Adam Thompson (NCAA Designer) Q&A Thread

[pjv31]

So did we ever get any clarification whether or not the sliders work this year? Of all the things I can tolerate that would be a huge let down if they didn't.

[OMT]

Quote: Originally Posted by ncthompson11

can the mods do that then?

Yeah, this is a good idea

[marino13882]

Quote: Originally Posted by OMT

Yeah, this is a good idea

Thats one mighty big cup you have there Adam

[NolePride17]

Adam I don't believe that you had revisited the facemask issue from earlier in the thread. I apoligize if you already have. Here are a few links for the facemasks that tons of college football players have. I think that having them in the game authenticates the gameplay making it more like real college football.

http://www.riddell1.com/catalog/images/G2BDC-R.jpg
http://www.riddell1.com/catalog/images/G2B-R.jpg
http://www.riddell1.com/catalog/images/G2EG-R.jpg
http://www.riddell1.com/catalog/images/G2BDUC-R.jpg

[rj102990]

Quote: Originally Posted by michiganboy2412

Don't know if this is your area or not, but I'll ask anyways... Any reason why EA prefers to use their own score bug and overlays rather than use ESPN's to make it seem more realistic? I understand that EA would like to put its brand out there, but I just think the realism the ESPN look would add would be awesome.

nice question. also, any reason create-a-team has not been in yet?(probably answered already)

[rudyjuly2]

I've kept track of 95% of the stuff. Here it is although cutting and pasting screws it up a little. I tried to cut it down in spots and using italic to highlight questions.


Hi guys!

I'm Adam Thompson, one of the designers on NCAA 09. I know Ian's been posting a lot on the Madden boards and has been getting some great feedback, so we are going to try the same for NCAA.

My area of the game is art... the uniforms, stadiums, logos and such. Also I took on commentary this year. I can certainly answer questions and take suggestions in these areas, but feel free to ask anything. Some of the other designers are going to start posting soon and will have better answers for their parts of the game.

Please note that I'm not here to sell you the game. That is not my job. We are trying to open up the game teams to the community, and I am here to give you insight into the development process, answer questions you may have, and listen to your concerns about the game. My goal is to make the best college football game possible every year, not to convince people that our game is great and you should go buy it.

... though I hope you will

I look forward to joining your community here!

About me:
I've been at Tiburon almost 6 years now, and have worked on every NCAA title since the great NCAA 2004 game. My school is UCF (class of 99), and am a huge Knight and C-USA fan.


Adam: What is the reason that each school doesn't have their stadium in this year's version?

I figured I'd get this question! It really comes down to time and resources. There are 120 teams in this game and 30 something bowl games. The amount of detail that goes into each stadium is incredible. I am disappointed that 3 years in now, we don't have them all.
We also have to factor in changes to other stadiums. With so many stadiums out there, there are always new pressboxes, bowled in endzones, EVERYONE seems to be getting a jumbo HD video board these days. Looking at my stadium priority list, I have 32 things listed as "needs to be done," and 17 of them are authentic stadiums.


You guys do a great job and it's probably on your list but I would like to see bowl game endzone art back in the game as well as bowl game jersey patches.

Yep. It has been on my list since 2007. I can make no promises at this point in the development cycle, but I feel good about these for next year.


the stadium in this game looks incredible. perfect job. i do have one question though, i know a fair amount of knights work for EA, and with having the new stadium, helmets, logos, etc. in the game, how come its still the old knightro and not the new one?

We haven't touched mascots since NCAA 2007. Well, actually that isn't true. One of our artists made a handful in his down time after 2007 was finished (UCF, Air Force, and I think either Vanderbilt or Wake Forest). I told him the Knightro was old but he thought "it looked cooler" than the new one... and that isn't even the current Knightro that was introduced a couple years ago. The one we have in game is two Knightros ago! But to answer your question, I'd rather get mascots for more teams before redoing a team that has an old one. At least until the school itself asks us to change it.




when can we expect other c-usa stadiums to be updated/included, i.e. southern miss expansion, tulsa's skelly stadium?

I'm hopeful to get them in this year. As far as expansion to The Rock, it will depend on when it is completed. Unlike PS2, we can no longer use mockups of planned renovations for updates. We actually have to send a photographer down to the stadium to take thousands of high resolution photos to have enough reference to recreate it. I try to send out the photographer as soon as it is completed.


First.. Are Texas A&M silver alternative pants in the game this year?
Second.. do you know what/if any web support (statistics/standings etc..) there will be for online dynasties. I heard their might be a web interface for each league. Any info?

Nope, they aren't in there. That's my fault. I didn't even realize they had two sets of pants until I read your post. I went and checked my reference library and sure enough, silver and white pants! I totally missed that. They WILL be in the game next year (whoops.. not supposed to make promises).
I don't know about the web support. Ben Haumiller should be showing up in the next couple of weeks to a message board or two and can answer this.


1. the CPU quick snapping so soon that we can't adjust pre snap.
2. A severe lack of pass rush by both the HUM and CPU defensive lines, making the passing game WAAAY too effective.
Can you let us know if both of these SHOULD be concerns for us and if they are, how you guys have gone about remedying potential issues?

Yep. I have read the threads. These are gameplay issues and I will send them onto Ian's team. I will also make sure they are brought up as issues to be potentially fixed if we put out a patch.



I think one of the most obvious questions that I'd like to ask is why are there no team entrances for Next-Gen NCAA? In my opinion it's something that really is a huge letdown year after year for the NCAA series. Especially because most of us were used to at least some generic entrances (and some custom) on the past-gen games. It just doesn't get you fired up for the game to start with an open field and a disembodied coin toss.
Also, what Hawai'i alternate uniforms are in the game?

I believe those were removed from PS2 around 2006. We actually replaced them with the "Virtual Gameday" desk where Corso puts on the head and all that. And the only real entrance was the Notre Dame one.
This is definitely something we want to do. It is quite the task, indeed. And we don't want to just copy what we did on the old consoles. When we do it, we are going to do it right and make it cool.
Hawai'i will get alts next year, just like in real life.





I'd just like to know why the crowd has been the same since like 2001. Same 2D cardboard cutouts in the stands. How difficult is that to change? To me it really detracts from the beauty of the stadiums.

