Ian_Cummings_EA's Blog - Operation Sports

Deep Thoughts...by Ian Cummings

Blog from Ian Cummings, Lead Designer of Madden NFL 2010

Monday, August 3, 2009

I started my own blog

Posted on August 3, 2009 at 10:27 PM.

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http://sportsgamedesign.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Turning off private messages

Posted on April 14, 2009 at 11:23 AM.

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Sorry guys, but as we are getting closer and closer to final the amount of time I am able to spend on the site will decrease, so for now I am also turning off private messages as they were just coming too fast and too often (upwards of 20 a day).

I will definitely keep responding to posts and threads.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

NBA following suit!

Posted on February 17, 2009 at 11:23 PM.

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Add NBA to the list for EA Sports (joining us and FIFA) publicly coming out and saying 'no more gimmicks...just gameplay'. Gotta love it!

http://sports.espn.go.com/videogames/news/story?id=3900151

Monday, January 5, 2009

Miyamoto, Bleszinski.....and Cummings??!?!?

Posted on January 5, 2009 at 11:46 PM.

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Phil just sent me this link this afternoon:

http://unrealitymag.com/index.php/20...ame-designers/

As much as of honor it is to show up in a list like this, I'd have to say this list is unfortunately not close to reality. No Will Wright or Peter Molyneux or Sid Meier, yet someone that hasn't even shipped a game as a lead designer (me) makes the cut? And putting me in ANY list with Miyamoto is totally out of the question IMO. Maybe after we ship a stellar Madden 2010 we could talk about me earning a spot in the top 50 or something, but until then, I'd say I feel a bit out of place.

I do think I could take CliffyB in a "design-off". We'll bet one of his Lamborghinis on it.

Friday, November 28, 2008

Can people please stop asking for a new engine?

Posted on November 28, 2008 at 04:08 PM.

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I figured what good is a blog without a controversial title...so here goes, the 'new engine' debate.

I've seen comments in this fashion posted probably thousands of times in the Madden forums:

"Madden is never going to be any good until they scrap their current engine and make a new one".

First, what is an engine?
I've asked this of the community before...what they think the engine is. Here are some responses:
- More animations
- Ragdoll physics
- CPU playcalling AI
- Everything from the AI to the crowd audio

So I think it's pretty obvious that there's some confusion here...it seems that 'engine' has been used as a nice jargon buzzword. To clarify, in the eyes of myself and the team, there is no one 'engine' for Madden. We've got 4 main 'engines' that are running in-game (i.e. not in Franchise mode):

- Animation Engine - It's called ANT (ANimation Toolkit), and it's shared technology among nearly all of the EA Sports games. ANT provides two things: 1.) a 'tool' which allows us to prepare our raw animations for the game (i.e. tagging when a player is down or what injury impact a tackle has on which body part), and 2.) in-game technology to actually execute all these animations. Anything custom to our game (and NCAA) is built as a plug-in to ANT...so it's actually not part of the low level animation engine. This includes things like IK Foot Pinning, Multi-Character Alignment (for tackles, blocks, etc), Catching, etc
- Physics Engine - Though obviously we don't have a rag-doll solution, we do have physics in our game to handle collision (or else players would just pass through each other and the ball would pass through the ground). This engine is proprietary and custom to Madden only. Havok Physics (by Havok) would be another example of a physics engine.
- Rendering Engine - We have a proprietary rendering engine called RNA that is also used in many other EA games. This handles the 'drawing' of everything in our game to the screen. Another rendering engine example would be 'Gemini', which is the rendering section of Unreal Engine 3.
- AI / Assignment Engine - Another proprietary system, since this is obviously specific to football. The game runs on a multitude of different assignments that a player is in with hundreds & thousands of parameters; things like "deep zone" or "ballcarrier pursuit" or "move to catch" or "get fumble". Some of this is driven directly by the design of the plays (i.e. a run route assignment), and much of the other stuff is dynamic AI (i.e. pursuit).

What else is there?
- There are so many other systems in place that live on top of the core animation engine. Triggering moves as a ballcarrier, matching up a gang tackle, releasing the ball on a pass, etc...those are all independent 'systems' that sit on top. The last layer is actually the animations themselves. You may have seen posts from me before on that, but if you don't have the correct coverage with animations, then even the re-write of the system won't show off as well.
- For each of the assignments, we spend a ton of time each year tweaking, tuning, and even re-writing them each year. This is where much of our time is spent right at the end of the year, as much of the early parts of the year are spent in changing core systems (which can easily 'break' the assignments).

We continue to improve on these each year...last year we added a brand new system for multi-character interaction and a brand new system for running the ball. Sure, some of the same animations may exist from the previous years, but the core system could be 100% brand new.

Anyways, I hope that's a good explanation of how things work. So from this point forward, can everyone please stop asking for a 'new engine'? It just doesn't really help since it's so vague. Instead, how about specific fixes that you want? Do you want better catch animations? Ok, then post it. Do you want better CPU playcalling? Ok, then post it. Do you want us to swap out our physics engine with Euphoria's? Ok, then post it.

Just know...there is no such thing as a magic bullet "new engine"!

Monday, November 10, 2008

New Xbox Experience

Posted on November 10, 2008 at 10:23 PM.

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I was lucky enough today to get an early look at the Xbox experience on my dev kit at work. I am very stoked to get this at home! I've included a screenshot for your reference:

(That's not me as an avatar btw - I tried to make it look a guy I used to work with).

We're really curious what kind of stuff we'll be able to provide (in terms of art) for that avatar - i.e. can we provide NFL jerseys or helmets? Not sure. What we're also unsure of is the link between this and the EASportsWorld avatars...do people need both? PS3 Home is still looming out there as well...not sure how that's going to play out. Ahhhh, the joys of the unknown...you never know what will get dropped on you that you need to support.

I don't have an in depth review on the positives / minuses of the XBE because I didn't get all that much time with it, but I can say it's much cooler and much easier to use. I found it quite easy to get around, where I still find myself getting lost in the blades at the house.