Public Preview Version of ITST 1.16

[Martan]

Nice Berdych anims, good job

How big will be a roster? Now I see two more spaces for players than in 1.15

Thank you

[tonigno]

Is there anything new? For me this is the best version of the game....

[Elias]

Nice Berdych anims, good job

How big will be a roster? Now I see two more spaces for players than in 1.15

Thank you

You should see a total of 60 slots actually, not only two more. ( ). i hope this will work on everyone system by the way.. cause i have to use some special ascii characters to make this work.
If all goes well, the goal is 60 characters.

Is there anything new? For me this is the best version of the game....

Well, it's progressing slowly but surely.
For now i (almost) finished balancing the 36 current chars (besides maybe some last time adjustments as usual, like the heavy characters run accel probably lowered a bit more, maybe nadal backhand slightly adjusted, precision wise), so i'm starting to include new characters to fill in the spare slots. I also need to have a look at the dressroom, probably some US Open 2013 and WTF outfits from Jaydraco.

Still some anims choices to make regarding the current chars. I you guys want to make a call, feel free.
About Haas i think it's better to leave him with Federer BH for now, the new Haas BH is somewhat troublesome position wise due to the steps animation, and a bit slow, overall gimpy in the current state. Though he can keep his new FH wich is pretty nice.

Isner serve is another question. i made several AI testing sessions to compare the serve. Maybe not
long enough, but i felt like a vanilla (sharapova) serve was slightly more effective/consistent regarding
the number of aces. And also seems that Anderson serve was on the opposite, a bit better than a vanilla
serve So it's a difficult choice because, Isner has huge serve stats. We want him to have a very good serve
of course, but neither gimped or overpowered. So i'm just wondering if we shouldn't stay on the safe side keeping
a vanilla anim in this specific case.

Wawrinka serve anim got updated by megyaem and the good news is that the new one doesnt seem overpowered
trajectory wise like the previous one. So i could restore some power there more safely (well, i hope so )

Besides this i'll have to tweak the CRC internal check to display a message directly in the ingame HUD,
that was already almost finished by the time i did it though needs a fix regarding the way the message was
displayed. It will be a pretty rough text message in a corner i think, but not blocking/intrusive.

Maybe including Rogerfed1 custom scoreboards, though only if i can include the online features (rep) in it, cause our mod is dedicated to online play so we don't want these being unavailable, so it depends if i can do this cleanly enough and also if it's not too much time consuming. Either i'll do it for a future version.

I also contacted Heinrich v. westphalen (he's a modder @ MG forum and pretty talented at graphics and 3D). He made some nice slick hud/scoreboards/statboard and offered to contribute, so for a start, i suggested some custom ITST hud/scoreboard/statboard, with all the stats we need, rep buttons, ITST colors ident (red/white grey / black, etc). That would add some value to the mod idendity i think. No answer from him so far so i don't know if he's planning to do it, nor if it will be ready for 1.16 release then. We'll see.

[ELTXETXU]

Great news!! It looks very promising.

I'm very curious about Heinrich V. Westphalen work, if finally he does... all the stuff that he have done since he began to mod is amazing.

Thank you very much Elias for all the work!!!!

[Lucian86]

Maybe including Rogerfed1 custom scoreboards, though only if i can include the online features (rep) in it, cause our mod is dedicated to online play so we don't want these being unavailable, so it depends if i can do this cleanly enough and also if it's not too much time consuming. Either i'll do it for a future version.

But his scoreboards don't have also a second page of stats that include everything ?

[Elias]

But his scoreboards don't have also a second page of stats that include everything ?

I will check again but i don't think so. There is a second page of stats yes, but for instance i think i couldn't
see the average rally length on any statboard. I mean it's realistic regarding the real life statboards, it replicate them, regarding the stats order and some missing ones.

In the end it's possible to mod all of them to add the stats anyway, though i feel lazy to do it at this time.
And i don't want to delay 1.16 release too much with this, as it's not a priority.. it's been a long time without a new version already, people needs a gameplay "refresh" above all, these utterly long rallies and crazy defense since like 8+ months annoys players and get them bored. So we'll try to compensate with more drastic stat changes (even though i think there won't be any magic fix using stats to adress current movement mechanics flaws). I bet/hope Manutoo will maybe make an update in december/january improving this aspect, he wrote he would make some tests about it @MG forum. So we'll see how it goes.

Now it's not like it's really critical to have these stats (they are always available in the html match log anyway), but when a member posts statboard screenshots as a match report, we like to see the whole stats (though we can see less and less screenshots in forum reports these days).

[Lokius]

After being fortunate enough to have some games with Elias last night with 1.16 i can only say i am so excited about the ITST mod.
The game feels quicker and a lot more aggressive, instead of the drawn out endless rallies.

