NCAA Basketball 09 Interview

October 28, 2008 3:06 pm - Author: Fred Villarruel

 

NCAA Basketball 09 Producer Interview

SportsGamer took questions from the community and submitted them on your behalf to Connor Dougan, the gameplay producer of NCAA Basketball 09. Find out what he had to say about your questions. EA also sent us some new screenshots for your viewing pleasure. And as always be sure to stop by our forums and chime in on the interview.

What caused the name change from March Madness to NCAA Basketball 09?

As we all know college basketball is about so much more than the actual NCAA tournament. There’s so much more to the game, from preseason tournaments to conference play.  We felt that our name didn’t reflect the sport as much as it should. It also was a good opportunity to align ourselves with NCAA football.

Now that NCAA Basketball 09 is the only college hoops game in town, what does it have to offer that College Hoops didn't or even March Madness?

We looked at the opportunity this year to make a strong and lasting impression with college basketball fans because it was the first year for us on the EA SPORTS basketball engine. For the first time we are using a common basketball engine with the NBA LIVE and this has enabled us to bring over some of the features from LIVE and give them a college basketball spin, and because we ship later than LIVE we have used the additional development time to polish the features. This is in addition to creating new features exclusively for NCAA Basketball 09. What will make our game stand out this year is our new feature Game Tempo Control that features authentic styles of play, our new partnership with the National Association of Basketball Coaches that enabled us to put Division I coaches in the game for the first time, providing real time feedback on your performance, and our partnership with Blue Ribbon College Yearbook has enables us to create authentic team scouting reports and player attributes directly from the experts. A couple of other features I think will be well-received by the community is Rival Challenge, which will instantly match-make online games against your team’s rivals, the ability to save and upload video to EA Sports World and a robust file sharing feature set allowing the community to share rosters and game settings. With all these features together and the way we have captured the atmosphere and excitement of college basketball, we really feel like NCAA Basketball 09 is going to be a game consumers will enjoy playing.

How does the head coach feedback work in the game?

The coach feedback system is designed to give you advice in real time based on various factors such as: time and score, fatigue, how you’re playing based on our team style and your coaching points of emphasis. For example, we monitor player fatigue and if it drops below a certain point your coach will let you know that it’s time to make some subs. If the user’s team is an Up Tempo team and he isn’t playing at the right pace, then your coach will let you know about it. Additionally, if you need to press late in the game or need to go for a quick 2 for 1 then your coach will suggest that strategy. I should also mention that we have coaching points of emphasis that the user can select pre-game. You can select from numerous points of emphasis based on your Team’s Tempo. So If I’m a Halfcourt team I may choose “stop dribble penetration” as one of my points of emphasis. The coach will let me know how I’m doing.

Is everything editable on the players and coaches. Can we edit; names, class, height, weight, etc?

Everything is editable on players. With coaches you can change names, body type, clothing and likeness. We just don’t have a number that you can edit for weight and height.

Can you create a Tourney Bracket and allow the user to setup a NCAA Tourney with the Classic/All Time Teams?

Yes, we will have a tournament bracket that features Classic teams. We will be revealing the teams and bracket soon.

Will the Pontiac Challenge be in the game for online play?

Currently we are in talks to have some type of online challenge around the NCAA tournament but we haven’t finalizes anything as of yet.

What are some online features?

This year we have an online feature we are calling Rival Challenge for instant match-making. You’ll see a map of the U.S. showing in real-time rivals of your team who are currently online which will enable instant match-making without the need to log in to online lobbies. It also build a sense of community as you will now know who’s online with you and it makes match making so much easier. The map also shows users playing with Top 25 teams, conference foes and your own team. Another feature is Online Everywhere Rival Icon that appears in the front end whenever you are online and a rival logs in. This enables you to quickly set up an online match. We’ve also done a lot of online optimization to ensure that our online play is lag free so you’ll see tremendous improvement there.

