Moving Pictures

Just a quick update to show you some videos of the NSS4 interface in action. First up is an overview of the main screens...



After loading the game it goes straight into the days fixture list, from there it goes into the home page, then the tournament screen, the club screen, the training screen, the relationship screen, the finance screen, the search screen where we look for goalies with 50+ bravery. We finish up looking at a couple of player detail screens. Don't worry about any blank areas in the interface as these will be filled with vital information by release time.

Next up is a look at the casino games. BlackJack, Roulette and the Slot Machine...



The roulette wheel and the slots run a bit slowly, but that's purely down to the video capture method.

Here you can see the interface customization options. It starts off by selecting some of the pre-set colour schemes but then shows how you can change pretty much any aspect of the game; panels, buttons, text and the background. So whatever your team colours you can change the interface to match.



Finally, this video shows the setting up of a quick match between Arsenal and Aston Villa. I created this mode to make it easy for me to test the match engine without having to load up a career. In a quick match you control the whole team, as is normally the case with other football games and of course Sensational Soccer. I will leave this option in for NSS4 but there won't be any multiplayer or online options. However, I am still considering adding an option to let you control the team directly on the pitch when you become a manager, rather than making you just sit back and watch the CPU take over on match day. One problem with the management part of the game is that it cannot ever aspire to the level of detail and control you are given in other games like Football Manager. So by giving you control of the team it would certainly spice it up a bit and help alleviate the fact that the management options are a little sparse.



Also in the video you can see the team run out onto the pitch (or slide out because there still isn't any animation!) and you see how the camera can be adjusted to your tastes; lengthways, side-on, over-head, close-up, far-out... Something to suit everyone! Actually the camera still needs a little work because I want it to be able to keep both your player and the ball in view at all times (if you choose that option). This would enable you to bring the camera right down to pitch level and really put you in the action. Whether this will work or not though remains to be seen.

Don't worry about the green energy meters above the players heads. I'm currently working on energy consumption and need to see how much each player has left in the tank. It might be quite useful to see these in manager mode though, so there will be an option to turn the energy meters on or off in the final version.

As you will see I've cut the video short of the kick off but that's because I want to get the animation working first. It also saves me something to show you in the next blog. :D

By the way, you can keep track of all the NSS4 videos on the new YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/newstargames.

Let it snow

Being English, my mind is telling me that November should be cold, wet and grey. Yet, having moved to Australia it should in fact be the opposite, as it is late Spring here. The funny thing is, it has been grey, wet and almost cold here in Sydney for the past two weeks with rain battering down the dull alleyway outside the balcony which is pretty much my office and thunder disturbing the peace every so often. So maybe it's the confused weather that inspired me to add rain and snow effects to NSS4.

For the rain I've employed a similar method to that of NSS3 whereby I overlay the screen with some transparent tiles which have animated rain drops on them. It's a simple method but when I loaded up NSS3 to remind myself how it looked I realised that it's also rather crude and I needed to improve it for the new version. I set about creating better rain tiles and employed a new system where both the rain image and sound gradually fade-in and out. Thanks to the excellent transparency effects in BlitzMax I'm happy to say it looks great! Check out how muddy, miserable and typically English this screenshot looks...


For the snow I have to thank Klaas of the Blitz forums for some excellent Blitz3D code. I needed to convert it to BlitzMax and adjust it for my purposes, but within a few short hours the winter matches felt like an Alpine Christmas. The snow flakes are rendered in true 3D so it actually falls in the game world, unlike the rain which is a 2D overlay. What I like most about it is the way it whizzes by as the camera tracks the match. Just imagine how snow looks when you're driving through it and you'll get the idea. My one concern is that it will slow down the match action on less powerful PCs, but it's possible to alter the number of flakes rendered so it can be cut down to zero if needs be. I've settled for 100 flakes for now which gives a nice effect without looking too sparse. Anything over 300 actually looks too cluttered.


In another flash of inspiration I realised that if I make the snow flakes multi-coloured it produces quite a nice ticker-tape effect which would be great for Cup final celebration scenes. More on that another time though.

Talking of celebrations, one thing many people have requested is the ability to control your player after scoring a goal. Well, your wish is my command because this is possible in NSS4. I've yet to implement the animations but you can run wherever you want during the moments after a goal whilst your teammates chase after you. The plan is to assign 4 celebration animations to the four main buttons (pass, lob, shoot, call) so you can show off to your adoring fans or maybe even run over and taunt the opposing fans. It's this kind of freedom that I'm perhaps most proud of with regards to the NSS4 match engine. For instance, if you are the setpiece taker then you can position yourself by the ball exactly where you want (within a 5 yard zone) allowing you to angle a run-up or simply stand next to the ball for a standing kick. Once in position you set the strength of the kick with the pass, shoot or lob buttons then as you hold the analogue stick (or direction key) the player runs up and kicks the ball. The great thing about this is you can hold the stick exactly how you want to apply the aftertouch and not worry about running towards the ball as the player does that automatically, making it easy to apply dip, loft or curl to the kick. Needless to say, a quick tap of the pass or lob button will pass the ball to the highlighted teammate. A simple thing yes, but it's shocking to think that Pro Evolution Soccer hasn't managed to get short freekicks right throughout the series.

So that's a little update on the state of the match engine and I really, truly hope (and pray) that by the time I next update the blog that it will have properly animated players, because once that is in then the match engine will be 95% complete. At a guess I would say the the entire project is at around 75% complete. Now that's something to be happy about, whatever the weather! :D