Public Preview Version of ITST 1.16

[pidzi]

about decoturf physics i think they should stay same or at least bounce maybe you could lower the reduction of speed after the bounce but if not still ok for me. About the idle anims i would be glad to see them since a like great Lucians anims and particularly his adds even more immersive experience while playing ITST so for me yes, put them in.

And lastly made some other tests with other chars than hardhitters and have to say that gameplay is great and almost everything is working as intended. So lets just work on these hardhitters, rebalance their stats and i think in a few weeks and new version can go online.

And again have to thank to Lucian for such an incredible work he made, that he allowed us to use his animations and increased the enjoyment and immersion of the game to another level.

[Elias]

And lastly made some other tests with other chars than hardhitters and have to say that gameplay is great and almost everything is working as intended. So lets just work on these hardhitters, rebalance their stats and i think in a few weeks and new version can go online.

Yep. AI testing were not the most reliable to make the right choice in this precise case, cause with this setup, a Djokovic can hit thru a 66-68 run accel Berdych, almost as well as thru a 63 run accel Berdych, when both Berdyches max speed is caped short. Just that the rally physionomy is not the same then. What we want obviously is to feel the rally realistic when playing.
At this time i'm on a 63 run accel with Berdych (62 speed / 64 tonicity / 86 stam), still trying different values around this. Try it if you want and tell me how you feel it. It will need some live online testing and feedbacks i think to validate the gameplay, and then if AI testing gives balanced results as well, we can decide to go for it.

And again have to thank to Lucian for such an incredible work he made, that he allowed us to use his animations and increased the enjoyment and immersion of the game to another level.

Oh yes, Lucian is the animation goat, undoubtly
But watch out Megyaem, he's improving a lot and doing great anims these days (check the new delpo ones, and you will also find Janowicz serve and FH, Isner serve & FH in this test version). Meg is also releasing Haas anims (wings) pretty soon i think, wich seems pretty nice too. Emmainf's Nishikori FH normal+acc was a nice surprise as well.

[Lucian86]

Hmm Murray anims i thought i integrated them .. maybe a mistake or just not binded to the char ? i will check.
I mean i think i replaced 1.15 Murray v2 FH, by your Murray V3 (last pack), but didn't changed the version name, just overwriting the anims in place, will re-check it, but i think these are the new ones from your Murray pack.
Right, about wait/idle, i'll probably add them. I'm often reluctant with idle anims cause with custom ones i could see very often the characters "bouncing" left/right so much faster compared to default ones that the chars felt not idle but more on steroids wich looks a bit unreal. Not sure it was yours though, but then remembering this i somewhat avoided it straight away

About stretched aliens running weirdly i'm not fan either, i definitely won't use this

[edit]
checked about Murray anims, they are present and selectable in this preview. I just forgot to bind them or didn"t saved the char when i did, probably.
for info : serv n°40, FH n°39, BH n°21, slice n°18, return stance n°33
[/edit]

Alright !

About the idle thing...in real life players bounce left and right pretty fast actually. When they return the serve, before the split step, they move even faster, this time up and down more than left and right. My animations are something in the middle.

By the way, put also the "move left" and "move right" animations which are related to the "idle/wait" animation. Basically when the player moves left and right, he maintains the same idle position.

And again have to thank to Lucian for such an incredible work he made, that he allowed us to use his animations and increased the enjoyment and immersion of the game to another level.

You're welcome

[JasonBourne]

Lucian

Hello, nice work on your animations! Could you make a Nadal FH motion ? The one we have now is good but not perfect, I would like to see your work on it ! Like the service and the BH, perfect!

Tnx

[Elias]

Hello there,

i updated this version so you can re-download it (simply drop it and overwrite), also editing the link in Moe post to avoid versions mismatches :

http://www.mediafire.com/?d6443z54n5oa731

- The balance should be overall much better, especially regarding movement/run acceleration differences.
You may re-test the heavy chars groups (Tsonga, Berd etc, against fast characters like Djokovic etc), balance
should be ok, not more than 1% tonicity far from it i think, if not perfect.