Sure. This is a technical issue. The more detail the crowd gets, the less memory and such is left for what really matters... on the field. The detail actually took a step back after NCAA 07 to get the game to run at 60 frames a second. It would be easy to get them better looking.... and then very difficult to get the game running smoothly. The player models would become less detailed, the field would be come less detailed, etc.

We certainly are always looking for ways to make them better without a huge hit to the console's resources. One thing we did add this year was crowd logic, so they aren't going crazy on every play. They actually watch the game now and react properly.



Hey Adam, welcome to OS...One quick question, are there any changes that can be made before the game is released or is it pretty much final?

The game is final. Though a patch isn't out of the question. Keep posting what is wrong, especially after you get the game. We will be using a lot of your feedback to figure out what goes in a patch if we do one.


One issue some guys have brought up is if you were part of the C-USA and move to the SEC, you still have the C-USA patch on uniforms and your stadium.

Yeah, this has always been the case. The artwork isn't dynamic like that. I'd love to find a solution for this. Thanks for bringing it up, I will look into it!


Other than that, my only question would be: has there ever been any consideration given to the idea of customizing uniforms? I have in mind a couple of things. First, I have historically disagreed with the color palate chosen for Michigan. The 07 version of the game (360) was damn near perfect, but outside of that game, I find there is a tendency for the blue to be a little too bright and the yellow a little too dark. It would be great if I was allowed to change this. Also, it would be great if we had the option of creating alternate uniform schemes; just something simple like adding long socks for cold-weather games, or making an all-blue or all-white uniform (again thinking of Michigan). In the past the only way I could achieve this was to create "Michigan" with the create-a-school feature. In short, I'd like to see similar features be available for every team.

Getting the uniform colors correct is challenging. I don't believe our artists have a way of converting PMS (thread) colors into accurate RGB (graphic) colors. We do have the school's RGB colors from their logos, but once you put it on a uniform model and put it in game under different lighting conditions, it will not look the same. There is a LOT of tuning done on the colors of the uniforms, and they need to work in all lighting situations (day, night, snow, etc). We try to get it as accurate as possible.


I don't think we will be able to make uniform options that don't really exist. All our art has to be approved by the schools, and there is a good chance we would be asked to remove a lot of it, wasting a lot of work.

Creating alternate schemes is certainly on my radar!



Anyway, has anything been done to improve equipment for incoming recruits? The past few years the equipment recruits wore was just bizarre, strange tape, armband combinations, no gloves for receivers and RB's. Instead might I suggest in the future instead of having the game randomly assign equipment just put together two or three equipment templates that would be suitable for each specific position and randomly assign one of those templates to the recruit.
Also, is it possible to make it so recruited players in dyansty wear long sleeves for cold weather games? I know that an appropriate number of players wear long sleeves during cold weather games from the default roster, but after a few years in dynasty I can be playing in December in the snow in 20 degree weather and not one player on either team is wearing long sleeves.

I don't know exactly how the equipment on recruits gets chosen. I DO know that it isn't just random. In my job capacity, I have to worry about making sure Florida's freshmen don't come in wearing Adidas cleats! I'll find out more about this when Ben is back.
As far as the long sleeves in cold weather... this should work like all of the other equipment. If you notice in Edit Player, one of the options for long sleeves is in cold weather. So this option is assigned like what kind of glove he wears.


One thing I would like to see in the future is better bowl presentation. If I'm in the national title game, I want to feel like it. For example: Entrances, player celebrations, etc

Quite frankly, we need to improve on these things in ALL games, not just bowl games. It is definitely something we look to improve on every year.


Strategy - i.e., the CPU's playcalling: what goes into how they call plays and why? Is it simply a matter of ratio? Because what it should be doing, in my opinion, is looking for things that work and then stick to them until they don't work. The "chess on grass" side of things.

We have what is called an AI Script, that looks at everything that is going on in the game and calls a play necessary. We also use this logic when you use "Ask Corso" (though I doubt anyone on this message board uses that!). This is handled by the gameplay team, so I'll pass this suggestion onto them.


what is the likelihood that we could be given an option to choose uniform tops and bottoms seperately? therefore giving us many more options if we choose to mix and match. (i know alot of people have been asking/wondering about this)

I'll expand on your first one - when can we expect to see an actual picture of a player wearing the uniform when we choose our uniform (like on the PS2 version) instead of the game just saying the color (like it is now)?

This is how I want to do alternate uniforms as well. Not only would it give the gamer all the options, it would save tons of art resources. We are going to have to change the way uniforms are rendered on the player to accomplish this... and the real challenge is actually the uniforms on the sideline players! And as Odogg pointed out, we need what we call the Front End Player Model working. We already have the player model in the game under the hood, but there were some technical hurdles to getting it working right that we didn't have time to address (especiallys with two player games... two FE Player Models on the screen at once), so we had to remove it.
This feature is a goal of mine and has been; I have already written the design. Unfortunately it isn't trivial and will take some considerable development time. As I said before, I cannot make promises but I have a good feeling on this one


Is there a possibility to have Corso and company back in the game as animated characters? Next-gen level, of course. I loved that, ugly oversized hands and all.....

Personally, I'd rather see team entrances. If we were to tack Virtual Corso (as we called him on PS2) onto that, you'd get a pretty long pregame. I mean, that would be neat and all, but how many times would you watch it before buttoning through to the coin toss?


For the most part I know graphics etc.. are important but for me the gameplay issues need addressed first. So you (EA) really need to make sure the gameplay issues above are indeed addressed via a patch if necessary.
All the pretty in the world won't help flawed gameplay.
Don't get me wrong I appreciate everything the graphics/visual departments do and I know this area is also important.

Of course not. That is a common misconception I have seen on message boards. The gameplay side of the game is done by engineers, the "pretty" side is done by artists. The inclusion of a mascot or changing lighting happens independent of gameplay, so it would not detract from the real meat of the game... the gameplay.


There was a discussion earlier in the forum about progressive lighting/passage of day dusk, dusk to night being taken out of the game this year? Can you clarify whether it was or not?

