FIFA 12 Producer Interview - David Rutter, Breaks Down All The Changes

[Steve_OS]

Complex has posted their interview with the Producer of FIFA 12, David Rutter, as he breaks down all the new changes.

Quote:

Complex: "You've said that this is the biggest leap the franchise has made since this generation of consoles—were the improvements more driven by external pressures from the fan community or were they things that the dev team had always wanted to do? David Rutter: I think it boils down to this. For the team, we've been trying to craft a brilliant soccer video game. A simulation of the sport. So to hear you say that you played growing up and love the game is reassuring to me because that's what we're trying to do. Since we transitioned to this console generation, we rebuilt the engine, rebuilt the game, and slowly but surely have been getting to a game quality level that we were happy with. The past couple of years we've been 90 or around it on Metacritic. For this year, we actually invested a small team offsite to build the Player Impact Engine, and they were working on that for a while. The reason we wanted to do that was that we realized that we were limiting ourselves with the technologies we'd built four or five years ago, and we needed to rejigger. So this was a team-based initiative, rather than a company-based one. For tactical defending and precision dribbling, those two things came as much out of my frustrations with the limitations we had in our dribbling, and also to do with the fact that our defending was basic and wasn't engaging—it was powerful, but ultimately did not reflect what defending is. We had the jockey press and whatnot on double triggers, but that was not an accessible mechanic for the vast majority of people. So we wanted to remove the kind of un-engaging, basic, and ultimately dull defending mechanic and put in something much more interesting, with a lot more depth, but that actually reflected the sport and people's experience with the sport."

[Krebstar]

Pretty good but still very minimal interview for this time of year.

Oh, and Steve posted it in the wrong section.

[supermati]

There's a strong rumor that the new league is going to be from arabic asia. I was hoping for Argentina.

[Whitesox]

Quote: Originally Posted by supermati

There's a strong rumor that the new league is going to be from arabic asia. I was hoping for Argentina.

You say the new league, as if it is confirmed. From what I read, Rutter refused to answer that, unless I missed something. If it is, or it comes to fruition, I'm thinking Egypt.

[Steve_OS]

Quote: Originally Posted by Krebstar

Oh, and Steve posted it in the wrong section.

What? Where...

[misterbroom12]

Great to hear all that has come so far about the actual in game play but it could still be a very frustrating year of FIFA if CM isn't fixed up a bit.

[TheTodd84]

"For this year, we actually invested a small team offsite to build the Player Impact Engine, and they were working on that for a while. The reason we wanted to do that was that we realized that we were limiting ourselves with the technologies we'd built four or five years ago, and we needed to rejigger. So this was a team-based initiative, rather than a company-based one."

So awesome... Where are NCAA and Madden on this front?!

[Qb]

I liked this part:

Quote:

It's been a big balancing act for us, but the proof is in the playing. When you've played it and you see the fluidity, and the fact that when play breaks down it breaks down in such a believable and realistic way that you don't feel cheated, whereas if you go back and play FIFA 11, what you find are these moments where you're just "argh!"—it just grates really badly, and you probably didn't realize at the time what it was, but a lot of it's to do with that.

I think a lot of long-time FIFA players can relate to the "argh!" feeling. Hopefully the Impact engine enables them to clean up collisions to the point where what look like fouls visually are processed as such under the hood. I think the previous animation system caused a lot of 'jumbled mess' collisions that did not accurately portray the calculated outcome. If that makes any sense...

[Krebstar]

Quote: Originally Posted by Qb

I liked this part: I think a lot of long-time FIFA players can relate to the "argh!" feeling. Hopefully the Impact engine enables them to clean up collisions to the point where what look like fouls visually are processed as such under the hood. I think the previous animation system caused a lot of 'jumbled mess' collisions that did not accurately portray the calculated outcome. If that makes any sense...

I think I know what you mean. What appeared to be a foul was not called a foul, because it wasn't. It was just an odd animation. Or, what was a foul, isn't called a foul and so on and so forth.

[Qb]

Yeah, that's about it... the under-the-hood calculation was "ball first", but the animation we saw was closer to "rugby tackle". I think it could be better if the points of contact can be better recognized -- both by the game and the gamer -- as individual limbs and animated as such.