- added Gulbis in the character batch
- added Lucian's idle/wait anims to their respective motions/chars.
- added Megyaem Haas anims (BH & FH binded)
- added Megyaem Wawrinka BH & FH (but waw is not there^^)
- added some few 2D courts (wimbly first court, Paris masters, WTF, to have a glimpse on these new cams)
- you can check a new clay texture for 3D courts (mapped on RG courts here). I used the clay from
lenglen 2013 to make it, check if you like.
- new ITST net from Rounders

Ingame this version will report as ITST1.15c so it's not compatible with the previous one.

Some final decisions can be difficult regarding animations, as in our environment, gameplay efficiency is as much important as immersion. Some of these choices are :

- Federer FH : Lucian's Federer FH (currently binded in this version, anim n°43) vs Manac0r Federer FH n°17, wich we are using since a long time already. Anims with a shorter preparation time and/or faster swing simply brings a noticeable ability/comfort to hit hearly, maintaining more rythm in the rally, and can be an advantage to hit towards the open court earlyer, for instance.. There is not a big timing gap between both of these anims, but testing and re-testing, there is still a noticeable difference in my opinion. They are both good cosmetically wise, with some advantage in this area to Lucian anim with both normal/accel variants, more polish; manac0r one still seems faster at execution, easyer to play crisp crosses with.

As the real Fed is declining, choosing Lucian anim could be a logical choice. Though it may also remove some pleasure to the overall Federer gameplay and users. So i'd rather this to be a community choice, not mine. So i'd really like to read ITST members opinion about it.

Haas anims : they are pretty nice, cosmetically wise, FH is ok, not very fast but catches pretty well Haas motion.
the BH looks very good but in my opinion has a tricky gameplay : due probably to the steps animation, for some reason, the character moves a bit back when you hit a stroke, when the autopos triggers, and this is pretty troublesome for proper/precise positionning. At least it is at first, after some training with it, shots comes off more easily, but still, it's not an easy animation, if you compare it to Lucian Gasquet anim. Try Haas with Federer BH (wich was binded to Haas before), for comparison. It's also a tricky situation because Haas BH is his strong shot, gameplay, stat wise. It's not a fast execution Bh either, but this aspect is pretty spot on though, and not penalizing enough imo.

So, your choice again, Haas lovers/users We can use it, or we can also ask about it to Megyaem (i will) and wait for a future fix / version 2, if it is possible.

Megyaem Wawrinka new anims : well, they are pretty good, but the BH has the same positionning issue (but lighter than Haas Bh i think), Fh is nice. But there i think we are pretty fine to stay with Lucians anims. Or a FH change maybe could be an option, matter of taste (i mean megyaem Wawrinka FH v2, n°58, not his previous one).

Meg Isner serve :

Richie reported some difficulty to hit enough fast serves with this anim (and could hit faster serves with anderson motion). It's an important matter as serve is important to this character
The toss is pretty short and the character doesn't hit the ball very high, regarding Isner height, i think the impact could have been a bit higher. So it's also usual that short toss anims give you less time too prepare your hit, direction wise, and somewhat charging the stroke (?). SO that may be the reason and maybe one may need to practice it and be used to.

personnaly i did some offline test (only serving with two Isners), and my results were not really worrying :




143mph max, 132mph average, seems ok regarding the character stats.

As the stats were pretty standard, i didn't made the same full test with Anderson motion, thout testing it quickly
it's true that it's an easyer anim, more time to adjust, ball impact is higher and then the serve trajectories are better.

