Multiplat AFL Evolution 2

[BlackMamba]

*they didn't, it has always been on the Unreal Engine from day one.

Day one of AFL Evo 2 development?
They didn’t start with the engine from Evo1?

 

[BallaratBulldog]

Day one of AFL Evo 2 development?
They didn’t start with the engine from Evo1?

When adrian(?) from WW was talking to Twistie in that video pre release he mentioned that Unreal Engine was in development the whole time.

But the Facebook Status made it sound like they changed engine midway. They announced Unreal engine and delay to December 2019 in May in the same post with wording like “adoption of the new engine created extra work meaning a delay in release.” that could indicate that.

 

[melbournemartin]

Day one of AFL Evo 2 development?
They didn’t start with the engine from Evo1?

They switched to Unreal at the start of the project, not half way through as a lot of people believed (I dare say mislead a bit by WW as a cause for the delay). Twistie made this very clear in his developer interview.

 

[dwwaino]

Is it their first major project on Unreal though? Surely it takes time and experience to fully understand the API, workflows, engine specific quirks stuff?

 

[BallaratBulldog]

Does anyone know if it was version 3 or 4?

Is it their first major project on Unreal though? Surely it takes time and experience to fully understand the API, workflows, engine specific quirks stuff?

I agree but they wouldn’t have started when they announced the game in late 2018 for a 2019 release, you would think they would have planned for such work and given support from the publisher to do so.

It’s on TruBlu in my opinion. WW can only do and say what they are told.

 

[dwwaino]

Does anyone know if it was version 3 or 4?




I agree but they wouldn’t have started when they announced the game in late 2018 for a 2019 release, you would think they would have planned for such work and given support from the publisher to do so.

It’s on TruBlu in my opinion.

Without even looking it up it would be on UE4.

No idea about the other stuff, I don't know how these things work. All I know is as a hobbyist that considers themselves somewhere between intermediate and advanced in C# and have been using Unity since Unity 5 I still fumble through the docs and some of the cool packages they add each build. Each time you make something you learn something new and better ways to do things. That's like absolutely anything though.

 

[melbournemartin]

It’s on TruBlu in my opinion. WW can only do and say what they are told.

TruBlu also published AFL Live 1 and Don Bradman Cricket 17, yet BigAnt were on here and Planet Cricket regularly. Sure, they didn't HAVE to be, but they were.

 

[BigAntStudios]

TruBlu also published AFL Live 1 and Don Bradman Cricket 17, yet BigAnt were on here and Planet Cricket regularly. Sure, they didn't HAVE to be, but they were.

Sebastian Giompaolo hated it, on AFL Live I just loved being on here, I did it anyway and copped the consequences - in the end it resulted in a much better game with the community from here heavily involved in shaping the dev.

The Bradman games were under our control, with Tru Blu merely a publisher, so I could do whatever I wanted with regard to interaction on forums etc. My stoushes with Ashes 2013 lead to my favourite headline of all time:

Big Ant, Bare Bums, and Don Bradman
https://www.ign.com/articles/2015/03/24/big-ant-bare-bums-and-don-bradman

 

[BlackMamba]

TruBlu also published AFL Live 1 and Don Bradman Cricket 17, yet BigAnt were on here and Planet Cricket regularly. Sure, they didn't HAVE to be, but they were.

On the WW forum, there was a reference to the AFL Evolution Facebook group being ‘our publisher’... so yeah, looks like it’s TruBlu doing the messaging... excuses or misleading comments and such...

 

[BigAntStudios]

Is it their first major project on Unreal though? Surely it takes time and experience to fully understand the API, workflows, engine specific quirks stuff?

Agreed. It's not their first go at Unreal though:

King_of_Spin_VR Comments

 

[2006_Eagles]

They switched to Unreal at the start of the project, not half way through as a lot of people believed (I dare say mislead a bit by WW as a cause for the delay). Twistie made this very clear in his developer interview.

Using the word "switch" implies a change with the current project. At the very least its super ambiguous

 

[melbournemartin]

Just decided to check out the Wicked Witch Twitter page.