Can you pick any game you want to play during a season, meaning you don't have to control the team but can hop in and play any game you'd like? Say I make it the NCAA tourney, but I lose. Can I continue playing the tourney out picking and choosing what games I'd like to play?

This year we really worked closely with the community to make the changes to the game they wanted and with the change to the new engine this is something we did not have enough time to get to. But it is certainly something that will be a priority for next year.

It's been mentioned that NCAA Basketball is using the NBA Live engine, are there any improvements that we won't see in Live?

This is a good question because we knew we had to really focus on making the engine better and different than LIVE. There are many improvements we have made to the engine that you’ll see in NCAA Basketball and I have called them out below. With the extra development time we were able to focus on some areas that we felt needed to be tweaked. Here are some of the main areas:

• Defense – Since our focus was on adding a variety of new defenses we felt we needed to support all of the logic with additional animation variety. There are new zone stances and intensities depending on the defender distance to ball and the type of zone defense being played. We’ve also added a greater variety and intensity for both on ball and off ball man-to-man defense.
• Transition - Many new animations for players in transition: starting with the guards coming back for outlet passes. They now have many more contextually appropriate receptions where they catch and advance up court. Wing players will fill the outside lane sprinting up court calling for the ball and looking for the hit head pass. The lead post will run the middle of the floor with a greater sense of urgency looking for the hit ahead pass as well. As these players settle into the frontcourt you’ll notice a bunch of animation for off ball players. These types of animations will vary depending on a teams’ tempo – an up tempo team will be ready to catch and attack whereas a Halfcourt teams’ animation will not  communicate the same sense of urgency. The visual look for a Halfcourt team is consistent with their style of play and varies drastically from an Up Tempo team
• Animations – We have added a lot of new animations, including new dunks and layups, specific animations for players moving to set a screen, more running rebounds, more play calling animations, coaching, player bench animations and new positive and negative crowd animations that capture the atmosphere of college basketball.
• Full Court Defense -- We’ve rewritten our full court press this year as well. This means new full court defenses, such as a 1-2-1-1 and  full court run and jump (trapping man-to-man), to name a few. New press breaks specific to each defense and a lot of animation support to recreate the intensity and frenetic pace of college full court defense. As a result, we’ve put a lot of effort into a new trapping system. This new system is fundamentally different because the ball carrier now maintains his dribble when he’s being trapped. Once trapped, he can try to beat the trap with his dribble and depending on ratings there will be various outcomes. We felt that traps in the past were flawed because we forced the user to pick up their dribble. The additional functionally gives the user more control with the added bonus of better looking animations when beating the trap off the dribble or with the pass. We’ve added 3 man pass animations to support a press break and to enhance the look of our passes. You can see the reaction of the defenders as you’re passing the ball. We’ve also added 3 man deflections - these occur from time to time when passing from a trap. The goal with traps this year was to give the user more options to beat the press and to accurately recreate the intensity of full court trapping defenses. We felt that we needed to increase the intensity of the full court press beyond just traps so we’ve added new animations for both offensive and defensive players. As an example: instead of an offensive player standing around waiting to receive the ball, he’ll be on his toes calling for the ball with a sense of urgency. You’ll also see defensive players in aggressive stances looking to pounce on an offensive player or shoot a passing lane. We’ve also added animation support for defensive players guarding an inbound situation, players moving towards a trap (think arms out covering passing lanes), as well as offensive players flashing to the ball and sprinting up court to break the press after a ball reversal. I should also mention the work we’ve done with passes, receptions and interceptions in the context of full court defense. Offensive players will come back to the ball catch and square up looking to attack the press or find the open man. We’ve also made some adjustments to receptions so when you reverse the ball and hit players on the move – they will continue to run and attack the basket. We’ve also added additional interception content and some “bad pass” animations so you can’t always make that 90 foot full court pass. At times we instead throw a bad pass and have the receiver jump for it and readjust to the catch or miss it completely based on the logic that determines how bad of a pass was thrown. I’m really happy with the implementation of the full court press this year. It’s a core feature for NCAA Basketball 09 and early feedback from the community has been positive.
