UFC 2009 Demo is OUT NOW!

OK, Sixtwo, I have a legit question about the game.

So I was playing on expert last night, and its wicked hard. But it also showed me that I don't understand a few aspects of the game. The biggest one is submissions. I was playing as Chuck and Rua would put me in rubber guard any time possible. I was able to block/sweep it most of the time, but the two times he got it on me he went straight into a triangle choke. Both times, I was unable to break free. The first time I tried rotating the right stick, then I remembered that Chuck is better with the brute force method so I tried that the second time.

Both times I got choked out. The stamina meters were on so I know I wasnt gassed, not even close. The second choke was actually the first action of the match! So my question is, how are submission "locks" determined? Is it primarily how fast you mash/rotate? What other factors come into it?

Also, playing last night as Rua I waited till Chuck was nearly out of stamina then started a submission. He ran out about half way through the attempt (and I didn't) but he still broke free. Is that normal?

 

The variables in a Submission are the type of Submission being applied, Submission Offense, Submission Defense, Strength, Energy level, and input speed. The two things you can control during a match are your Energy level and your input speed, so just worry about those. How fast you mash/rotate plays a huge part in your chances of escaping; casual mashing will get you subbed against the expert AI. At 100% Energy, through, I'd be surprised if you were getting subbed easily on any difficulty.

Did Chuck run out of Stamina or Energy? These are two different things. Moves cost Energy, Stamina is depleted when you are struck with attacks, or if you perform moves with zero Energy. Either way, the initial Energy level is what's important, not the Energy at any other point during the Submission. Make sure you're shining as fast as you can; on expert, thumb shining might be too slow. You might need to switch to a palm shine - place the right stick in the middle of your palm and rotate the stick as fast as you can.

 

sixtwo,

What is the most rewarding part of helping to create a game like this?

The least rewarding?

What kind of mindset/energy/joys and frustrations did you feel going into work everyday?

What part of the game got you the most excited?

Disappointed?

Are there any parts of the game that make you cringe and want a do over?

What do you consider to be the best game u ever helped develop?

The worst?

What exactly did ur job entail? How did u do it?

I'd just really like to hear a little more of your mindset regarding the whole career path. I find it very interesting. And anything else you want to throw in there would be great. Thanks.

 

I have to ask, who was consulted when you did the rubber guard stuff? How much of Eddie Bravo's "tree" can you go through? Most rubber guard stuff, esp the transition from crack head control to...well, some of his other crazy named horseshit, can easily be beaten by keeping elbows inside the guys thighs and pushing the foot down.

 

I have to say, fan reaction. This is a genre game; it's appealing to an audience who loves the sport upon which the game is based, and they're typically your harshest critic. That the game is being so well received by them is particularly gratifying.

That when things aren't quite the way they should be with the game, players interpret it as the developers being either dumb or lazy. Neither is ever commonly the case.

People think making games is all about coming up with cool ideas. The truth is that we're making a product, and that product has to make a certain amount of return on its investment. So my day-to-day is really more of what I would call "problem solving" than simply coming up with the coolest idea.

Tough call. Today I'll say the grapple controls, because the way they're in the game now was not the was they were originally implemented, and I had to go to the vice president of my department personally to convince him to let me change them, which was a cost and time investment that could have potentially not paid off.

The Submission system. I intentionally fought for a system that wouldn't feel "wrestling-like," but in the end the system is not transparent enough for players to feel comfortable with it as easily as some of the other systems.

Submissions! Also, I think I could have consolidated some of the controls a bit better; there is a lot to learn in the game, and while some of it is necessary, a lot of it isn't.

Unquestionably, UFC 2009 Undisputed. I've worked on other really successful games, but this one I had a lot of control over, so it feels like my baby.

I worked on both Backyard Wrestling games from Eidos, and I was the co-lead designer on the 2nd one. /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/crazy.gif

I created, designed, and helped implement the entire combat system in the game, all the way from the control scheme, to move selection, to position hierarchy, to how long a pass from Guard to Half Guard should be. This entailed writing a lot of design docs, and accumulating 110,000 miles of travel back and forth to Osaka, Japan, where the primary development studio is located.

The first thing you have to learn when making a game is that it's not about what you like, almost at all (unless you're one of the less than 1% of developers who are actually paid to make they games they themselves want to play). It's about what's best for the game. That is a very, very hard thing to do.

