet peeve of mine from ts3, when they'd win the match point, but act like they had to play another point.

But they do celebrate in TS3 If you win a slam, they collapse to the ground, or you'll get a fist pump of some sort I believe.

[o Sinna o]

if you wanna celebrate a Win, get naked after every Match like I do and swing your **** in your Room.

[SlicerITST]

kinda random, but does anyone know if players will actually celebrate when they win a match? That was always a big pet peeve of mine from ts3, when they'd win the match point, but act like they had to play another point.

I have seen at least 1 screenshot that was ingame and had a player celebrating. Im typing on my phone now but will link it here later.

[tenjintenkai]

What i do like is that there service return motions. That should make returning more interesting. hope for a block return or something.

I may be wrong but i think the return is about the stance, not the motion...

[oDEVLISHo]

Can someone post the txt on the forum - i cant get facebook at work!

[Cro Morgan]

Can someone post the txt on the forum - i cant get facebook at work!

Some pics missing, but here's the text:



Hello everyone,

My name is Jean-Karl Tupin-Bron, Game Designer on Top Spin 4. I previously wrote a Developer Diary about King of the Court so please take a moment to read that if you haven’t already.

Today, I’m here to talk to you about Top Spin 4’s Career mode. MAKE SURE YOU WATCH THE MY PLAYER TRAILER HERE. Many of you 2K Sports gamers may be familiar with this mode from other titles such as NBA and MLB where you get to create a player from scratch and guide him or her through every facet of a real pro tennis career, starting as a newcomer pro with the goal of becoming one of the game’s greatest legends. As you progress through your player’s career, you will have the ability to fully develop him/her over time, and eventually create your own style with the introduction of a variety of coaches. The vast array of options throughout your career will allow you to shape your player however you want. Let’s start with the completely revamped Player Creator.

Step 1 – Character Creation

The Player Creator has always been an important element in the Top Spin franchise. We have always wanted users to create very unique characters to play with in Career and Online modes. The motto has not changed since the first edition of Top Spin: “No two players will be alike!” But between the feedback from the great folks at ITST and all you Top Spin fans around the world, we've advanced the system.

Streamlined Interface

One of the key objectives in Top Spin 4 was to ensure that great results would be achieved easily. To do this, we created many presets to get you started very quickly. So, for instance, each gender has 40 different face presets (skin tone, skin texture, face geometry) that allow you to quickly create a realistic player model. All these presets can be further refined in a wide variety of ways, but serve as the starting block of your My Player. We also made sure that all customization options were self-explanatory and instantly output the changes as you make tweaks. This makes Player edition a breeze.

Deepest Player Creator Options

Making it easier to use doesn’t mean it is more limited; it’s actually the opposite! We have more content now in the Player Creator than we have ever had in the Top Spin series:

* 40 face presets per gender.
* Basic face customization (face texture/face shape) gives several hundred uniquely different results.
* 100+ haircuts (with real physics) to choose from, with options to customize color and accessories.
* 40+ different facial hair styles you can apply to your male player.
* Rich combination of makeup options for females.

In the Locker room, you can dress up your player however you want. We have nearly all of the most relevant tennis brands available and you can pick from the most recent catalog of Tennis gear (Adidas, Nike, Fila, K-Swiss, Prince, Babolat, Head, Yonex, Bosworth).

Also, we created special custom brands with hundreds of extra items to unlock, allowing your player style to become more eccentric, classical, street, etc...

Advanced Controls for the Perfectionists

Although the variety offered by the presets is already huge, we wanted to provide users even more control over their player’s facial features with advanced controls that provide easy-to-use sliders to refine various areas of your player’s face. These can be used to change physical traits such as:

* Nose
* Eyes
* Mouth
* Head Shape

Also, similar to Top Spin 3, there are expert controls that provide the most advanced users direct control over points on the face for precise tweaking.

Putting the Finishing Touches on Your Created Player

Once all the cosmetic elements of your created player have been defined, you can select some Tennis play style elements (Handedness, 1 or 2 handed backhand) and your favorite animations to be used for Forehand, Backhand, Serve and Return positions. You can also define the temper of your player and if he/she is quiet or vocal on the court. Then just give a name and country to your player and you’re ready to embark on your journey to become a tennis legend.

Step 2 – Player Evolution

The basic principle of Player Evolution is very simple:

- You gain Experience Points (XPs) by playing matches in any game mode

- As you accumulate XPs, you raise in Level. You begin as an amateur at Level 0 and can go as high as Level 20.

- Each time you gain a Level, you have to decide how and where you want to ‘invest’ your earned XP.

Let’s get into that in more detail:

Experience Points (XPs) are gained by playing matches. Obviously, winning earns you more points than losing so the better you perform, the faster you progress. Also, not all matches are equal; some grant little reward while others can boost your XPs quite drastically.

So what do you do with all those XPs? Well at defined stages, you gain Levels (very standard RPG concept here) but you actually have to decide what area you want to allocate those Levels.

