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Tuesday, January 09, 2007 |
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Audio and Atmosphere in NCAA March Madness 07
Hey guys,
This is Novell Thomas from Electronic Arts and I was responsible for the audio portion of March Madness 07. This year NCAA March Madness 07 has really focused on the atmosphere and excitement which accompanies college basketball. Let’s be honest, the college game is head and shoulders above any other indoor sport when it comes to passion, energy and spirit. It was our goal to showcase the college atmosphere but also identify and accurately portray what you may hear, at any college gymnasium in America.
What are highs without lows?
This simple statement drove initial discussions for audio. We wanted to present this by having extremely high moments and extremely low moments. We were determined to move away from a crowd who always seemed to be excited. To us this wasn’t authentic. This year you can listen to the crowd audio during home free throws and in some cases, you could hear a pin drop. Conversely, pay particular attention to the crowd audio during tie games, in the last minute of a rivalry game between two top ranked teams – like UNC and Duke. Bringing crowd highs and lows to the forefront, was a major objective in NCAA March Madness 07.
Too often in sports games there is one crowd which we hear for every venue, regardless of crowd attendance. For years, sports games have used the same crowd for every team in their game. That is to say, regardless of the attendance or venue, you hear the same data. We decided to go in a completely different direction. The team felt that the game would be better served if we stayed away from mock/replicated crowd audio. NCAA March Madness 07 took some huge strides, and in coordination with ESPN, secured crowd data, from live games. Data from the University of Washington, Syracuse, Cincinnati and the ACC Conference tournament were some of the venues where ESPN recorded sound for us, and we placed into the game. Numerous microphones were strategically placed throughout the venues to ensure the capturing of not only crowd audio but cheerleaders, bands and other members who make up the environment.
Differentiating crowd audio, based on school reputation, was another goal of ours. There are over 320 schools – some of whom cheer loud and often and others who cheer less frequently and with less conviction. Does Allen Fieldhouse at capacity sound the same as Colgate’s Cotterell Court? No. Does Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium sound like Radford’s Dedmon Center? Definitely not! We wanted to ensure that the ruckus at Cameron Indoor was drastically different from that of Syracuse and furthermore, smaller, lesser-known schools. Accuracy in representation was what we were after.
School Pride is something that audio really took into account. School Pride can loosely be defined as a school’s level of passion and overall support (for a thorough explanation of School Pride, visit Mike Mahar’s blog on School Pride). A high School Pride level, symbolized a school with an incredible following, who also exemplified passion, energy and spirit. We assigned a School Pride level to every school in the game. It varied anywhere from 1 to 5. Obviously schools and perennial powers like Duke, North Carolina, Kansas and Arizona have a high school pride level. However, schools that are not permanent fixtures in the top 25, like the Gauchos of Santa Barbara and Drexel University are also rated highly in terms of School Pride. Audio ensured that the high School Pride environments were more boisterous, louder and continually chanting and in some cases heckling the opponent. School pride was a great addition to NCAA March Madness 07 as it influenced many different game areas, especially audio.
College crowds, and more specifically their student sections, create an environment which is not seen in any other sport. These spectators are packed into these venues and are well within sight and ear shot of the players. Deafening chants, many of which are school specific, are heard frequently. Many school specific traditions will be heard as well. In tune with our concept of having unique crowds, we spent additional time researching chants and traditions which schools perform. Take UCLA’s “is that the winning team” chant or Illinois’ “you got crushed” chant. Or, what about Virginia’s “Wahoowa” or Arkansas’ “calling of the hog” chant. Let’s not kid ourselves. What we hear from a televised game is only a fraction of what is heard while actually attending a game. We wanted to deliver the chants that you actually heard while attending the game.
Intensity Control was another major feature in NCAA March Madness 07. This feature will definitely influence what you hear. Pump up the crowd with ‘Intensity Control’ and hear them roar and on occasion, start chanting defense. Use the ‘Intensity Control’ to taunt the crowd with an away player and the home crowd boos and the student section jeer. Have an away player miss a few shots and hear the crowd heckle “Where’s Your Jumper” or “Overrated”. Yes, that intelligence and depth has been built-in to our crowd logic. After all what’s a student section without some heckling? And why not recognize their witty humor and banter. I’m sure the Cameron Crazies and Gauchos Locos will appreciate this.
Incorporating a band was a must. The band, as they do in real life, will keep the spirit and atmosphere alive. See the band members animate accordingly when the school fight song or victory song is playing. Take matters in to your own hand, and cue up the band with ‘Intensity Control’ during ‘Impact Moments’.