So here again, members feedback and opinions are important. Please try Isner and see if you can serve well enough with him. It should be as this char pick is mostly based on this ability

A last / remaining question wich i often think about these times is : should we keep the Defender style ?
Not that it's overpowered, imo it feels even weaker, with such setup, but i may be wrong about it.
For instance, playing the Nadal AI, using Ferrer, i figured that it was like impossible mission for Ferrer (what do you think ?).
At equal human skills i don't know what would happen, but : both have spin (more moonballs on Ferrer side due to Defender style, but Nadal as a puncher has still a pretty huge spin thanks to the high spin stat, AND has shoulder height accels to crush Ferrer spin shots. I tried this on clay and was scared for the poor David
Now, one can tell it's fine if Ferrer / Nadal is a no_match for Nadal, but in this tour context i'm not sure it's a good thing.
Though, even if Ferrer had shoulder height accels, what type of shots from Nadal would come to his shoulder height eh ? poor slices ?

Richie suggested that Ferrer, regarding his way to play on hard/indoor lately could be pretty well considered as an attacking baseliner, as he likes to push with his FH pretty often.
Gameplay wise, some "defenders" could pretty well be set up as PB style, considering most of our usual PB's have been switched to Punchers to enhance their net abilities. This one is more a reccuring question than a choice we have to make. but it's a choice we have but dropping a style would mean loosing some gameplay variety, wich is something precious as well.

have fun !

& sorry i'm not updating fast, but still not at home and only with a little laptop (and my eyes still in pain). I should be back home during the next week.

[Florian]

Fed declining, have you been watching tennis since Basel ? He has been the only player taking twice a set off Nole ^^

[JasonBourne]

As the real Fed is declining, choosing Lucian anim could be a logical choice. Though it may also remove some pleasure to the overall Federer gameplay and users. So i'd rather this to be a community choice, not mine. So i'd really like to read ITST members opinion about it.

My opinion is definitively Lucians anim. Heck, I even edited that in the previous versions.


Ehm, Nadal's forehand is weaker than before, the ball floats way too early before bouncing so hitting a winner is almost not possible, and its easy to counter. Is this how it should be or ..?

[pidzi]

Hey Jason, you have to realize that in order to balance we simply cannot allow Nadal to have both High spin and also High power on his Forehand. That would simply caused real imbalance because you could have hit both incredible angles and also hard regular accels. Also i dont know what you think but in real life, nadals forehand is not based on power(yes he can hit harder occasionally but thats very low amount of such shots) but rather on spin and precision mainly.

[Florian]

Nadal s fh strength comes from high balls that he can crush hard, and also from huge counter accels dtl on the run. But counter isn't well reproduced in TE. For me Nadal should stay as PB but with quicker reactions and max speed (same for Nole but in the first test version he seemed well balanced for that matter.

[JasonBourne]

Alright thanks for clearing that out guys.

[C4iLL]

Sorry guys, I'm completely overbooked since 1 week, I could not participate to the new tests till now, I hope I'll have more time soon, I'm really curious about how this new version feels.

[JasonBourne]

Hey Jason, you have to realize that in order to balance we simply cannot allow Nadal to have both High spin and also High power on his Forehand. That would simply caused real imbalance because you could have hit both incredible angles and also hard regular accels. Also i dont know what you think but in real life, nadals forehand is not based on power(yes he can hit harder occasionally but thats very low amount of such shots) but rather on spin and precision mainly.

I know what you mean Pidzi, and you are right. But what I actually mean is, the strikes on those soft balls are even slow, thats why it's very hard to finish point, and easy for the opponent to turn around.

In my opinion Nadal has too much topspin, 76. Because he already has alot spin in his FH motion, the moonball effect.
+ 76 spin on it, makes the ball float too much. I think the spin should be reduced, maybe to 63 or something.

This is my opinion guys, and I would like to hear yours aswell.

[pidzi]

On this i agree with you, i actually suggested that he should have 60 top spin but turned back to the Defender style again, like that he would have more powerful strokes but also great defending capabilities.

[JasonBourne]

On this i agree with you, i actually suggested that he should have 60 top spin but turned back to the Defender style again, like that he would have more powerful strokes but also great defending capabilities.

Let's see how it goes, maybe Elias would change it.

EDIT: I just found out I forgot to change my profile name to ITST2, thats why I did not feel any changes. Gonna test the 2nd version now.

[JasonBourne]

OK, This version seems good, he is now more agressive. Let's see how it goes.