I had quite a long hiatus from the game but if this is the future of the mod i am very very much looking forward to it

[Martan]

Nice Berdych anims, good job

How big will be a roster? Now I see two more spaces for players than in 1.15

Thank you

Sorry, my mistake.

I wanted to write two times more

Anyway thanks for answer

[MaGav]

My opinion about preview version 1.16.

2nd version of 1.16 is very similar to 1.15, not many differences between them in a gameplay. Service is still not a big advantage, attack still requiring hard building of action.

In my opinion:
1. Defensive slice trajectory (it probably is a work for TE, not ITST), on some courts it's hard to see when it's going to land and easy shot which just have to be responded by a winner is making a trouble in positioning to hit a hard winning acc.
2. There shouldn't be a real hard servers who can hit 2-3 aces per game. In that situation many of beginners will pick Isner, Berdych, Gulbis, Tsonga, Janowicz to win their own service games and counting on some luck in receiving games.
2a. If we are deciding to make them hard, good servers then I think we should draw chars for every player for every single tournament. It could be more interesting and there won't be situations like 4 Federers in SFs.
3. Now Berdych, Del Potro etc are similar to 1.15 version, now when they are slower they should have harder FH and BH with 2-3 points.
4. Nadal's issue is hard to solve, but in this form not many guys will pick him. He should be faster and have better BH instead of that incredible FH short cross.


Which atp players will be in that 60 roster? Maybe any voting for last 5-10 places?

Last thing. I think in 2014 the relevant tournament should be played on its court, not any else. Some opponents want to play on another court, becouse of bad view, light etc. But it's that additional thing, conditions, that can make tournaments more interesting. It's not funny to play every hard court tournament on US Open etc.
I know there is an cappability to play always on the same court when picking another (like pidzi in WTF) but maybe it can be blocked?

[C4iLL]

I'm with Magav on the court blocking !

[Elias]

2nd version of 1.16 is very similar to 1.15, not many differences between them in a gameplay. Service is still not a big advantage, attack still requiring hard building of action.

Well. As i wrote earlyer, i think there won't be any magical fix to current TE movement mechanics. TE already had this tendency to exaggerate defense abilities, being by to high run acceleration or excessive helpers towards newbies and smoothing the lack of reflexes of lower skiller players. Resulting in less freedom of movement, lack of depth, and thus way too high movement potential when good movers are involved (now, even average players..). Though it never reached such a ridiculous point in my opinion. Since 1.0f. No secret, it's being said over and over since several months over here.

Now they start to wake-up at MG and i'm looking forward the next TE update wich hopefully will make things more acceptable.. I stand by my words, and we were right about it. 1.0e was clearly superior, besides the autopos trick issue, being about the movement wich was feeling much less constrained/free, much more enjoyable to play, more wrongfooting, globally defense was already very strong but not what we can see today. Overall 1.0e with autopos trick removed, toncity feature, decreasing the drop stats a bit, would have been much better than what we have to use since several months.

Now we have 83+ power along with 70 speed/accel. Still not enough. Yes we can still go for more. We will probably, but we shouldn't have to go that far. That won't fix the main culprit and game design flaws wich cause such a poor situation. Sorry to say this, but it's a waste, no other words for it.

About backwards movement speed, or additional baseline helpers, it's been discussed here months ago ( viewtopic.php?p=244575#p244575 , viewtopic.php?p=236149#p236149) . We had to wait some reactions months later @ MG to get the issue aknowledged, finally. Okay. 1 year since these nifty changes took place. White flag hissed, long time ago from our side. if such obvious issues were not aknwoledged and spotted after that much time, along with our multiple inquiries, it's helpless. No interest losing more energy if our voices are ignored and we can't get simple tools to build a custom control setup.

So we can still try to go for a bit more power than this. That will need a bit more balance work though and will ask a bit more time.

I may also tweak a bit the surfaces (accelerate them, that is).

By the way, having to build a point is a good thing. But in the end you need to be able to hit a damn winner, that is.
Currently the game is well balanced in this regard towards 800-1400 Elo (ITST currency) players, low/average level, beyond that ... it's often tedious.

2. There shouldn't be a real hard servers who can hit 2-3 aces per game. In that situation many of beginners will pick Isner, Berdych, Gulbis, Tsonga, Janowicz to win their own service games and counting on some luck in receiving games.

Well. We always had some big servers. True that newbies like them cause they can expect then to have a bit more free points and at least lose on a decent score. Though overall i think we couldn't finally see much shocking or unexpected results due to these chars. But of course, it's always a tricky aspect of balance.

