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Rob Jones here. As you can tell from my interviews and the recent IGN Preview, I am very excited about the changes that NBA 2K11 has gone through. When we finished NBA 2K10, we felt that the game had some solid building pieces that we could carry forward into 2K11. You may remember my Insight last year that spoke about this among other subjects. However, we also felt that some of the systems in place had run their course.
Two areas of immediate concern were ballhandler movement and defensive movement. In regards to ball handling, what we realized was that control had to be the most important aspect to the dribbler. That meant more response to controller input, less auto dribbling, and more weight/momentum. From a visual aspect, we wanted a completely smooth, seamless experience where, as a user, we can’t recognize changes in animations. I can proudly say that we have achieved success in all the areas.
Many of you have been clamoring for foot-planting technology. What we realized was that we all wanted a feeling of being planted on the ground, especially when making changes of direction. The new dribbling animation system allows for that. From a control standpoint, we discussed sweeping changes to the dribbling mechanic, but in the end settled on two fundamental changes: immediate and accurate response to input as well as a command system that replicates the needed gestures to achieve a move, instead of randomly throwing sticks and/or mashing buttons. What that means is that holding multiple triggers to activate a special move is no longer necessary and that moves reflect the intention of the user. Mike Wang will go over these controls in more depth at a later stage. We wanted feathering controls, more control over when to protect the ball and when not to, and how to decide whether or not we wanted to stay faced up to the basket or not. All of these were achieved without sacrificing what you have come to expect from an NBA 2K game: Authenticity in AI and movement for every player in the league.
Our second area of concern was defensive movement, especially under user control. We had a new engineer take over the defense last year. He learned much from working within the existing system and at the end of the project, set out to write a more flexible movement system that would allow the AI to incorporate not only basic movement, but many of the nuances that make basketball players move the way they do. All of this translates in appropriate movement models like backpedals, less jittering when making small adjustments, shading appropriately when necessary, etc.
Additionally, we wanted to accurately replicate the feeling of getting a good block in the game. Due to the fact that blocking shots has been made popular again with the great chase down blocks that we’ve seen from Lebron, Wade, Kobe and others.
Our AI, smart as it has been has been beefed up on both sides of the ball. We were able to spend good time adjusting transition and fast break behaviors, on both ends of the floor. We added smarter decision making from the AI ballhandlers, incorporating more attacking moves.
We added over 1000 unique plays to have the most authentic playbooks that anyone has seen, while improving the AI’s ability to execute them.
All of this and it’s just the tip of the iceberg. Our Shotstick now gives you accurate control over the exact types of animations you want from special layups to rim relative shot directions. We have a new in air collision system that automatically adjusts and reacts to every situation, providing the game with a different experience every time you pick it up. This system provides accurate physical resolutions to in- air contact, as well as air to ground (say for example in a Take Charge) situations.
Passing was another area in need of a major upgrade. We wanted to differentiate good passers from bad ones both from a User standpoint and from a ratings standpoint. You’ll see in videos the variety and the outcome of our work.
We knew that we had to come stronger than we ever have and we’ve gone out of our way to improve any and everything. 2K Sports has always been about the authenticity of the sport, down to the most minute details, and NBA 2K11 continues that attention to detail. In the coming weeks, my buddy Mike Wang and the rest of the boys will expand further on many of these areas. Stay tuned!
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