Team Specific Celebrations
We've had player specific celebrations in Madden since Madden NFL 2003, but since we've implemented our "No Post Play Celebration Cut Scene" policy, we really wanted to extend the functionality outside of just players, but to teams. Plus in the example of the Giants, it would not have been very efficient to just tag every player on the Giants with a special animation set. Then also if you had traded that player he would still do the animation on another team, and we didn't want that either.
In the video you can see the immediate reaction from Strahan - doing the jump shot "ballin" celebration that nearly every defensive player on the Giants would do last year. We've got team-specific celebrations for Atlanta (A-Town stomp), Denver (Mile High salute), Philadelphia (Eagle flap), and a few other teams as well.
On an added note, we've even got some special surprises in store for create-a-teams too. I'd encourage you to experiment with scoring touchdowns with some different teams with different logos when you get your hands on the game.
Bad Weather Jukes
This one has been a hotly debated topic around Tiburon...do we want players to slip and fall? It takes control away from the gamer...which is kind of against our mantra this year. We decided to make an exception and have slip and fall jukes in rain or snow games. This is a part of football...so we finally got it in. It doesn't ruin the gameplay experience by any stretch (i.e. you can keep running if no one touches you while you're down), and it's tuned for the player's agility rating. So for the example in the video I used Lorenzo Neal (don't worry - I turned on a debug option to make him slip every time just so I could show it in a video easily - and I froze the defense as well), but the point is that a guy like him will be more at risk to slip and fall when juking than a guy like Tomlinson. I think it is tuned perfectly too...my whole goal with this one was just to put it in the back of your head that you might slip and to keep you wary of it. It's not even close to happening every time (or even every other time) you juke, but it's just enough to get you thinking about it. "I probably shouldn't juke with my fullback right now...but maybe I'll give it a shot". It's also scaled based on the amount of precipitation. If it's a light drizzle you'll rarely see it, if at all, but in a heavy downpour you might run across it every now and then.
I'm really looking forward to expanding this in the coming years. Rain and snow games should really start feeling more and more different. This is something I definitely want opinions from the community on though:
Jukes seem more acceptable to slip because you are controlling the player. If you juke with a non-agile guy in the rain, and you slip and fall, that makes sense. But what about the following...would you want to see things like this in Madden NFL 09?
Receivers and defenders slip and fall on cut moves based on their ratings. This one is totally out of your control, but can be realistic.
Ball slips out of QB's hand while passing based on ratings (maybe the Carrying rating? Should we make a new rating for this?). Again, pretty much out of your control...you have to pass whether it's raining or not right?
Holders and punters missing snaps. Man this would infuriate me if it happened in a clutch situation. But look at Romo and the Cowboys...it happens! If it's in the game...should it be in the game?
Kickers slip and fall on kicks...though I bet this would look pretty funny, what if you missed a game winner because of it? I am assuming a few TV's and controllers would get shattered if we put that in.
Play Action with Short Yardage to go
This is one of my favorites because I actually implemented it. You got it...I've taken up a little programming (a.k.a. hacking away until it somehow works correctly). This was one of the first things I tried, and it caused all kinds of bugs at first, but my engineers were helpful enough to take some time out and help me fix them. Basically the idea is that your RB will fake a dive over the top if you are in a very short yardage situation (i.e. at the goal line on the 1). With our improved camera fakes too this can really throw off your opponent...and it's really a great moment when you see it. I find myself calling PA plays a lot more now just to see it happen. There are a few caveats - your RB has to be heading toward the goal line (i.e. you won't see it on a toss play or a Shotgun option choice), and your RB can't have a run-route assignment after the PA (we did this so it wouldn't ruin your play). So knowing those...make sure you try this one out!
Defender Fakeout Logic
In the grand scheme of things this one is pretty minor, but to me it was extremely important. If you've been keeping up, a big push for this year was to really bring the twitch back and bring user control back to the forefront. With better user control brings back the ability for all of us to pull off what we call "d-pad jukes", which are basically just twitch moves with the stick that don't require hitting a special move button. That's all well and good, but our pursuit AI had gotten so advanced that once we got the control to where we wanted it, the defense was still shutting us down. A solution to this (after more accurately tuning pursuit based on our new pursuit rating) was to implement fakeout animations for defenders if they've over-pursued the play. We've had these animations in Madden and NCAA for a few years now, but they always were triggered off of special moves. This is no longer the case...now if you really work a guy and fake him out with the stick, he'll actually play the animation and truly be out of position.
The video shows just one example - we have tons of different fakeouts that differ between the player types (big guys, medium size guys, and agile guys), and we even have granularity between fatigued players and non-fatigued players.
Luigi Running fixes
I've been so sick of having Mario Running in Madden for the past 15 years that I had to call it something different - hence Luigi running. If you don't know what Mario Running is, it's a reference to any Mario game - if you take Mario up to a wall and just keep running, he'll keep running in place which is what our players often did when they ran into the back of the line. I wonder who coined this phrase...does anyone know?
But what a great moment to say that it's finally gone. No longer do your players get stuck on the back of linemen or teammates. We first had to change a lot of collision code to make players a bit more "slippery" in terms of physics, and then after that we added all kinds of special animations to take care of the instances that were problem areas. The video example shows a nice push-the-pile animation...if you're using a guy like LJ you'll see animations more like that. If you're using a guy like Warrick Dunn though, you'll see much more of the get-skinny and "slip by" animations. We used our new Ballcarrier Vision rating to really differentiate the players in how they react in that situation...I think you'll be very pleased with the results.
So that's all for now - please send your comments on the weather issue...I really would like that feedback as we start planning for next year.