Yes, it was taken out this year when we went to the new lighting system. This was really disappointing for me, because we really do cool stuff on NCAA 2007 with the sun.
We had it set up with actual stadium longitude and latitude as well as exact rotation (a stadium may be North-South, but looking at it from a satellite it would closer to North North East - South South West). I think I remember the IGN preview of NCAA 2007 said that EA had satellites! What we actually did was use Google Earth to get overhead views of every stadium for this info. So what would happen is that based on the time of day and time of year, the shadows in the stadium would exactly match real life. We would take a photo that had a date and time stamp of a light pole casting a shadow on stadium, then set the console clock to that time and go in game... and the shadows would match!
So it was fancier than progressive lighting. Unfortunately, not many people noticed this little detail. We really need to get this all back in the new lighting system.


Is there a limitation in the game that forces you guys to have the big screens at all the stadiums use the view the user is already seeing? I think it would add alot to the game to have a TV camera view used as what the big screen shows all the time. This is especially needed when the camera pans across the big screen after a play and show the screen, in a screen in a screen... and on and on.

No, there isn't a limitation. It will just take time to use the replays, and we'd rather spend that time on bigger issues. We actually got rid of the replay camera always showing on them because of that tunnel effect this year.



If you guys were to put out a patch, do you have an idea of when the patch would/could be released? Or does it depend on whats being changed/added?

It depends on a lot of things. Most importantly is that we only patch once. So we need to make sure everything we get everything in there. Then it has to go through the same testing and approval process as the game does when it finals. If you see a patch right after a game is released, it probably fixes a reproducible crash or something like that. We want to include fixes that you will notice on the patch, so it will be a couple months after release I would guess.



I do not believe that Georgia Techs new jerseys made it into the game, but at one point on the ea website they were shown to have an alternate jersey. Just wondering what happened to that alternate and can we expect any jerseys changes or updates for any teams in the possible patch. Thanks

Yep... I had the blue jersey they wore in the 2006 ACC Championship game. However, Georgia Tech asked us to remove it as they wouldn't be wearing it this year. To me, that doesn't matter, but if they ask I gotta comply. Its a shame, I really liked that alt!
I think I heard they are getting all new uniforms anyway, right?



This may not be your department, but RATINGS .....

You're right, it isn't. I have heard talk and we are probably going to be changing how this is done.


Please Add Mullets, Dreadlocks, Mouthpieces, Eyeblacks and towels !!!!!!!!!

I'm always looking to add new equipment. Yes, all this is considered equipment from a tech standpoint.
But mullets? Really? Is it 2008 or 1988?




Any chance of getting knee braces for offensive lineman?
What about long hair in the edit player options?
Any chance of editing cleats and sock color?
What about eye black?

I kind of answered this in the last one, but it was asked differently. I have a huge list of equipment.. what we call "swappable parts"... that I want in the game, and it is in priority order. Every year I try to get as much knocked out as possible. Last year, I only got clear visors . But knee braces are high on the list.
Sock and shoe color is not a swappable part, it is part of the uniform art. The problem is everyone on the team needs to wear the same colors. This is more along the lines of a uniform editor, a feature I would love to get!


Adam, you mentioned you took on commentary this year as well as graphics. Was there a substantial amount of new booth commentary added this year? Each year, it seems EA claims to have added more commentary, but I don't usually hear much different from one year to the next.

Also, since EA has the ESPN license, why have they not developed an ESPN TV style presentation, using the official ESPN graphics, music, stat overlays, etc.? I think doing so would up the atmosphere and draw everyone into the game more.

And lastly, any chance down the road that we'll ever see a halftime presentation of some kind?

First off, I don't know how the ESPN deal works so I can't talk about it.
Cool, a commentary question! That isn't an unfounded claim... I think I had a more specific question I will be answering about Brad, Lee, and Kirk so there will be more detail about how MUCH commentary goes in later. I think the reason you don't hear how much different is the amount of lines. We record about 7,000 new lines of commentary. Why doesn't it sound all new? Cause we have 50,000 lines of commentary in the game! I tried to remove a lot of the more memorable lines that play all the time, which might help a little. I also added lines to the more common situations.
We actually made a neat change to the play-by-play "engine" (best way to describe it), that made a huge improvement. This is the Brad Nessler stuff, the actually play by play. You won't be hearing a whole bunch of lines stitched together like "Back to pass. Looks. Fires to a reciever. Caught. On the run! Tackled at the 20." That just isn't realistic. It won't jump out at you, but if you really do pay attention to the commentary, this is a huge change from NCAA 08.
And lastly, there is a great chance down the road we will have a halftime presentation. The only question is how far down the road that is. I can't give you an honest answer there as I just don't know.



Has there been any thought given to dynamic equipment? What I mean by that, if I have a player leave the game with a broken arm or broken finger, can he come back with a cast or taped fingers? It would be nice to see those things implemented (I know that casts are in the game, but I NEVER see them). An ankle injury can result in a player taping his ankles when he wasn't prior to the injury. Etc.

With commentary, I've run into cases where the commentary is 2 or 3 plays behind because it gets stuck in a string (or I've skipped through some in between play stuff). This can be pretty annoying, has any thought been given to having the commentary skip through if I decide to skip through the other stuff?

Dynamic equipment: That is an awesome idea! I love it! You wouldn't mind if I steal that?
As far as the commentary. YES!! When I picked up commentary this year, the first thing I did was fix that. Here's what happened... we have expiry times on every sentence... so if it doesn't play within a certain amount of time, it is supposed to not play at all. Now, this amount of time is based on what are called "game ticks." NCAA used to run at 60 ticks, but we dropped it to 30 to get better performance (don't confuse this with frames per second, the game is RENDERED at 60 frames a second). The guy who used to do commentary never accounted for this and it essentially DOUBLED all of the expiry times. So if something is supposed expire after 5 seconds, it would actually last 10 seconds.
I also tighted up the expiries all around the commentary project. They were just too long in general. I can tell you this is fixed on 2009. There is one situation that we could not figure out what was causing it that it will still happen though, and we were trying all sorts of things to fix it all the way until the last day of the project to no avail. It is rare though (which is why we couldn't track it down). But 99% of this is fixed!


For example...College Hoops 2k8 has a Preseason Special with Clark Kellog and Greg Gumble, weekly highlight shows, and an indepth "Selection Sunday" show.