Chants, heckling and banter, fight songs, cheers, jeers and boos are an incremental part of the college basketball experience. What you hear in NCAA March Madness 07 is what you can expect to hear, in person, at a college game. Hear the mayhem unfold as you play or interact with the environment and manipulate the audible ‘treats’ which exist.
Last and definitely not least, we have the return of our commentators Dick Vitale and Brad Nessler. Dick Vitale, as we all know, is the voice of college basketball -- bringing the insight and knowledge to the broadcast. Brad Nessler calls the action as it unfolds only the way he can. We’ve attempted to capture their chemistry in NCAA March Madness 07, emulating their comedic but insightful delivery, as seen on ESPN’s College Basketball broadcasts.
So there’s a look at how we approached the audio component of NCAA March Madness 07. I hope it adds to your experience playing the game and gives you the feel of a real college basketball experience.
Novell
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Tuesday, January 02, 2007 |
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The Lockdown Stick
Connor Dougan, Associate Producer
NCAA March Madness 07
As fans of sports games you guys know that game makers are guilty of creating features that primarily focus on new ways to enhance the user's ability to play offense more immersive and more fun. Every year it's a new mechanic to shoot, pass, etc. These features are fun, creative and usually make the game much more immersive. The only problem is that this will sometimes lead to an unbalanced game in a couple of ways:
1) The game has one or more extremely easy way to score, like the deke moves in NHL 94 or the Hail Mary's to any decent wide receiver in any older football game. We all know the money plays that force the users to make up rules to nullify "the cheapness" of the specific game mechanic. These can be frustrating (especially if you're on the losing end).
2) More importantly the users experience is greatly reduced when playing defense. As a user I have a plethora of controls and mechanics to help me score, but I don't have anything on the defensive side of the ball to make my experience engaging, strategic, fun, and most importantly, a way of stopping the offense. The whole problem is that I generally have nothing to do but mash a steal button and hope that I get lucky. We're relying on a virtual dice roll and this sucks because, as game developers, we can do something about it.
Enter the EA Sports Lockdown Stick.
The Lockdown Stick has been around since NCAA March Madness 06 for the current gen game. When this feature was introduced in Pre Production of 06 it was quite obvious that all basketball games turn out to be a repetitive exercise of waiting to score. Our goal was to give the user the ability to truly "Play Defense". We provided the consumer with a mechanic that allows you to body up your man, play aggressive defense and force him toward the help defense or into trapping situations to get a stop or force a turnover. It helped balance the game on both sides of the ball.
How it works: Hold down the right analog stick while using your left analog stick to stay in front of your man. You can drive the ball handler into a trapping situation or where your teammates are in a position to help stop the ball. You can get even more aggressive by using L1 to attempt to draw a charge and R1 to attempt to steal the ball.
The Lockdown stick on Next Gen hardware: Moving to the Xbox 360 we knew our technology for animation was going to change and going to be more challenging because of a completely different animation system. One thing we couldn't do was port over the two-man animations from current gen because of technical constraints as well as the fact that our animation wouldn't look good on our next gen characters. That's why we had to redo our lockdown stick animation from scratch. We shot just under 400 man moves in motion capture for our Xbox 360 Lockdown Stick animations alone. This includes two-man defense animations at various speeds (walking, jogging and running full speed), accelerations, decelerations, changes of directions and a bunch of other subtle animations to reduce any foot sliding or glaring visual problems that wouldn't be noticeable on the current gen version.
Lockdown Stick Feature enhacements: Besides all of the animation which was redone we decided to make a few enhancements to improve on the Lockdown Stick feature. This year we tried to make player ratings play a larger role in allowing you to be successful. If you’re playing defense with a big guy, that isn’t quick and not a good defender, you’ll be able to initiate the Lockdown Stick but you won’t be able to stick with a quick guard who has good ball handling abilities. Ratings also come into play when attempting to draw a charge or steal the ball when using Lockdown Stick.
Be smart when using your Lockdown Stick. Get to know your players strengths and weaknesses on the basketball court. The risk is worth the reward you get by playing aggressive defense, dictating tempo and a style of play that turns defense into offense. We also made improvements on our defensive rotations and put defensive players in much better position to help on the drive and rotate out of double teams. This leads to a lot more penetrate and kick situations that are so synonymous with college ball.