If overall, serves are still not an advantage enough. We may decide to go for more power there as well.
For now, in this test version, mostly consistency has been increased (wich means higher first %, and higher first serve average speed), and precision a bit too. Power has been slightly increased, only for lower powered servers (<70). Ferrer from 62 to 66 for instance, same for Youzhny, etc. Above 70 it's more or less the same as before. We could decide to compress this range more, and get all our chars a minimum of 70 serve power, for example. That would be less realist, but could help (but expect to see some complaining from low experienced players wich will probably be aced much more).

And this leads to some other questions, aspects of the gameplay : variety.
I could read several interesting things in the chat log, of course. Making Federer FH handling ability (thanks to precision) a standard among the roster, was something i was thinking about for some time already, cause this wing allowed to play quicker and more agressively, aspect wich was overall lacking among the roster. C4iLL had the same suggestion in TE chat, and i thought we should give it a try. It makes the game more nervous, promotes agressive play even from more difficult positions. Though it has some drawbacks as well of course. High precision brings a lower charging time, but as well less ue's. And a slightly more arcade gameplay feeling (yeah it's more easy).

Of course i've read things like "about Tsonga power, i'd make them all the same power.", or all characters lower spin.

Of course balance would be a breeze, if we only played characters 70 speed, 30 spin, 86 power.
But where would be the variety then ? Faces textures and anims only ?

I exaggerate a bit, but you get the idea.

There is some more powerful guys, wich are slower. Faster guys, who have less power, this is pretty basic and the least we can do about gameplay variety i think.

About spin. decreasing it, compressing the range from 20 to 60/65, instead of 20 to 74. could be investigated as well. why not. Our current 1.16 Ferrer with 60 spin, and a decent counter stat, can be agressive enough. But Nadal at 60-65 spin feels a bit weird, to be honest.

2a. If we are deciding to make them hard, good servers then I think we should draw chars for every player for every single tournament. It could be more interesting and there won't be situations like 4 Federers in SFs.

Well, this has been discussed in the past (check this thread : viewtopic.php?f=1047&t=17716 ). There is pro and cons. Personnaly, IF the character balance is very good, then i love the idea, and indeed i think this could be very fun.

The drawback is that newcomers usually wants to play their fav player/icon. But i wonder if people would'nt get over it and enjoy this new challenge. That could be very interesting trying to make pronostics then, like : "Damn, do you think Richie can make it to this RG final with Lopez ? And Vram has Ferrer here .. Richie is screwed ! no he can't do it.." etc etc. I guess it could add some suspense, maybe a bit more surprises in draws. So i'm still seduced by this idea.

3. Now Berdych, Del Potro etc are similar to 1.15 version, now when they are slower they should have harder FH and BH with 2-3 points.

Well. maybe. not exactly.

Before, Djokovic had 82 speed / 50 tonicity, eg : (82+50)/2 = 66 run accel. So, 82 speed with 66 run accel.
Del Potro had 72 speed / 44 tonicity, eg : 58 run accel.

So between them, there was 10% speed difference, and 8% run accel difference.

in this 1.16, Djokovic has 71 speed and 70 run accel (69 tonicity)
Del Potro has 62 speed and 63 run accel (64 tonicity) (well in my last version, not the public 1.16)

So here we have 9% max speed difference, 7% run accel difference.

It's not a big difference but the movement potential gap between Del Potro and Djokovic is a bit lower, than it was in 1.15. Though the faster guys got some power incresase, and not the heavies, right. But this power from Delpotro or Berdych, somewhat means a bit more along with this setup than before, also they now have more run acceleration than before, thus can reach more balls, overall, +5% run accel compared to 1.15, has in my opinion more impact over global court coverage, vs -9% max speed, it's true for both types of characters, though. I'm not sure they would need much more power (relative to fast chars power, that is). maybe a bit.

4. Nadal's issue is hard to solve, but in this form not many guys will pick him. He should be faster and have better BH instead of that incredible FH short cross.

Well, not sure he won't be picked. I think he can be pretty lethal in good hands. His anims are not the easyest to use though. Faster, considering TE main issues currently, i think is not an option, really. We don't need anything faster in our characters, they already reach so much balls. Balancing a bit the wings could be done of course, less good FH, better BH ? well. Not sure he would be that much interesting to play then. Such setup like the current one promotes turning around the BH, and the FH precision allows to do it in better conditions, somewhat. That's a more technical setup compared to Djokovic with two good wings of course. That adds to gaemplay variery as well.

Which atp players will be in that 60 roster? Maybe any voting for last 5-10 places?

Well not completely sure how it will be done yet. But for now probably removing Nalbandian and Fish from the roster, and extending the roster to 60 players, that would mean, 26 free slots to fill.

As Djarvik wrote in a pm, it could be nice still to have some retired players / legends to play for friendlies, especially when we have very nice dedicated animations for them (Nalbandian anim pack by Lucian is very nice). So i think what i can do is simply releasing 1.16 with two profiles. The first ITST profile with 60 active players, the second ITST2 profile with retired players.