If NCAA could do something like this...OMG!!

Say a Preseason Show with Lee, Kirk, and Nessler. Weekly "College Football Scoreboard" shows, and a BCS Selection show.

Has this been passed around at EA yet as far as really taking the Presentation to the next level?

It sure has. The entire design team wants to do a College Game Day thing with highlights and stuff. The video highlight stuff we added last year was the first step to accomplishing this.



As for entrances, has there been a discussion on when to bring them back?

I've written about entrances probably more than I want to admit as I feel they are THE most recognized thing about college football.

My idea has always been to have the same entrance scene for most teams, just led by different things (mascots, team leaders, live mascots)

There are a few that would have their own specific entrances which would add greatly to the game. Michigan, Tennessee, Clemson, and ND come to mind.


Of course we want to bring them back. And you're right, they would be implemented in a similar way. Every year Colorado sends me an email saying "It would be cool if you had Ralphie running out before the game... did you ever think of that?" lol


Create a School ?

Yup. We were gonna do create a school this year, but once we saw the scope of online dynasty we realized we just didn't have the time to do both. As much as we want create a school, we have been wanting online dynasty for years.
We also don't want to just port what Madden did, or do it like PS2 does. If we are going to do create a school, we are going to do it right. We are going to be innovative with it. We are not going to implement it as a throw away feature.


Welcome. Long hair adds personality to players Why has madden had this for 2 years and none in ncaa? Love those dreads or golden blonde locks(OSU) line backers have. Or the Dreads of others. Teams like hawaii where almost the whole team has long hair looks awkward w/o . What about tattoos also?

Well, Madden has real players. We don't. They also have real heads based on the real life athlete. All our player heads are generic, dreamed up by an artist. We use a different head system than Madden because of this (a much simpler one, which allows us to put those resources elsewhere). That's why we can't just port over the Madden hair, it would take away significant time from more important things.
Tattoos? They wouldn't be real, as we don't have real players. There might even be something from the NCAA on this. Does March Maddness have tattoos? Or College Hoops 2k8? I don't know for sure, but it has always been something we never consider. I want to find out for sure... thanks for mentioning it!


Adding to this, it looks like teams who use different colored helmets were limited to 1 color for this year's release (unless I've missed something). Are there plans to include the other colored helmets for teams who use more than 1 helmet (Wazzu, Oregon, etc).

It would be great to be able to mix and match not only tops and pants, but helmets as well.

Right. On PS2, the helmet is part of the uniform. On next gen, it is actually a seperate piece of art. So when we change the uniform, the helmet stays the same. This would certainly be part of any sort of "mix and match" uniform system.


As for commentary, I love Kirk, Lee and Brad but it would be nice to hear a complete re-record, if that could ever be undertaken, with all new lines, even if it means less for a couple of years. I know the script so well, it's like it doesn't register in my brain any more.

That would be tough to do. Madden did a ton of recording for the new commentary this year, and it was really hard on the voice talent. You don't know the whole script, just the more common stuff. Like I said before, we got 50,000 lines of commentary!


Why does it seem like the more advanced the game system, the less camera angles you get to choose from?

Why was the user defined cam on Madden, and not NCAA, but then removed from Madden as soon as coach mode was introduced?

Will the chain gang ever come out to check close first downs again?

Lastly, does the inclusion of mascot games or campus challenge prevent anything else from being put in?


It is because we put a new camera system in. We are hoping to not only allow for multiple cameras, but let you set any camera angle you want. That would be cool. Another problem with some of the crazier camera angles is that it has to be the same no matter what stadium you are in. So what works in one stadium might show some ugly stuff in another stadium. If you had the ability to zoom the replay camera outside the stadium you'd see all sorts of weird stuff.



1. New uniforms: can you discuss the process of getting these in the game? Do you get info on these from the individual schools or from the apparel companies? How far in advance does EA have to receive the necessary info?

2. From screen shots it seems that Houston's stadium still has the old score board that was replaced prior to the 2006 season by this:



2. I just added it to my list. Thanks for the heads up!

1. Unlike Madden that has one licensing company and one uniform manufacturer, the NCAA has multiples of both.

I do a lot of research during football season. I spend about 2-3 days a week scouring the internet for photos from the weekend's games and I add them to my reference library. I have a TON of photos! Then we review the photos versus the previous year's photos and look for differences... changes to the uniform. Then we view the uniforms in game versus the photos to look for anything we missed.

However, with around 300 uniforms in the game, we always miss something. I remember NCAA 07 had ACC on Idaho's helmet! Ugh.

For new uniforms, I work with the school and the manufacturers. We will implement uniforms all the way up until we "freeze" the art on the project. It always seems like a couple days after we freeze a team announces a new uniform that they never bothered to tell me about (I'm looking at you, Minnesota!). Sometimes I will know about a new uniform but they just don't get it to me in time.

Some schools are better than others. We have the schools that are very helpful, the schools that don't seem to care, and the schools that get mad at us for not getting everything perfect. I won't name names, sorry guys!



Hey,Adam.I'm a big boston college eagles fan.One thing that always bugged me while playing at Alumni Stadium was there was no BC student section(superfan section;all gold yellow.)link
Has this been addressed yet?

Nope, sorry. While we DO have student sections in the game, we don't have the ability to give them a different color from the regular home crowd. What we do is put less neutral colors and no visiting colors to make it stand out. Getting student section specific colors is in the plans from what I hear from the Art Director.


Hey Adam are medical redshirts and player discipline in the next gen version of the game?

Not yet.


Hello, I was wondering if you have implemented a two quarter back system such as Virginia Tech's or a two running back system?

Only if a player is fatigued. Isn't their custom packages that you set backup QB or backup HB?