I hope you have fun using the Lockdown Stick in NCAA March Madness 07 on the Xbox 360. For those of you who haven't had the opportunity to use the feature, I'm sure you'll be pleased. You’ll love the ability to play aggressive defense to help lead your team to victory. Once you’ve experienced it and then play any other basketball game, it will feel like something is missing.
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Tuesday, December 12, 2006 |
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NCAA March Madness 07 Intensity Control
Turn Up The Heat With Intensity Control
As college basketball fans we all know that atmosphere and emotion are what makes college basketball so unique and exciting. So when we came up with our vision for a next generation college basketball title we we’re all pretty pumped that we finally had the processing power to create something that would replicate the experience of being at a Cameron Indoor or Allen Field house. We came up with our list of all of the things that go into making a great college basketball atmosphere (see below) and then imagined how this atmosphere affects the players on the floor. We talked to broadcasters, coaches and players to understand what goes on when the atmosphere and intensity heats up and we tried to replicate this in NCAA March Madness 07.
Here are some of the elements that we found impact the atmosphere:
- The student sections and their behavior
• Authentic crowd chants
• Crowd taunting the opposition
• Crowd animation synching to audio (we wanted to not only hear the chants but also see them playing the appropriate animations)
• Unique student section placement based on the venue (See Michigan State for a great example)
• Unique chants based on school
• Animation variation between the student section and the rest of the crowd
- The mascots
- The cheerleaders
- The band
- Authentic environments
- Variable attendance based on your school pride
- Multiple crowd intensity levels based on game context
- Home and away crowds in tournaments
- The ability to interact with the crowd and secondary characters
In creating this list we realized that we wouldn’t be creating the true college basketball experience unless all of the elements listed above had an impact on your players/teams ability to perform on the court. And this is where the Team Intensity Control feature comes in.
 -Click here for larger image
Our goal was to make a player’s performance dynamic based on game context. So if I’m hitting shots, getting stops and forcing turnovers (basically making good plays) then my individual performance is going to be better. Conversely, if I’m turning the ball over or taking bad shots then I’m likely to perform at a lower level. Individual performance can rise and fall based on many factors and is different for every player. This is essentially player composure.
From a high level, player composure works as follows: if your composure is up, then you’re more likely to perform better. If it’s down, then your individual ability will suffer. The thing is, in all sports every player will react differently to the same events. So If I’m a composed player, I’m less likely to be bothered by a few missed shots. However, if I’m a freshman playing on the road at Cameron Indoor then I’m more likely to be affected by both positive and negative actions. That’s why each player in our game has a unique initial composure rating – so if you have a higher composure rating coming into game the less affected you are by negative events.
There are numerous actions that affect player composure that aren’t just limited to what happens on the court. One of the things that make college basketball so unique is the home court advantage and how the atmosphere can have such a great impact on the outcome of a game.
We’ve innovated in a way that showcases great college basketball environments and more importantly, allowed them to impact the players on the court through a gameplay mechanic called Intensity Control. Intensity Control allows you to interact with various parts of these environments, during the game as well as after the whistle. During the game you’ll need to fill up your Team Intensity meter to initiate your Intensity Control giving you the ability to interact with the crowd (both home and away), pump up your teammates to raise their composure level, interact with your opponents or use your team intensity to raise your star players’ composure.
Player attributes rise and fall during a game (composure) based on momentum swings during gameplay and environmental factors. Every player has been created to respond differently to the environment, based on a lot of factors like his experience, his composure, his ability, how he’s playing at the time, who is on the floor with him, how the crowd is reacting, etc., etc. All these factors will affect the way the players perform on the court and will affect how you play March Madness.
 -Click here for larger image
One of the cool things about Intensity Control is that you can choose to use it during the game or you can let your Team Intensity meter fill up and you’ll now have the ability to activate an Impact Moment at the next stoppage in play. Think 5 second call, an and-1 taking a charge etc. If you initiate an Impact Moment you now have the ability to pump up the home crowd, motivate your teammates, raise your own composure or intimidate your opponent. Whatever you chose to do when you activate the Impact Moment also gives you and/or your teammates a ratings boost, or lowers the ratings of your opponent.
The environments are interactive during Impact Moments. They are interactive in the sense that you can run up and chest bump a mascot, you can lead the cheerleaders in a dance routine or conduct the band and see the crowd get up out of their seats. You control where you move around the court and initiate the interaction, then they respond. It is fun and entertaining but more importantly if affects gameplay. The Impact Moment gives you and/or your teammates a ratings boost so there is also a strategic element in deciding when you should use it.