Literally zero tweets about AFL Evo 2, despite being "MASTERS IN THE ANCIENT ART OF VIDEO GAMES"

But there is a tweet showing off this article: https://www.smh.com.au/business/com...-target-gamer-generation-20180831-p500ys.html

tl;dr, a Wicked Witch game has been developed into a Pokies game. Good to see that they are proud of promoting such a predatory industry.

 

[D1Matman]

Out of all of the people on this board who have been critical of this game, hands up if you didn't end up buying it?

*slowly raises hand* I'm still holding out. Will wait and see how the next update goes for everyone. The no-buy streak continues for the moment.

 

[Scallop Industry Thug]

Pre-release we kept hearing about how Cheeto had written like 30,000 lines of dialogue

This beats twister as most hilarious way to refer dismissively to twistie.

 

[BlackMamba]

So clunky and jarring. Pre-release we kept hearing about how Cheeto had written like 30,000 lines of dialogue or something. fu** knows where they're hidden.

You'd think a few of those 30,000 could've been recording numbers and names more than once. "At quarter time. It's. Adelaide. Five. SIX!!! Thirty SIX!!! To. Melbourne. SIX!!! One. Thirty seven."

There’s even videos On Facebook of Huddo recording commentary back in 2018 which I have NEVER heard in the game...
Where names life Fyfe are just part of the sentence he’s saying, instead of being stitched into it.

 

[George]

Just decided to check out the Wicked Witch Twitter page.

Literally zero tweets about AFL Evo 2, despite being "MASTERS IN THE ANCIENT ART OF VIDEO GAMES"

But there is a tweet showing off this article: https://www.smh.com.au/business/com...-target-gamer-generation-20180831-p500ys.html

tl;dr, a Wicked Witch game has been developed into a Pokies game. Good to see that they are proud of promoting such a predatory industry.

I know the game might be bad, but seriously?

 

[Mootsy]

BA, have you ever thought about sending a brief demo of a new AFL game as an appetiser/pitch?

 

[BigAntStudios]

BA, have you ever thought about sending a brief demo of a new AFL game as an appetiser/pitch?

We'd just compile the old game for the new consoles - probably run at 200+ fps!

 

[Scallop Industry Thug]

With the option to play 2 loose in defense and half up socks.

 

[Fretless108]

This beats twister as most hilarious way to refer dismissively to twistie.

I used to refer to him as "Cheezels" all the time, but that's just because I got my cheese snacks mixed up. It was embarrassing when someone said to me "You mean Twistie?"

"Umm, yeah. Him"

I'm not great at remembering names. Forgot my own brother's name one time. Spent about 15 seconds describing him to someone else before they said "Do you mean your brother, Duncan?"

 

[D1Matman]

We'd just compile the old game for the new consoles - probably run at 200+ fps!

Haha, would be interesting. Any SE's bored enough in their lunch break to give that a go Ross?

 

[D1Matman]

There’s even videos On Facebook of Huddo recording commentary back in 2018 which I have NEVER heard in the game...
Where names life Fyfe are just part of the sentence he’s saying, instead of being stitched into it.

In my experience that's how the 'big' sports titles go about their commentary recording generally. I've written and contributed to plenty of audio scripts. They avoid stitching, focus on star players and record specific sentences for various contexts (key is plenty of variation per context). For other players you'd use a generic call for the same context (need even more variations for generic). Having good commentary talent and that is also good at adlibbing is the perfect combo to get it as natural sounding as possible. Basically if you have the commentator reading word-for-word a 10,000+ line script, every single comment variation for a given context being read off the page, its not ideal - or at least its not going to sound as fluent as it could. Also the trade off is the amount of generic comments you end up with in game, but at least everything sounds fluent.

Can still have lastname calls for however many players but they never get stitched. Where you'd use lastnames as a singular callout and maybe have 2-3 contexts recorded for each name, ie. a low-key "Smith" call when player named Smith gets ball in low pressure situation, but a more high impact "SMITH!" eg. when he does something amazing or when game is more intense. But for repetition avoidance, you don't use these everytime Smith gets the ball, only a certain %. Same deal with the player-specific sentence type calls.