• Play calling -- Since we have taken the core of NBA’s signature play calling system I wanted to touch on how it was modified for NCAA. We have expanded offensive and defensive play books. The user now has 8 offensive and 8 defensive plays to choose from as well as the 4 quick plays as per NBA live. Be sure to customize your playbook so that you have the appropriate plays for your teams’ personnel and playing style. We have more team oriented sets as opposed to player specific sets. It all depends on the personnel on your team and who is good at what. If you have a dominant post player run some sets geared toward getting him the ball in a scoring position. If you have a talented perimeter scorer, find that set which will get him a catch on the perimeter and in a position to score. If you have a balanced team with multiple scoring threats, find a play which will allow you to use all of your offensive threats. Don’t forget you also have zone specific and 3point specific plays at your disposal, when the time calls for it. There are close to 150 offensive sets to choose from and it’s a matter of finding the one which works for your team.
• Defense -- In addition to the full court defenses we spent a lot of time fine tuning our zone defenses. We touched the 2-3 zone, 3-2 zone and 1-3-1 zone….knowing which one to play and when is more important in our game now then every before We’ve also modified our defensive positioning for help side and denial. Weak side defenders will be positioned closer to the ball especially if they’re assigned match up isn’t a 3-point shooter. We also had to modify our denial positioning to suit the college game.
• Post play -- We had to re-implement dynamic post control into the game this year. So you’ll still have the same functionality spins, power moves, up and under, pump fake and go. We’ve replaced the jumpers and some of the moves from face up as well.
• Pick and roll defense -- We modified the pick and roll defense by making it a little tougher to get the pass to the roller when there are multiple defenders in the way. We also implemented trapping the ball screen to give the user another way to defend the ball screen.
• Ball Physics -- We modified the lob trajectories and increased some of the pass speeds to eliminate cases of “floaty” ball physics.
• Responsiveness issues -- We made pulling away from 2 man defense more responsive.We cut off the gather from our block animations so you’ll get up much faster to challenge the shots.We shortened many of our pass receptions so that the user won’t feel stuck when trying to move after a catch.
• Interceptions and game flow -- We had a problem in our game where players would intercept the ball and the user would be stuck playing out an interception animation resulting in the defense catching up and killing the fast break. We fixed that problem by cutting the interceptions shorter and blending to moving dribble animations resulting in a better game flow and a much improved transition game.
• Quick Strike -- We replaced the entire set of “jog” speed crossovers with much quicker ones that provide the user with a greater sense of control and responsiveness. The new animations will preserve the momentum of the ball carrier instead of taking him off to a 45 degree angle. We also made go moves/first steps from Quick strike much more responsive. So if you’re crossing over back and forth from a stand and then try to go left/right with your left stick – the player will react instantaneously instead of waiting for the crossover to finish. The same change was also applied to the Turbo modified big hesitation crossovers. This change really helped improve overall game responsiveness.
• Shot blocking in the post -- Shot blocking is now easier in the post. The community felt it was a little tough to react to the shooter at times.
• Analog passing -- Analog passing was tuned so that the ball goes to the intended receiver more often. Essentially we removed the weights that were conflicting with the users analog stick direction. We eliminated cases where we tried to guess where the user wanted to go and instead relied more heavily on the left analog stick direction.
• Icon passing -- We’ve added “quick tap” functionality to the icon passing. If the user taps the icon passing shoulder button the icons will appear over the players’ heads for a fraction of a second, in which time they can press any of the face buttons to pass the ball. Users can still hold the shoulder button to keep the icons up if desired.
• Players react faster to loose balls -- We’ve tuned the reaction time and player selection for loose balls.
• Pick and roll receptions -- We’ve addressed an issue where players rolling to the basket would catch the ball and his momentum would take him too far under the basket.
• Default camera zoom -- We’ve increased the default camera zoom to further enhance the size differences in players.
• Transition defense -- We’ve improved transition defense for teams who play Halfcourt zone defense. We found there were cases where players wouldn’t guard the basket in transition and instead get confused an go to their assigned spot in the Halfcourt zone defense.
• Double teams -- Increased the amount of double team scenarios when the user brings over another defender to double team the post. We increased the frequency of traps occurring when the user presses the double team button.
• Not enough fouls on collisions -- Slightly increased the amount of fouls called during in air collisions