Moving to next gen hardware finally gave us the ability to deliver the authentic college basketball experience. It’s the atmosphere, tradition and emotion that we all know and love about the sport. I think people who play the game will really like the way Intensity Control ties this together giving you a unique perspective on what it’s like to step on the court in one of these great venues.
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Tuesday, December 05, 2006 |
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NCAA March Madness 07: Blog Two
Hey guys:
Thanks for your messages and I hear your frustrations with EA’s NBA Live product. The March Madness and NBA Live development teams are two different teams so I can only speak to what we are doing on March Madness. March Madness does not use the NBA Live game engine and we used very little of its code. The differences in gameplay do not lend itself to sharing code.
In order to develop features that are specific to March Madness, like Team Intensity Control, the Floor-General, Lockdown Stick, college basketball specific rules and the differences in how the games play, we had to use a separate code base from NBA LIVE. This allowed us to focus our resources on developing our own feature set. There were some elements we leaned on from NBA Live, such as renderings and architecture. NBA Live is a great looking game and visually I would put it up against anybody. It looks fantastic. So we borrowed their expertise in this area.
The March Madness dev team has learned a lot from the first year Xbox 360 titles and what NBA Live tried to accomplish. We listened a lot to our fans and the boards. We understand that gameplay, great visuals and a deep feature set are important. And we know people want to see a leap forward from current gen. In March Madness we will deliver a great playing game, a great looking game and a great sounding game. When you add in a new Dynasty Mode with a lot of new features, the ESPN Integration, and all of our new gameplay features, we feel like we will deliver the best basketball game EA has made to-date on the Xbox 360. It is easy for me to say that but I understand that we need to show you. That’s one of the reasons why we posted the early demo of the game on Marketplace. We wanted to give you a taste of the direction the game was headed. We have sent preview code to the guys here at IGN so you can expect to see their takes on the game in the next few weeks.
That demo you played was finished in mid-October and we have spent the past 2 months tuning and polishing the game play. This is the first time at EA we have ever had a sports game post a demo two months before ship. The frame rate was an issue on the demo because you are playing with alpha code. We will have had two additional months to tune the game and I’m confident the frame rate won’t be a problem.
If you played the demo I hope you were able to experience the atmosphere and intensity of college basketball with our new interactive environments that affect a player’s ability to perform on the floor. College basketball is a fun environment because of the traditions, passionate fans and the impact the crowd has on the players and the game, and we have captured all of this in NCAA March Madness 07. Being on Xbox 360 for the first time we have the opportunity to showcase some of the things that are special about college basketball and I sincerely hope that you give the game a chance when it ships in mid-January.
Thanks for your feedback and I hope you check back to this space for more information about the game. I’ll try to respond to any of your concerns or questions.
Sean O’Brien,
Producer for NCAA March Madness 07
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Wednesday, November 29, 2006 |
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NCAA March Madness 07: There’s No Place Like Home
NCAA March Madness 07: There’s No Place Like Home
By Sean O’Brien, producer
Welcome to the official NCAA March Madness 07 blog! As the Producer of NCAA March Madness 07, I wanted to inform you, our fans, of all the new features in the game this year as well as what you can look forward to when the game hits stores on January 17. Over the next few weeks leading to launch, members of the production team will share insight with you to give you a more in-depth look at the feature innovation throughout the entire game.
If you want to try for yourself how this year’s game plays there is a demo available on Xbox Marketplace that you can download. It features the Florida Gators and Kansas Jayhawks. It is early software and we’ve made a lot of improvements since it went live in mid November but it should give you an idea of the direction we are heading with March Madness 07. If you are pretty good at playing the demo you can even video capture your best replay and record some commentary, then submit it for a chance to be included in the production of the March Madness “How Does It Feel?” Replay TV commercial. Check out www.Marchmadness07.com for details.
We’ve had a great first year developing software for the XBOX 360. You’re going to see, hear, play and experience college basketball like you never have before. To me, what makes college basketball so special and so different from other sports is the atmosphere. There’s nothing quite like being at Allen Fieldhouse, Cameron Indoor Stadium, the Final Four or the amazing little venue called the Lahaina Civic Center, the annual home of the EA SPORTS Maui Invitational. Nothing compares to the atmosphere seen, heard and felt in these arenas and the passion and traditions that the fans and students have for their schools.