Or we keep them in the main roster, but then we have only 24 free slots.

Here are the names to choose from i selected at this time :

Janowicz (of course )
Querrey
Monaco
Anderson
Seppi
Chardy
Robredo
Dodig
Rosol
Tursunov
Paire
Granollers
Berlocq
Bogomolov
Zeballos
Mannarino
Fognini
Mayer
Troicki
Mahut
Klizan
Sock
Nieminen
Istomin
Andujar
Haase
Berankis
Hewitt
Matthieu
Belucci
Darcis
Volandri
Sijsling
Sela
Kubot
Lacko
Giraldo
Kamke
Brands
Pospisil
Bautista-Agut
Carreno-Busta
Stakhovsky
Young

that is 44 names already.

I couldn't find any face textures for some guys like the young talent Nick Kyrgios or Przysiezny.

So if you want to add additionnal names to the list feel free.

And you can post you fav selection of 26 players in this list as well

Last thing. I think in 2014 the relevant tournament should be played on its court, not any else. Some opponents want to play on another court, becouse of bad view, light etc. But it's that additional thing, conditions, that can make tournaments more interesting. It's not funny to play every hard court tournament on US Open etc.
I know there is an cappability to play always on the same court when picking another (like pidzi in WTF) but maybe it can be blocked?

Well i remember Fez came with this idea as well. enforcing to play on 2D courts only.
the thing is, if you enforce someone to play on any 2D court, he can still use 3D mode with his favorite camera anyways. Wich can be seen as an advantage, definitely.

Pidzi chooses 2D for immersion purposes. But doesn't want to make compromises about camera cumfort. So he modded his WTF court with shangai geometry/picture, keeping indoor court physics, to play on it. I mean it's not worse from him than having switched to 3D mode, technically speaking. So i'm really not against such practices, if the guy knows what he's doing, because modding a court is ok, changing the picture and the cam, but changing the physics would lead to some huge desyncing in online games.

So .. imo the only thing that would be doeable, would be enforcing playing on 2D courts only, disabling 3D mode in menus for example (but even this you can't have 100% control over it and someone could enable this option again, sliently).
Thus i think there isn't any solution for this.

[Woowhat]

Hello. I just came to say that Gasquet and Berdych animations are brilliant. Good job whoever made them. I play with them in practice mode just to enjoy the motions. About gameplay I can't say much cos I didn't play online in moths but for me this game always feelt like better movement = win therefore more games/playing - better feel - win . Too much muscle memory.

[Elias]

Hello. I just came to say that Gasquet and Berdych animations are brilliant. Good job whoever made them.

From Lucian !

[C4iLL]

Great post Elias to sum-up your opinions. By the way 2 questions outside the subject :

1) would it be possible to avoid the "create ITST profile" step when you install the mod + the loading of the characters afterwards ? I mean a version where you just launch the game and you can directly choose the player in the roster.
2) What about the demo project ?

[Elias]

1) would it be possible to avoid the "create ITST profile" step when you install the mod + the loading of the characters afterwards ? I mean a version where you just launch the game and you can directly choose the player in the roster.

Well, i thought about this one as well. It's possible theorically yes, but may cause some problems.
The way to do it, would be to install along with the mod, a default ITST.ini, issued from the default template
of Tennis.ini from the last TE version (the profile.ini is basically a copy of tennis.ini when you first create it, before
customizing your setup).

The problem is, when a new TE update is released, pretty often, some things are changed in the default tennis.ini, some new entries may appear as well. So in this case, even if you make a fresh install of the new version, when installing the mod, the ITST.ini provided by the mod may lack some entries or contain wrong ones. wich may then lead to some issues.

That's why it was not done already.

2) What about the demo project ?

Wel it's only a rough idea, i didn't digged it much for now, mostly focusing on 1.16.
Not sure what is possible to be done really. TE Demo is extremely restricted modding wise.
I think when the trial time is expired you can only play with 1 animation for each shot.
That would mean, customising demo default anims, only one pro char available.
Only one court surface available as well (Blue Green).

So i don't know if it's worthy. Maybe we can do some tests someday i'll try to connect you
or someone else with a demo "modded" 1.15 or 1.16 to see what happens.

Not sure either Manutoo will be pleased with such idea, so i wanted to bring him before
anyway.

In the end i think it could be beneficial for both ITST & MG.

Having demo players being able to join Full version ITST users. Being limited to only
one or two characters (not the top 8 though, if you want to play Federer, buy the game ).
That would at the same time allow them to have a glimpse of the mod, and lead them to buy the game to have the benefit of playing all characters. It would be only for friendly matches though, we couldn't allow them to play on tour, for time limiting reasons, and also surface limitations.

1.16 is the priority though, i'll probably mess up a bit with this after release.