Will you be able to adjust the same slider set that is in NBA Live 09?

Yes definitely.

How is dynasty mode compared to March Madness? What features does it include?

• We spent a lot of time on Dynasty mode and made these changes:
• Support for 15-man rosters 
• Open Roster Sharing – free public file sharing without restrictions – and begin a dynasty with a custom roster downloaded from EA Locker
• Boxscores for every game for the user team, and also season and daily schedules for every team in the NCAA
• Three new ESPN Pre-Season Tournaments – Anaheim Classic, Old Spice Classic and Puerto Rico Tip-Off – with complete support in dynasty(along with tournament invite offer logic)
• Integration of ESPN Team Prestige for all teams in the game
•  Support for seasonal stat summaries (baseball card) for players in dynasty, and for all stats, instead of just their career average
• Dynasty Yearbook, which shows team and player highlight data for every past year in the dynasty
• New Coach module and coach annual statistics (won loss record, etc.) for the user’s coach in dynasty mode
• New PARADE All-Americans and ESPN 100 in recruiting, as well as national overall rank and position rank for every recruit
• Pro Stock logic and display for ever player in the NCAA in Dynasty Mode (displays their prospects for making it in the NBA)
• Team Style of Play screen and logic support under coaching menu in dynasty (change your style of play)
•  New training options and player progression in Dynasty Mode
•  New calendar interface in dynasty mode, featuring university seal and ‘game ticket’ for game days
•  Updated player editor which provides quick access to all art assets in the game (head and body models, accessories, etc.) and removes cap on player ratings editing
• Coach creator
•  Numerous interface/UI improvements

Do you hope to turn NCAA Basketball into the premiere college hoops title, the way EA Sports has done it for NCAA Football?

Definitely! That’s our long term objective. Our goal is to be the best hoops title, not just college hoops. I really feel that our product is now in a position to get there in the coming years.

What else can we expect from the partnership with Blue Ribbon?

First and foremost, the yearbook served as the principal foundation for our 2008-2009 ratings and rankings of all the teams in NCAA Basketball 09.  We also used the yearbook data to cross-check our rosters by, for instance, looking at a team’s Blue Ribbon ‘Backcourt’ rating and then comparing that letter grade with the player ratings (that we prepare internally) of the projected  starters at the guard positions.

The Blue Ribbon information was immensely helpful in helping us accurately project team strengths and weaknesses for the upcoming season.  But rather than keep the data “under the hood,” both our production team and the folks at Blue Ribbon wanted to share this treasure trove of basketball information with the fans.  And so, every copy of NCAA Basketball 09 contains a condensed version of the 08-09 yearbook (viewable within our game), complete with summaries for every Division I team, and letter grades for each team's Backcourt, Frontcourt, Bench/Depth and "Intangibles."  The information is provided in an easy-to-navigate interface along with every team's logo and school crest.  As an added bonus - and exclusive to NCAA Basketball 09 - Blue Ribbon also reached into its archives to provide the same analysis for all 64 of the classic teams that appear in our game this year.

Is there a big emphasis on the coaches and coaching since the game will have real coaches?

Definitely. We have all new coaching strategies, create a coach and, of course, the coach feedback system in game. Coaches are a huge part of the game this year and we will continue to blow out the use of coaches moving forward.

 

New Screenshots: