http://interviews.teamxbox.com/xbox/171 ... erview/p1/
You say you want a revolution? Well, EA Sports has one for you in the form of FIFA 07 for the Xbox 360.
Sports franchises rarely change from year to year, but it seems as though EAu2019s FIFA crew is preparing for the futureu2026right now. In fact, FIFA 07 is such a big jump over last yearu2019s title, that it was necessary to talk directly with the gameu2019s senior producer Andrew Wilson to learn all of the details.
We chatted with Andrew to get the real scoop on everything from new ball physics, to EA Sports Lab integration, and yes, even the online mode prospects. Letu2019s see what the passionate football gaming guru had to sayu2026
Weu2019ve heard a lot about these sick ball physics featured in FIFA 07. Whatu2019s all the hub-bub about?
Andrew W: The ball physics are actually part of a larger scheme that involves technology featured in EAu2019s E3 06 athletic performance lab. This new animation technology has changed the way we can animate players, and as a result, has changed the way we draw the ball.
In yearu2019s past, we animated the player, and then attached the ball animation to the player animation; this always gave the sense that the ball was tied to your feet by an elastic band. Basically, the ball would always go from you to another player or from you to the goal, with little differentiation from these paths. This was very deterministic, so the CPU always knew where the ball was going to be, and, in time, human players could figure out these attached ball paths based on the cued up animation set.
What we wanted to get to in the next-gen was the feeling that the ball was alive. This was a necessary change, as football has changed over the years to where the focus is on ball handling and playing the ball into space. For example, if youu2019re watching Ronaldinho, heu2019ll play the ball one way, run around a player, and reconnect with it on the other side, or maybe even play it through the defenderu2019s legs. We couldnu2019t do moves such as this in our old system, but we felt it was important to do so in the next generation of systems, and for FIFA 07 on the Xbox 360.
I think what youu2019re driving at is the ball will have its own physical propertiesu2026correct?
Andrew W: Yes. What we have now is a physics system based just around the ball. The ball is no longer animation driven, but is now physics driven; action/reaction, equal/opposite force all now apply to the ball. So now, depending on where you kick it in terms of height, what part of the boot touches the ball, the force of contact, or the impact off of a goal post or player, the ball will react in a completely realistic fashion based on real-world situations.
Thatu2019s a long way to say that now the ball is its own entity, making it possible to interact with it the same way you would in real life. Therefore, you can start to play the game the same way you would on a real football pitch.
This ball-as-entity concept is going to set up a foundation for us moving forward to start doing a lot more things with our ball control. This is important because the core of any football experience is that player/ball interaction. We are now going to be able to build on top of this a bunch of revolutionary control schemes moving through this next-gen platform cycle, capitalizing on the fact that the ball has its own physics.
So what does this mean for the player animations? Will we see a revolution in player animation physics as well?
Andrew W: Absolutely. EAu2019s initiative for better athletic performance in videogames (discussed in an interview here) was helped along by one of the key members of the FIFA 07 team. So of course weu2019ve got this upgraded performance in FIFA 07. The kind of responsiveness that you see in these demos, and the kind of realistic animations that you seeu2026you will see all of this in FIFA 07. By u201Callu201D I mean the tools and the technology are fully implemented, and the level of animation that you will see is 10 times greater than what is already on the market. Completely revamped character animations controlling a ball that is now physics driven; sounds like a lot of work for the FIFA team and for the CPUu2026
Andrew W: It is, but, well worth it. This is where everything sort of ties together. When you get players to operate in a physical world [that are completely physics-driven], and add a ball that is completely physics-driven rather than animation-driven, you canu2019t determine anymore what is going to happen. Itu2019s now all based on context: where the player is at, the fatigue of the player, momentum of the player, body positioning, boot positioning on the ball, and a whole lot more.
What we found in current gen was that because the ball was deterministic, so we knew at any given time where the ball was going to go. For this example, letu2019s use a shot on net and the goalkeeperu2019s reaction to the shot. In previous years, we would always know that the ball could only go so many places in the net and therefore, we could effectively u201Cblipu201D the goalkeeper into place based on the fact that the CPU knew where the ball was going to be before it even left the playeru2019s boot.
When you get to a completely physics-driven world like FIFA 07, the CPU doesnu2019t know where the ball is going until the ball gets there. What that means is, in terms of the goalkeeper, we had to get much deeper in terms of the animation just to get full coverage of the goal net. Since nothing can be u201Cblippedu201D anymore, a goalie has to go through serious steps to cover, letu2019s say, the top right corner. The goaltender has to plant his feet, transfer his weight, and drive towards the top right corner; we can no longer make him magically u201Cappearu201D for the save. This is what is necessary if a game is to put a revolutionary amount of responsiveness and intuitive control in the gameru2019s hands, making it feel like youu2019re actually controlling a professional athlete.
So what about the shot interface? Will it see revolutionary changes as well? Fully analog maybe?
Andrew W: Weu2019ve looked a great deal at the notion of fully analog controls, but the challenge with football is that there are just so many different shots and touches. Full analog really isnu2019t user-friendly for us at this point.
We basically have a combination system in place with both analog and buttons carrying the load. The idea of First Touch on the right analog has been carried over from previous titles, but for the next-gen it has been tweaked a bit. The ball-physics system now allows user to use the right stick to play the ball into space very precisely. For instance, you could use the right stick to play the ball between a defenderu2019s feet if you wanted to. But in terms of shot taking, general pass taking, and finesse moves, weu2019ve left these on the face buttons at this point in time. To us, the face buttons are effective for these maneuvers, and focus groups have reported a finite/definite reaction to having these controls positioned as such. But the focus groups also really liked the notion of First Touch, or how they could initially control the ball is if they were on a real pitch. This is how we arrived at the analog/face button scheme for FIFA 07.
Individual ball and player physics are great, but it takes eleven men to field a team. How is both the cooperative and adversarial A.I. being revamped to take advantage of the revolutionary changes in FIFA 07?
Andrew W: Weu2019ve re-written the A.I. from scratch.
Something that we realized very quickly in terms of next-gen engines is that this era is really about the players and the decisions they make. The graphics will be next-gen; thatu2019s a given. But we needed to get to a level of individuality with each playeru2019s decision that was not only believable, but intelligent.
What weu2019ve done to achieve this believable, intelligent decision making is rewrote the intelligence and A.I. layers to be much more attribute-driven. The lack of strength of previous-gen systems meant we could only write algorithms on a few player attributes. In FIFA 07 weu2019ve effectively doubled the player attributes, and added a whole sub-layer of player traits, in terms of player behaviors or player tendencies. So any given player on the pitch will make his decisions not based on hard-coded information, but what the real player might do based on fifty-plus attributes, and across twenty-five-plus tendencies. The new hardware architecture affords this luxury to process that many more algorithms per frame.