So this year in March Madness 07 we have replicated the atmosphere visually with interactive and animated 3-D crowds, mascots, cheer teams and bands that surround the court, and synched all of this to the audio so the traditional fight songs and student-section chants create an authentic experience. So now the environment will reinforce the highs and lows that you experience when momentum swings during a college basketball game and, most importantly, we have created a game where these factors affect gameplay. When we began motion-capturing the crowds, mascots and dance team early in the development cycle we really wanted to create an authentic experience. So, for example, we brought in a former mascot and had him replicate the antics of the different mascots from the different colleges. We did the same for the cheer teams and specific traditions that true to each school, like the Jay Hawk Chop. But if we stopped there we new we would have failed in delivering fans an authentic college basketball experience because the key for us was to have these factors – crowd, student-section, bands – affect the gameplay. When we achieved that that’s when we new we were being true to the game. In college basketball we are dealing with 17-22 year-olds and the atmosphere affects them. If a freshman is playing at the Cameron Center and seeing the Crazies for the first time it will affect the way he plays. But for a senior, who’s been there before, it’s not going to have the same impact on how he plays. He’s not going to rattle as easily. That’s what we have captured in this year’s gameplay. Every player has been created to respond differently to the environment, based on a lot of factors like his experience, his composure, his ability, how he’s playing at the time, who is on the floor with him, how the crowd is reacting, etc., etc. All these factors will affect the way the players perform on the court and will affect how you play March Madness.
All of the assets have been created specifically for the XBOX 360 – new arenas, uniforms, courts, animation, mascots, cheerleaders, crowds, student sections and bands. We spent days upon days researching and gathering information to enable us to properly represent the traditions that make this sport so special. We’ve innovated in a way that showcases these great environments and more importantly, allows them to impact the players on the court and allows you to interact with various parts of these environments, including the crowd, mascots, cheerleaders and the band all through a gameplay mechanic called Intensity Control. The crowds are amazing with hundreds of authentic crowd chants, complete with synched audio and animation as well as Dick Vitale and Brad Nessler back calling the action. I’m really happy with how this feature has turned out and it will be explained in further detail in next week’s blog.
Back is the strategic gameplay seen in NCAA March Madness 06. From the Lockdown Stick – which allows you to pressure your opponent and dictate his every move by playing aggressive, physical on-the-ball defense, trapping, forcing turnovers, denying passes and jumping into passing lanes, to the Floor General Playcalling system – the most sophisticated play calling system and authentic customizable playbooks to date. You can run your school’s actual plays or create your own playbook to suit your team’s style and play the way you like to play the game. We have received a lot of feed back on these two features and fans seem to like this about March Madness because the strategic gameplay differentiates Madness from the pro game. It is a different experience.
We’ll get into some more detail on the many improvements made within Dynasty Mode in the upcoming weeks, but I think you’re really going to enjoy our new School Pride feature. You can take your program from a mid-major to a powerhouse. Win games and watch the students come out to see you play, build your own traditions and be rewarded with cheerleaders and a band at home games. You can expand your facilities, upgrade your campus, and earn the support of your fans, alumni, and the administration. We’ve also added more tournament content than ever before with the Pre and Post season NIT as well as the McDonalds High School all-American game. Recruiting has gotten a complete overhaul with all-new recruiting and alumni challenges which help identify key players to sign to help build an NCAA Championship program. After all, you can’t win without good players.
Here are some of the features that you can expect in this year’s game and we will be discussing some of these in the coming weeks.
• Intensity Control Gameplay Mechanic
• Dynamic Player Composure
• Impact Moments
• Floor General Play-Calling System
• Lockdown Stick
• ESPN Access Online
• College Atmosphere and Traditions
• School Pride Feature
• College Atmosphere
• Day and Night Campus Hoops 3D Front End Environment
• Interactive Mini-Game while Loading
• 30 year Dynasty Mode
• In-Season Recruiting and Recruiting Challenges
• Program Academic Standards
• 325 NCAA Division I teams
• Online and Same-Box Multiplayer Modes
• NIT and the NIT Season Tip-Off
• NCAA Men’s Tournament and the EA SPORTS™ Maui Invitational Tournament
• McDonalds® All American High School Game
• Arena P.A. Announcer
• EA SPORTS™ NCAA® Tournament Selection Show
• Broadcast-Plus Presentation
Look for more insight into some of the key features in this year’s game exclusively here on ign.com. So if you are a college basketball fan check back weekly for more updates as we bring college basketball into the next generation with NCAA March Madness 07 for the XBOX 360.
Sean
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