We have pretty good access to 10th Planet - one of our designers actually trains there, and we did a lot of video capture there for our ground game, not just Rubber Guard. All of the positions in the game, including Rubber Guard, are treated as a system, rather than each position being its own cell with different rule sets, and so there aren't mini-variations of the position.

Rubber Guard is one of our Technique-specific positions, available only to BJJ guys, so we wanted it to be pretty special/powerful.

Hope this helps!

 

Between now and the official release, can you list some of the rarely occuring things we can do with the demo, or at least provide hints on how we can discover them ourselves? The people in UOC went ballistic when they discovered the foot sweep, for example (http://www.undisputedonline.net/forums/showthread.php?t=3276).

 

Also, can you knock someone out with an upkick?

 

I guess he was out of energy then. So if you have a lower stamina, your chances of being submitted go up? Maybe just a little?

I am worried now that people with turbo controllers online are going to break the game. Not that a lot of people use turbo anymore, but still. Does it help to press all the face buttons, or can you press just one really really fast?

 

Well. Excellent job sixtwo. Thanks for the answers. I have to say i am completely impressed with the game. When i say it feels like Fight Night for UFC i mean that as a complement and a nice surprise for myself, since fight night is what the series has built up to, not where it started. Really, it's fantastic for a first game (not intended as a back handed compliment). Considering it FEELS like a 3rd or 4th generation game. I feel like i could be playing UFC 4th edition, but nope. It's the first one!!!!! I think we have a new franchise. Incredible in today's video game climate. How many new franchises are popping up?

My only concern is that the ground game will be underpowered or overpowered or imbalanced somehow. Also i agree the submissions were where it felt the weakest. Again though, it is the first effort. Not like fight night round three's Parry system--> really, a paralyze the opponent in a boxing sim, ok. Actually, the submissions are not nearly that far off. THey just feel a little canned. But ultimately, i know i will buy this game, and enjoy it. Recently i've bought too many games that i didn't play. This won't be one.

 

sixtwo, keeping with a mild comparison with Fight Night /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/laugh.gif

Will UFC 2009 have the statistics for each round like the Fight Night series has. (e.g, # of upper cuts, muay thai clinches, # of knock downs, etc, )?

Will UFC 2009 track the win/loss statistics for the fighters in the game and the created fighters?

I know some players who could careless about the statistics after the fight is over. I know other players who use the statistics in Fight Night a great deal during the fight and for post fight analysis. You know the 'Tale of the Tape'[/size] /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/laugh.gif

Will the player be able to save replays in either single player or vs modes?

Just curious do developers face any licensing issues when providing a save replay features for next gen consoles?

I've noticed that the save replay feature was prevalent for lots of games on the PS2 and it dropped off dramatically for those same games that were ported to the PS3. Is there something about
the toolkits or engines that are being used that makes saving replay expensive, difficult, impractical, financially not feasible?

I'm totally diggin the between round short replays in UFC 2009 demo, but those replays definitely leave me wanting to see more of the entire replay of the round, especially if the round had some interesting mixups. Is there any issue with providing replay option in UFC 2009 for this first release of the game? /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/shocked.gif

 

Honestly, I like leaving a bit of mystery to the game systems. I think it helps support the longevity of a game. I remember when chickens were found in Tekken 3 a long time after release, and the kind of energy that created around the game. I hope that same thing happens for UFC 2009, as there are things that definitely have not been found yet.

As for upkicks, I believe we removed the ability to KO someone with an upkick, but I'm pretty sure you can rock (grey screen) someone with one. We went back and forth on this, though, not for the sake of reality, but for technical reasons.

Stamina level has nothing to do with Submission success. Under the hood, we do a check for the amount of Energy you have as a percentage of your current Stamina level. So, if you have 100 Stamina and 100 Energy at any given moment in the match, you have 100% Energy. If you have 25 Stamina and 25 Energy later in the match, you still have 100% Energy, and these values are treated identically in our calculations.

Turbo controllers will give a slight advantage to people who use them if they're particularly bad at button pressing, I guess. It's still just one part of a large calculation. We look at the total number of button presses, so I would imagine someone pressing all 4 buttons would input more total button presses than someone pressing a single button, if you assume that pressing 4 buttons simultaneously can be done as fast as pressing 1 button.

We designed the standing systems and ground systems a little differently. We knew that casual players would gravitate towards the striking aspect, as even casual UFC fans boo when the action goes to the ground /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smirk.gif , so we designed the stand up game with that in mind. Knowing that the ground game is the strong differentiating factor for both our game and the UFC, we knew we had to go with something memorable and unique, and so we created something a bit different than anything else out there. We hope people dig it.