I've noticed they gave the FCS schools prestige. Makes me wonder if we can play with them.??? What'd be even better is if they were modeled after the top schools from those regions. Not the exact school name but the mascot and uniform design and color scheme would fit those of APP ST., Deleware, etc. Go far enuff as to even get the rosters biggest names in there. aka Armanti edwards. Then every little once in a while the FCS teams would have awsome players that get drafted into madden

Well, you can certainly play against them in dynasty mode and then move the controller over to their side!
But these teams don't have stadiums, so you can't play as them. Their uniforms are based on Russell designs, as we had a deal with them. The reason we have the generic FCS teams is so it doesn't mess up the schedules in dynasty mode for when a team is going to play an FCS team in real life that isn't in our game.


hey adam, the minnesota gophers got some new jerseys earlier this year for the 2008 season. so far i have seen the old uniforms for the gophers in ncaa 2009 (except the addition of maroon pants) i was wondering if it was possible to make a uniform update download available for xbox live. im a big gophers fan and im just lookin for anyway to get the new jerseys into ncaa 09! it would truly make the game perfect for me! thanks

No, we cannot patch content. We also don't have the support for downloadable uniforms from Xbox Marketplace. We removed that from the game after NCAA 07.


I also would love for this feature (Classic Teams) to return.

Hmmm.. you are quoting a post I must have missed. I want classic teams back too! Not my call there, but we are kicking around some ideas for NCAA 2010 that would involve them.

My four major concerns are post-season all-star games, captain selection in dynasty mode, offensive line play and rating criteria as well as recruit attributes.

Great post! Great ideas there. I'd suggest you raise that to Ben Haumiller when he shows up. I'm not sure he will be on OS, but when he does show up I'm sure someone will post here about where he is.



Just wondering if Oregon State's south endzone and High Definition Jumbotron are on your list of things to fix for next year? I noticed that the south endzone in this years game has 2 side-by-side scoreboards when in reality it should be one large one. I believe its one of the top 5 biggest screens in the country now.

Yeah, I have on my list of stadium updates "Fix Oregon State," I don't have any details.. just know it is wrong!
I need to research this and find out exactly what needs to be changed. Do you know any resources on the web that show all the changes? Also, what year were these done? That will help me out a lot in figuring out what needs to be fixed.



this game makes hundreds of millions of dollars and 1 guy is responsible for 120 teams unis and stadiums. not enough resources. lol wtf???? One guy forgets sumthin and its not double checked by ne1 else.???Sounds like this game is being built in a basement.
Hundreds of millions huh?
I'm not the ONLY guy in charge of uniforms. I am the guy on the Production team who is in charge of getting all the art updates in game, and getting them approved by the school and our liscensing company. When a uniform or stadium is done, it has been seen by the artist (1) obviously. Then it goes into stadium review by the Art Director (2) and the Lead Artist (3). From there is gets built into game by the Technical Artist (4) and Pipeline Engineer (5). Then I review it (6). From there it goes to the QA department which gets seen by the testers (46). So there... 46 people responsible lol. In all seriousness, I'm in charge of stuff from a higher up level and decide what we update and what we don't. There are people who would know much more technical and minute details about the uniforms and stadiums. They talk about things like UVs and Shaders... ummm.. just make it blue!
We have a decent studio, but the other EA studios are much nicer. So sometimes it is like being in the basement! Or actually, the attic. I'm on the 6th floor. Oh, and there aren't basements in Florida. You dig that deep and you'll hit water.


With what you said earlier about the jerseys not being RGB compatible or something to that degree does that mean Create-a-school is pretty much thrown out the window unless there are certain generic, pre-made jerseys?


Not at all. But if you want to match a team's exact jersey color, it will take a lot of trial and error if we had a uniform creator like Madden does.


Gee, I wonder why they haven't been hanging out here before??? I just can't for the life of me figure that one out. I mean everyone here knows how to act with sense of decorum, or not.

We've always lurked. Wouldn't you? Only now are we allowed to post


We should have a policy that only admins/donated members are allowed to speak to developers.

I'd like to hear from everyone, even the trolls. You don't need to edit them out, I'm a big boy.


Great to have you Adam, I know you work the arts portion of the game as you said, and I noticed that Tim Tebow's facemask prototype is in the game this year. I was wondering why masks such as Percy Harvin's still aren't built in. A lot of college football players wear harvin's prototype revolution helmet. Is it too late in the process to install it?

We rely on the helmet manufacturers to send us scan data to model the facemasks. If a lot of players are wearing them, I expect them to send them in. Which helmet do these guys wear?


It would be nice to have something like NASCAR 09 where you have a uniform template that we can load up for custom schools, any chance of that in the future?

Yeah, this is the type of stuff we want to implement for create a school. It is much deeper than just porting Madden's, so it would be a major feature.



Thanks for opening up some communication between fans and developers. I was wondering if Missouri's stadium would have people sitting on the hill this year. It's been empty in years past, and in real life can be very crowded. I was also wondering if Missouri had gold pants in the game this year. Missouri has fans on the hill in NCAA 09


I apologize for the basement comment. It was a joke At his expense... yes, but nonetheless a joke. But come on, I couldnt resist he said he forgot a pair of pants. Then took complete responsibility for the error. I was just making a point that it is too much responsibilty for one guy. I believe direct criticism is needed.

I missed one alternate out of 136 that I have listed. That's not a bad batting average! At least I was honest. There are plenty of alternates that I know about that did not make the game this year, I could have easily said that it didn't make the cut. But if I had noticed them, they would have made the cut.


Do you think we will ever see an AD mode, where you can hire and fire coaches, assistant coaches, and trainers? Also you could set concession prices, merchandise and add on and renovate stadiums?

Also, what about the ability for the coach to be more involved in goal settings to keep or lose his job. I would also like to see a team goal board like average 150 rushing yards a game, 200 passing yards, no turnovers etc.