Sorry digressed a little. Back to your original comment. I guess it is possible that WW were planning to give the commentary system a more complete makeover at some point, but ran out of time to implement that style of commentary content and was just too low priority maybe from the get go (even though they may have recorded a bunch of it). Hence sticking to the same formula and stitch city, but trying to spice up and add/tweak contexts and logic in the existing system, without having to overhaul code too much like you would if trying to accommodate the player-specific sentence type calls mentioned.

Dean (Twistie) freshening up 10,000+ lines of commentary script for recording, massive kudos to him, its a big job. I know what that was like back in the day - and ok it can be fun creatively. But it shouldn't need to be written word-for-word anymore like it was 15-20 years ago, if using a more modern approach to commentary system & recording.

 

[melbournemartin]

In my experience that's how the 'big' sports titles go about their commentary recording generally. I've written and contributed to plenty of audio scripts. They avoid stitching, focus on star players and record specific sentences for various contexts (key is plenty of variation per context). For other players you'd use a generic call for the same context (need even more variations for generic). Having good commentary talent and that is also good at adlibbing is the perfect combo to get it as natural sounding as possible. Basically if you have the commentator reading word-for-word a 10,000+ line script, every single comment variation for a given context being read off the page, its not ideal - or at least its not going to sound as fluent as it could. Also the trade off is the amount of generic comments you end up with in game, but at least everything sounds fluent.

Can still have lastname calls for however many players but they never get stitched. Where you'd use lastnames as a singular callout and maybe have 2-3 contexts recorded for each name, ie. a low-key "Smith" call when player named Smith gets ball in low pressure situation, but a more high impact "SMITH!" eg. when he does something amazing or when game is more intense. But for repetition avoidance, you don't use these everytime Smith gets the ball, only a certain %. Same deal with the player-specific sentence type calls.

Sorry digressed a little. Back to your original comment. I guess it is possible that WW were planning to give the commentary system a more complete makeover at some point, but ran out of time to implement that style of commentary content and was just too low priority maybe from the get go (even though they may have recorded a bunch of it). Hence sticking to the same formula and stitch city, but trying to spice up and add/tweak contexts and logic in the existing system, without having to overhaul code too much like you would if trying to accommodate the player-specific sentence type calls mentioned.

Dean (Twistie) freshening up 10,000+ lines of commentary script for recording, massive kudos to him, its a big job. I know what that was like back in the day - and ok it can be fun creatively. But it shouldn't need to be written word-for-word anymore like it was 15-20 years ago, if using a more modern approach to commentary system & recording.

Very interesting insight. I'll think about this next time I play other sports games.

The NHL series may be an interesting comparison since they changed commentators this year and so they don't have years of lines built up. Plus, they typically have a smaller budget than other sports titles. There are definitely some super-star specific lines like Crosby, Ovechkin etc, but not a whole lot. I think then that even without too many player-specific lines, they just manage to stitch things better to make it sound more cohesive.

For example, I think that stitched commentary works a lot better with the inserted text at the start than at the end. For example:

"[RIEWOLDT!...] takes the mark", you can sort of emphasise the player's name and add a bit of a natural pause, like you would with a comma, and have the stitching feel natural. That works a lot better than "Kicks it to [Riewoldt]" where you say the name immediately after the preceding word and the flow can easily sound off.

There are also times when the grammar is just off.

I also love it being quarter time and Huddo reads off a score of "Nothing. Nothing. Nothing."

 

[Fretless108]

I also love it being quarter time and Huddo reads off a score of "Nothing. Nothing. Nothing."

Yeah, it would be good to have him say "[Team] yet to score" or "[Team] yet to make a dent on the scoreboard" every now and then, wouldn't it?

 

[LennyHayes77]

Anyone have any idea what the attributes "clutch" and "1%er" directly affect in game? If anything at all?