Our pros are only available in what we consider "static" modes: Exhibition, online, etc., and as such we didn't think keeping track of wins and losses would be appropriate. But we do keep track of created fighters' records in all non-static modes, like Career.

For lots of games, like Halo or even Street Fighter, saving replays is as easy as recording controller input information and simply replaying it, as events will occur the same way every time in their systems. In UFC 2009, it's not quite that simple. So yes, there are some technological issues to resolve with something like this. Sorry!

 

Cool. How much of the rubber guard is available? Electric chair, stoner control, etc? Are any of eddy bravo's spine locks available?
I am just asking a lot about the guard system because, as a jiu jitsu and mma fighter, I like knowing what is available for options. How is the Judo groundwork different from the bjj people? More pins?
Is the main difference between wrestlers and Judoka the submission set?
Also, in the future are you going to make differences between Greco-Roman (Jim Bones Jones, Randy, etc?) and Freestyle/College style wrestling (Brock, Sean Sherk. etc)?

 

Thanks for answering my question Sixtwo. We really do appreciate you coming on here and talking to us about the game.

I guess what I was mad about at first was I felt there was no way to prevent being triangle choked, but I was wrong about that. What I should be doing is preventing the rubber guard in the first place, as its Rua's favorite position on expert /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/smile.gif

You know what it is that I really like about this game? The sudden finality of it. Flash KO's, submissions, things like this can give you a win or a loss despite how well you've been doing previous in the match. The reason I like that is because you really do have to block/dodge. Throwing a head kick only to have it whiff is a scary thing (especially against Chuck!). I feel like I have to calculate my strikes, think about my movement. It reminds me of Bushido Blade in that way.

Personally, I hate regenerating health bars you find in so many games today. It means you can make stupid, ballsy moves and rarely do you ever pay a price for it. So when a button masher throws a head kick at me, I'll step back and superman punch every damn time. Man that feels good!

 

Another kewl point about this UFC game is onscreen action/combo list. If you pause the game in the middle of a fight, then the
action/combo movelist is context sensitive. It shows you what moves you can do from clinch or hold your in or the what moves you can do from the current stance your in etc. I've been using this in addition to the tutorial, because it covers far more scenarios.

I hope they keep this feature in the actual game.

I'm playing against 3 or 4 people, I'm always picking Rua and I'm
obliterating Lidell. That classic Muay Thai clinch follwed by
The right stick then X is totally nasty. I stopped playing the computer because it can't beat me any more, after looking at the
context sensitive action/combo list a few times, I was able to pull off any ground game move I needed to win or defend. And my
stand up game became easy. I must admit on Expert settings Liddell is little harder to deal with, but in the end I still dispatch him, so now I'm playing my brothers, and my girl. Awesome game. Come on May 19th /forums/images/%%GRAEMLIN_URL%%/laugh.gif

 

We have the base Rubber Guard, which serves as a modified version of Full Guard, but none of the other variants that spill into Half Guard. Out of Rubber Guard, you have access to some cool sweeps - the omo plata sweep being one of the more eye-catching ones. As far as Submissions, we wanted to stay pretty true to the UFC, so we opted for a Triangle out of Rubber Guard.

We do give Judo some unique sweeps and Submissions, but where they are really differentiated is in their trips from the standing clinches. They have a ton of different trips and throws, from over/under as well as double underhooks. We talked about giving Judokas some half guard differentiation, but in the end we didn't feel it was prominent enough in the UFC to do so. We express Wrestlers more in their ground and pound variety, so we give them an up-postured striking version of Guard, as well as a few unique Transitions. Wrestlers also have their fair share of takedowns and slams from the clinches too.

As far as differentiating Wrestling, it's absolutely on our "if we get to make another one" list.

 

Cool. Thanks a bunch for all the feedback. The interesting thing about Judoka half guard is what they do is what Eddy Bravo calls the "lockdown." The Judo guys use that as their basic half guard because it prevents them from being ipponed with a pin.

 

Thanks sixtwo for taking the time to answer questions. I was going to ask some but you've answered them all already.

You guys created a heck of a game. I'm looking forward to the game's release.

 

I do wonder, is their any possibility of incorporating the feedback from the message boards to tweak the final game?

 

I think it's too late now, game release is only a few weeks the final version has probably already been published.

Maybe they could do it post release via updates/patches though.

 

Addicting game, but to be honest, I couldn't really "jive" with it. I'm sure other people (e.g. definitely the Fight Night crowd) would love it though.