Anything is possible. What about NCAA Head Coach like they do with Madden? I'm not saying that it is in the works, because it isn't. However, if you want a mode like this you might want to buy NFL Head Coach... if it sells enough, I could see an NCAA version where you do all this stuff come along Ok guys... I need to take off for a while. Hope I have answered enough to keep ya busy!>>
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TEAM PRESTIGE RATINGS>>
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Air Force 2
Akron 2
Alabama 5
Arizona 3
Arizona State 4
Arkansas 4
Arkansas State 1
Army 1
Auburn 5
Ball State 1
Baylor 2
Boise State 4
Boston College 4
Bowling Green 2
Buffalo 1
BYU 4
Cal 5
Central Michigan 2
Cincinnati 3
Clemson 4
Colorado 4
Colorado State 3
Connecticut 3
Duke 2
Eastern Michigan 1
ECU 3
FCS East 1
FCS Midwest 1
FCS Northwest 1
FCS Southeast 1
FCS West 1
FIU 1
Florida 6
Florida Atlantic 2
Florida State 5
Fresno State 3
Georgia 5
Georgia Tech 4
Hawai'i 4
Houston 2
Idaho 1
Illinois 3
Indiana 3
Iowa 3
Iowa State 3
Kansas 3
Kansas State 3
Kent State 1
Kentucky 3
Louisiana Tech 2
Louisville 4
LSU 6
Marshall 3
Maryland 3
Memphis 3
Miami 5
Miami University 2
Michigan 6
Michigan State 3
Mid Tenn State 1
Minnesota 3
Mississippi State 3
Missouri 4
Navy 2
NC State 3
Nebraska 5
Nevada 2
New Mexico 2
New Mexico State 1
North Carolina 3
North Texas 2
Northern Illinois 2
Northwestern 3
Notre Dame 6
Ohio 2
Ohio State 6
Oklahoma 6
Oklahoma State 3
Ole Miss 3
Oregon 4
Oregon State 4
Penn State 5
Pittsburgh 4
Purdue 4
Rice 2
Rutgers 4
San Diego State 2
San Jose State 1
SMU 1
South Carolina 4
Southern Miss 3
Stanford 3
Syracuse 3
TCU 3
Temple 1
Tennessee 6
Texas 6
Texas A&M 5
Texas Tech 4
Toledo 3
Troy 2
Tulane 2
Tulsa 2
UAB 1
UCF 3
UCLA 4
UL Lafayette 1
UL Monroe 1
UNLV 2
USC 6
USF 3
Utah 4
Utah State 1
UTEP 2
Vanderbilt 2
Virginia 3
Virginia Tech 5
Wake Forest 4
Washington 3
Washington State 3
West Virginia 5
Western Kentucky 1
Western Michigan 1
Wisconsin 4
Wyoming 2
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I see you got Utah's black alternates in the game. I had a question on that. Utah hasn't even released to the public that they will actually have a black alternate (and from what I understand are still debating it). Do you get these renderings from Under Armour, Nike, etc or the schools directly? Thanks!

I got these from Under Armour. My contact there is a big fan of the game, and helps me out a lot. He also got me the Hawaii uniforms well before they were announced, and finally got me the North Texas stuff that we missed on NCAA 08. There is also another team that is going to Under Armour, but I haven't heard it released so I'm not going to mention it. Maybe when the game comes out you guys can play a game of "Figure out who the secret Under Armour school is."



Why were the fans in Michigan Stadium changed this year to be primarily wearing navy instead of maize. In real life the main color to wear on gamedays is maize, and last year you guys nailed it for the most part. Also, I loved in 08 how the student section stuck out so much (the most maize section in the stadium), but this year it doesn't look like that.

Two more questions... even though Michigan's new adidas jerseys aren't out yet, I believe you guys changed them to adidas in the game. Did you just take the old jerseys and switch them or did you get inside information from U-M? Also, how long after Michigan Stadium's renovation is done do you think it will get in the game. It is scheduled to finish up before the 2010 season, so does that mean it would be ready for the release of NCAA 11?

I don't think we changed anything with the crowd colors. Once thing we did do was increase the saturation so they really stand out more. Last year was kind of grey looking... like you were playing football in a Soviet block country in Eastern Europe!
Actually, I got the designs for the new uniforms well in advance of their announcement. They haven't changed the uniform drastically, but it is a little different. About as extensive changes as the last uniform change in 04 or 05. Have they released the designs publically? All I know that is public was the deal signed with Adidas.
Are they really going to renovate it? I thought the fans were protesting the plans to renovate? How soon we get it in game will determine on when it is finished. Since Michigan is one of our highest priority schools, it will be in as soon as humanly possible. When we started building stadiums for the the first year on next gen, Michigan was the first stadium we did!


one thing i noticed in 08 when playing as UCF, if you win the C-USA championship, it says "congratulations UCF Knights, 2008 MAC champions." not a big deal at all, just a typo. it could be on Marshall too, not sure if they ported it from back in the MAC days.

appreciate all the info.
No, that is a big deal. Is that like an in-game banner? You get the right trophy, don't you? I of course have won the C-USA championship game on NCAA 09, and never saw anything about the MAC, so this better be fixed. Never heard of this bug to be honest.


I totally understand(4 the record i have never called you guys lazy) Im usually on the defense but these Forums turn you. I dont even know who I am ne more lol. It has to suck to work all year against deadlines and pulling all-nighters only to be called everything but a child of GOD in virtually every forum. I def would have lied about the silver pants though. Saying you forgot was just asking for it. Might be small to you(like forgeting to put the toilet seat down) but that detail will nag many aggie faithful and hardcore College football fans till Ncaa 2010.

No, it is not small in my book. I am upset that I didn't get it in. My manager doesn't care... he's a Longhorn. I take pride in being the Uniform Guy here and doing it well. Anyone remember how wrong the uniforms were on NCAA 2005? That was when they brought me in, to fix all that. And the uniforms have been silly accurate ever since.


Hey, I was just curious if there is any other Virginia Tech alternate jerseys other then the white ones with the maroon stripping. I'd love to see all white without the striping that was used back in 00'.
I'd rather get all the alternate uniforms in before adding throwbacks.


I'd like to know if for Northern Illinois when you score you hear the howl?
I just scored with the Huskies and heard a cannon, but no howl.


How much time do you get to spend with Brad, Lee and Kirk for commentary? Do they record things together as well as in separate locations? How much longer before we get real halftime and postgame shows?

Each of them is under contract to come in three days a year. They come down to the studio for recording. Lee actually lives about 20 minutes away, so we send him a car. This year we recorded Nessler alone, but had Lee and Kirk in together. We usually go from around 9 am to 4 pm, breaking an hour for lunch.
I don't know when we will have real halftime or postgame shows, sorry.


Any plans for next year to reduce the number of stadium pans shown between plays. I know you guys are proud of stadiums and they are beautiful but I would like to see shots of the sidelines, fans, close up of players on the field who just participated in the last great play etc... Nothing but stadium pans really removes the feeling of immersion we all desire in these games.