Remember, in a previous Dev Diary, we talked about Play Styles. Levels are to be assigned to a particular Tennis Strategy and your Play Style is defined by your mastery of these Tennis Strategies.

Again, here are the three main Tennis Strategies:

* Offensive Baseline Play
* Defensive Baseline Play
* Serve and Volley

Read up on them in the link above if you’d like to know about each one. Each time you gain a Level you need to decide if you want to progress in Offensive Baseline, Defensive Baseline or Serve and Volley.

This choice is important, as it determines how you increase your attributes. In Top Spin 4, we use 8 attributes to represent your players’ abilities: 4 of them are technical abilities in Tennis (forehand, backhand, service, and volley) and the other 4 are physical abilities (power, stamina, speed, reflexes).

Increasing your ‘Serve and Volley’ Strategy Level for instance will have a different impact on your attributes than raising your ‘Defensive Baseline’.

You can increase your 3 Strategy Levels however you want. Just remember that your Player Level cannot go beyond 20. By choosing which tennis strategies you want to master, your created player will create their own unique Play Style.

Here are some sample ‘final’ Created Player examples:



Thanks to that system, we created a great diversity of balanced Play Styles available in Top Spin 4. However, we wanted to go one step further and provide even more options to the users: both during and after the development of their created player.

So… we implemented a NEW Coaching & Development system.

Step 3 – Coaches, Objectives and Skills

One of the critical objectives we had when designing the Player Development system was to guarantee each tennis player you create or meet in Top Spin 4 is unique. This starts with the look, of course, but also with a unique play style. With that in mind we designed the Coach feature.

Introduction to Coaches

In Top Spin 4, each player can be contacted by a variety coaches. There are three categories of coaches in the game (bronze, silver and gold). Of course, the best coaches only work with the best players. There are more than 100 coaches in the game so you should be able to find the one suited for you.

Coaches will show up as soon as you accumulate XP and elevate in Levels. Obviously the choices you make in your Player Development will dictate the coaches that contact you. Some coaches may show up because you have reached a certain level in a Tennis Strategy while others require specific combination of Strategy Levels to show up. For instance, an excellent All-Rounder coach may appear only if your Level in each Tennis Strategy is 6 or more.

Keep in mind that coaches who contact you all have something interesting for your type of player. They may propose to focus on your strong points or offer you a way to compensate your weaknesses.

You will quickly have access to many different coaches but you can have only one active coach at any given time.

Objectives and rewards

Each coach proposes several objectives to complete (examples: perform 50 control shots, score 100 forehand winners, play 75 balls to the net, etc.). During all the matches and training you play with your current coach, you will progress in completing those objectives. The more objectives you complete, the more rewards you get.

A coach can reward you with:

* An XP bonus (examples: 3 bonus XPs for each winner from the baseline, amount of XPs won after each match increased by 10%, etc.).
* An attribute bonus (examples: Power +15, Speed +5, etc.).
* Or a gameplay skill (examples: be more efficient when you trail behind, play more powerful shots when your opponent is to the net, etc.).

No need to tell you that the best rewards are given by the Gold coaches. Obviously, their objectives are also harder to reach. No pain, no gain!

On top of giving you more choices and chances to improve your created player, one of the key aspects of the new Coaching System is that you can change your coach at any time in My Player mode. Changing a coach will deactivate its associated reward and you will just need to complete the objectives of your new coach to get new rewards. This may allow you to change your Play Style in a very significant way. And note: work done with one coach is never lost. You can change back to him/her at any time and reactivate all the rewards you previously had. This is a very flexible system to fine tune your Play Style.

Now it’s up to you to create your own tennis player just like you want him/her to be. And when you think you’re ready, hop online to challenge other players in a variety of modes that we will be talking about in the future. The experience will always be unique!


Stay tuned for more info in an upcoming Dev Diary.

- Jean-Karl Tupin-Bron
Game Designer

[VillaJ100]

One thing i would like is an even playing field with regards to power. what i mean is say agassi's backhand is, 74. but he has 68 for power. sampras's is 58, but he has 68 for power, so i would like the maximum speed of their shot to be the same (the power), just agassi's higher rating means his backhand is more stable, accurate, and with a slightly larger timing window

[o Sinna o]

Alot of Informations. I have read it completely and I understood it. ^^

[oDEVLISHo]

thanks cro

[jayl0ve]

One thing i would like is an even playing field with regards to power. what i mean is say agassi's backhand is, 74. but he has 68 for power. sampras's is 58, but he has 68 for power, so i would like the maximum speed of their shot to be the same (the power), just agassi's higher rating means his backhand is more stable, accurate, and with a slightly larger timing window

That's probably what it is....that's what it was like in TS2

[ANILTJE]

WRONG! Every shot is a risk shot now, you can get "errors" on regular shots now

Yes, I know . I have been praying for this. The A flat down the lines in all the TS series are gone. They made a huge improvement with that.