We did that on NCAA 09. The only time you see those pans (which we call beauty shots) is during pregame, play call, and when you're paused. Now you will see cheerleaders, flag wavers, flag runners, mascots (yeah yeah.. I know you guys don't like them), and of course players helping each other up, continuing past the whistle, chest bumping etc.

Hey Adam. As you can see we all love detail! How come in the initial release of the rosters, you guys have duplicate #'s, but the users aren't able to create duplicate #'s? (Two different players wearing the same # as long as one is on offense and the other is on defense)

We put in the numbers into a database along with all the other player info like his appearance, ratings, and equipment. The edit/create player is an in-game interface and there is probably a check to make sure a number isn't already taken. Not really my area, but I will bring it up and see if it can get changed.

The only question I have for you Adam is, does NCAA 09 have field degradation this year?.......I know you guys listed it as a feature but Steve hadn't noticed any of it in his beta build. So if you could please list the reasons why it was cut and or what we can expect from it if its in??

I asked the Art Director and he said "we should" have it on the field. I know we have it on the uniforms, but the word is it "should" work on the field. I'd play a whole game in the rain or something and let you know, but I don't have time right now. I super simmed a game to see, and it didn't degrade... but that makes sense because we didn't have players running around on the field.
I don't think artificial grass or field turf is supposed to degrade, so maybe he wasn't playing with a team on natural grass?

Has there ever been any discussion about using multiple announcing teams in the game? I have always thought it would add to the presentation aspect of the game. I originally thought about it from the Madden point of view having the Sunday night, Monday night crew, etc.

Not sure if the use of the ESPN license would allow this, but since they have many announcing teams, maybe have a couple of them in the game along with Chris, Kirk, and Corso. Playing a lower rated team, then you would have the lesser known crew. Playing a big game then maybe it is the original Chris, Kirk, and Corso crew, or the Saturday night Primetime ESPN crew. Something along those lines. If you could comment on the thought or pass that idea along that would be great.

Thanks!
Not a bad idea, and certainly my area of the game. Personally I'd rather getting what we have now sound good first. I have some ideas for improving Lee and Kirk's stuff for next year.

Especially now that we have Online Dynasty (Please don't ever remove this!!) how about if you're a member of the league, you can log on and if there is a league game going on you can choose to spectate it? I think that would be a fantastic addition. Especially when there's a key game going on that has BCS implications.

Oh, we are quite aware of the demand for spectator mode. I don't do anything with online so I don't what our limitations are there. But we do know people want it.

MY question/request- Can you try and get Texas away unis with WHITE shoes. I know they wear black socks w/black shoes at home, but the aways are all white. This is one of the only teams I play as, so it would be awesome if you guys could fix that.

I know... they aren't the only team that does that. When they set up the uniforms when we moved to next gen, we would assign a shoe to each team. So no matter what uniform they are wearing, the shoes would be the same. I guess whoever designed that didn't think teams had home and away shoes. Unfortunately I wasn't involved at the time in this decision, and it will take work to fix. Everytime I asked to fix it, they'd ask how many schools it would apply to. Even though they were big schools like Texas, Cal, and Oregon... it was never enough to justify the work . This is certainly part of mix and match uniform ideas though!



Was it a design thing or NCAA thing that doesn't allow the Mountaineer to fire the Musket after a WV score? I'm adding it via custom sounds but thought I'd ask.

We don't have custom mascot animations. They all share the animations they will play, with the exception of removing animations from some mascots because they looked weird (you will never see Albert do pushups because his nose would go into the ground for instance). Even if we could do this, we would have to disclose it to the ESRB! It wouldn't effect our E rating though, but that isn't why we don't have custom celebrations. Also, we'd have to include some sort of support for mascots to use props. Considering how much we hear about it from the hardcore fans that we have mascots dancing on the sidelines to begin with, we probably wouldn't spend resources on this.

When new recruits come in is it possible to randomize their numbers? For instances we know through college and highschool players pretty much wear the number they want. When new recruits come in they come in with NFL ready numbers. I know this is minor but it adds to the feel of the college atmosphere.

I'm not sure how jersey numbers are chosen for recruits... once again, not my area and Ben is on vacation so I can't ask him. Hang tight, he is supposed to start posting when he gets back. Let him know this, he is the man that can get it fixed.


Will be NCAA 09 region free on Xbox 360?

I don't know! I asked around and got blank looks... not too many people are here right now. My guess is because the game is only released in North America there is no reason to? I don't know why this stops us. I'll try to get an answer, but it won't be anytime soon. Sorry.


Thanks Adam. I'd take team entrances over that as well, as long as I could see my beloved Wolverines touching the banner! Also, are they gonna change the "Coke Zero" blah coin flip screen to something with captains and a ref? Int eh same vein, the end of the game is boring.Beyond boring. The end of game presentation of both NCAA and Madden just kills all of the excitement about the game I just played. Straight black with bold white letters, game over. And that feeling of "meh" is compounded exponetially if it's a bowl game or the NC game. Any thoughts on the future?

P.S. I'm pretty much a Single Player/ Franchise/Dynasty kind of guy. So it matters a bit more than to some....Thanks!

Yeah, it would be nice to get these things. I'm sorry it has been three years and we haven't implemented it. Unfortunately, stuff like this takes a lot of work and we have a finite amount of time to develop the game. We throw tons of stuff up on the board, find out how much work it will take versus how much work we can actually get done, and then cut down to a feature set that we are happy with and can get done in our dev cycle.


Adam, are there going to be stats from our online dynasties on a website? i heard something like this before but i wasn't really sure what that was all about.

I don't know.


Will we be able to add custom sounds for every team, or just one set of sounds that will happen every time I score a TD?

Also, will we be able to pull the music from our HDD?

Last question, can you confirm the achievements?

I know Greg, the producer in charge of custom music, is supposed to start posting on ncaastrategies.com today or tomorrow, he'd be the guy to ask. I haven't played with custom sounds, so not sure how they get in there.
I can confirm that we HAVE achievements. What are you looking for me to confirm here?


Who does the menu music for the game? And would it be possible to actually use the actual themes from ABC College Football Saturday, or the ESPN College Gameday, or maybe even the CBS Theme, to implement and bring more college football familiarity to the game?

I didn't answer this one... we had some Russian symphony come in and record all the fight songs YEARS ago. I know, they sound bad! So now we have been requesting recordings of the fight songs from the schools, and are getting actual recordings from the real bands. Unfortunately, not every school responds and gets us to it. We get a bunch in every year.


NCAA Next-Gen has a ton of new ratings, which is both good and bad. It's good because it allows gameplay to more finely tweak/tune things to get a more realistic experience, but it's bad because it's often very difficult/time consuming to scroll all the way over and view some of the ratings. Would the team ever consider putting together some sort of text box that appears somewhere in the upper right of the screen that lists all of the relevant attributes for the player's position, so you wouldn't have to scroll all the way over to see each rating (and scroll through several ratings that are irrelevant for that player)? I know it would probably be difficult to make look pretty and keep from cluttering the screen, but it would also help display information better. That way you could scroll down the depth chart and quickly/easily compare players on various ratings as they relate to on-field performance.

I don't know if it's your department or not, but are there plans to implement Madden's new playcall screen/controls, where you can make formation subs, view replays/stats, etc.. on the fly, in NCAA next year?

First question... ask Greg on ncaa strategies. Isn't that board your home? He was working on a design just like this.
Second question, no clue. Ask Ian on the Madden boards.
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NOTE: POST 365 HAS MORE UNIFORM AND STADIUM STUFF – I EDITED THIS OUT AS ITS VERY LONG.
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I haven't seen this question yet. Is there any formula for 'pride stickers', such as the tomahawk for FSU or the bone for Georgia. I was wondering if these were chosen at random or if there is a formula in the game based on performance. Also, in the PS2 versions you could see how many each player had on the roster. Last year it wasn't there. Can we the number each player has this year on the roster menu.

Great question! Yes, there is a formula. Actually, I had the whole pridesticker system revamped this year. We were using the old PS2 system. But the problem with that is some schools earn pridestickers easier than other schools do, and the system didn't take that into account. On 07, we put in a "fix" to make it a little more realistic, but I wasn't happy with it. This year it is much better. The formula in dynasty mode is all stat based.
The pridestickers also draw in a realistic order. It isn't perfect because we had to base it all on photos, and also all schools share the same formula in the game but not real life.
Also, the Play Now/Online formula for earning pridestickers wasn't very good. I changed that so it is now tied into overall rating. So a guy rated 95 or better will have the maximum number of pridestickers that team gives.
With the change to account for schools that earn less than other schools that removes the ability for us to display the number of pridestickers in the UI like on PS2. It wouldn't match the actual number of stickers on the helmet. Sorry.


Have you guys ever talked about making the roster file a database or spreadsheet file that could be edited on a PC for easier changes? I'm not sure if you want that or not but a PC editor would be welcomed by a ton of people.

It wouldn't work because of how we do the ratings.


Can you maybe enlighten us as to when "soon" approximately is as far as the demo goes? About when you guys will be submitting it to Microsoft and Sony (or if you perhaps already have).

Also, is there ANY chance at an early release this year (even a week) if 09 is really that close to being done?


All I can say is the demo is done and is in the process of being approved and distributed. Once we final the code, I don't know the status from then on. That is handled by the management types around here.
No chance at an early release. We didn't finish the game early. I think we missed our final date by 3 days. Don't worry though, three days isn't enough to make us miss our street date.
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I'm just curious. You mentioned earlier that you guys had always lurked the boards, but that now you're allowed to openly post. What brought about this change in philosophy at EA this year?
That is the goal of us starting to post. To provide honest feedback, get suggestions and bugs that we don't know about, and give you guys some ownership in the game. It is good that it is showing.

Yeah, when we were hired we had all the NDAs to sign and what not. One of the things was that we weren't going to post on message boards. It was a just don't do it philosophy.

What changed? Well, Ian just said "screw it" and started posting. He was getting great feedback and Phil joined in. They felt there was a very positive benefit to doing this and so we are joining in on the NCAA team.

But I think it goes to a different topic. I know I said I'm not here for PR and this might sound like it, but this is my real feeling...

We get a lot of criticism for the exclusive license. That whole don't post on message boards was pre-exclusitivity. We had to be very secret with our product and our practices. However, now that we don't have to worry about competition stealing stuff from us, we can answer all these questions that were off limits. We wouldn't have community days. We wouldn't give advance copies to people.

I'm not going to get in a discussion about the license here, but thought this might be one positive that I have never seen mentioned by any of you.
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Regarding a future patch:
There will be one patch. We get a free one, and then after that they are VERY expensive. We would only do a second patch to fix a critical bug.

Regarding releasing roster info:
I think we might release the rosters in the excel format. I think I heard something about that, but I'm not sure.

Regarding online lag:
I believe the lag was fixed, it wasn't because of the servers.

On why EA doesn't do a two year dev cycle:
Yeah, that would be nice. We could get a lot more done. However, like you said, it is about money. If it would more than double our profit, I would think they would consider it.

What teams are in the demo?
Florida and Tennessee I think. I haven't played the demo... just went over there to listen to the commentary (we have commentary in the demo this year!) to make sure it didn't sound really bad. There are also a mascot game with two other teams.
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When we send a man in motion we cannot reverse it until he gets all the way to the side we're motioning too. Can this change to where we can reverse the motion at any point in his movement?

Thanks,
I hate that too!

Thanks for bringing it up, gonna send an email to Sean Bailey and find out what the deal is.

NOTE: Russell from one Madden site said that ability was removed due to cheesers motioning a guy up the middle and exploiting flaws in the AI.


Adam, can rivalry trophies be won and lost from a users profile in online games. NCAA 2005 had this feature, but was subsequently taken out. I thought is was pretty cool and gave us motivation to try teams we normally wouldn't.


No they can't.

I'm surprised it took this many pages for someone to ask me why something on PS2 was "taken out" for PS3/360.

The fact of the matter is nothing was taken out. It is a totally different game. The code base is different, the art assets are different, the UI is different. I'm sure that risking trophies and pennants is still available on PS2.

And while I speak of it, no we are not holding back features that are in the older console versio