Madden NFL 11 Blog: Catch Tuning

**Deli** · 03-24-2010, 01:29 PM

Re: Ian Cummings' Catch Tuning Blog (3/24)

Originally posted by Pared

Was this really necessary?

Stop trying to ruin threads, people.

As a matter of fact yes it was necessary. I only inquire so I do not purchase the game under false pretenses as I purchased last year's iteration. Thank you for your concern.

**marktg30** · 03-24-2010, 01:30 PM

Re: Ian Cummings' Catch Tuning Blog (3/24)

Reposting for people having problems... Hope this helps.

Originally posted by marktg30

Catch Tuning

by Ian Cummings 03/24/10 10:37 AM

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  Well it’s hard to believe, but Madden NFL 11 will be here before you know it! The development team here at EA Sports Tiburon in sunny Orlando, FL has been hard at work trying to put together the best football game in history (our goal each year). We started off the season with a video blog introducing you to some of the team members, along with their whiteboards. Since then, we have been focusing on many different areas in the game from presentation to franchise to online, but this week we wanted to talk about everyone’s favorite aspect of Madden NFL – Gameplay. More specifically, catching.
Please note: This is the first of many blogs we will release in anticipation of launch. In addition, our first major release announcement will come closer to the NFL Draft so stay tuned.
As developers, catching has always been one of the hardest and most frustrating areas of our game to tune because of the sheer amount of possibilities. When you start to try to account for all the different angles a pass could be coming in to a receiver along with the difference in his body position, it is always a difficult problem to solve. In years past, fixing catch problems has taken countless development hours to try to track down and address the issues. With that in mind, one of the first tasks we started addressing after we shipped Madden NFL 10 was to create a more user friendly catch ‘debugging’ tool. One of our talented software engineers, Kasey Keltner, created this tool which allows us to figure out why certain catches triggered, what other catches could have triggered, why some catches play more frequently than others, and helps identify angles where no animation is available. This tool has already helped us enormously by being able to see why certain things happen in Madden NFL 10.
One of the first catch issues we addressed was to force receivers to run through particular passes instead of triggering jumping catches. This was often seen on deeper passes like Streaks, Corners, and Deep Posts. Instead of slowing down and jumping up to catch a pass, a receiver in open space will try and catch the ball in stride now. These types of catches will only trigger, however, if there is not a defender in the path of the route or in a position to make a play on the ball. We want the Larry Fitzgerald/Calvin Johnson type receivers to really go up and fight for the ball and come down with spectacular catches if there is a crowd of defenders around them.
Another area of focus we have been working on is tuning the frequency for when “aggressive” types of catches can trigger. In previous years there have been situations where you could sometimes see a receiver playing a catch where he runs back towards the ball. These could sometimes be seen on Curl/Hitch/Smash type routes as well as Screen routes behind the line of scrimmage. There is nothing more frustrating than calling a 5-yard route on 3<sup>rd</sup> and 4 and having the receiver catch it moving towards the QB and get tackled for a 2-yard gain.
Well, this year, the receiver won’t play those types of catches (unless of course there is a defender between him and the ball). If you are running a 10-Yard Curl and the defender is behind you, the receiver will always be forced to match a ‘standing’ catch so he can try to backpedal into the defender for extra yardage. Also, we eliminated the likelihood that a receiver that is behind the line of scrimmage (e.g. WR or HB Screen play) would play a running, aggressive style catch if he is in open space.
Finally, we have gotten sideline and back of the endzone catches to trigger in the appropriate situations. In previous years we have seen some situations where a receiver tries to make a catch near the sideline without making any attempt to get both feet inbounds. This was most commonly seen on flat and out breaking type routes.
<script src="http://player.ooyala.com/player.js?width=550&height=366&embedCode=phMGFhMTr U1YnpKO_zIjryjlYrawr0VS"></script><noscript></noscript>For Madden NFL 11, with the help of the Catch Debugging Tool, we have corrected all of our sideline / back of the end zone catches. You no longer have to be afraid of trying to squeeze that Deep Out or Goalline fade inbounds, as now the receivers have much more advanced AI to get both feet in.
Along with all of this work, we have added several new catch animations to the game from recent motion capture shoots with the goal of adding more variety and creating more authentic animations to match what you see on Sundays.

That’s all for this week folks. Join us next week for our live chat on Madden NFL 11 Catching Improvements. We look forward to answering any questions you all may have and don’t forget, more information about Madden NFL 11 to come.

**da ThRONe** · 03-24-2010, 01:32 PM

Re: Ian Cummings' Catch Tuning Blog (3/24)

Originally posted by Hova57

well everything that has to do with this blog i can't see. this sucks cheesenuts.

on first page on this thread i only see marktg intial post then nothing til i go to page 2 and the freaking link don't work could someone if its legal just post the blog in this thread plez

I was about to make the same request.

**KyGamerLT** · 03-24-2010, 01:35 PM

Re: Ian Cummings' Catch Tuning Blog (3/24)

Good Blog nice to see they know what is wrong, I hope they get it fixed. The sideline catches got really bad after the update. I hope to see some wr awr come into play with toe tapping.Will some wr be deep threats? will the jump ball be to powerful? Will this catch in stride animaton make drags and crossing routes more powerful against man? will stride catching destroy man defense? Will every wr get the same amount of seperation?

Is the curl returning this year since the wr wont come back to the ball but backpedal? Does this mean a wr will sit in a zone based on awr and route running? How will a DB react to the wr backpedal on a curl route?

I hope EA fix the Defense I like offense but Defense needs some serious love.

**PantherBeast_OS** · 03-24-2010, 01:38 PM

Re: Ian Cummings' Catch Tuning Blog (3/24)

Well I never cared for firefox. But I downloaded it and it helped out. But back to the blog talk. I see where Ian and his crew is going with the catching on the sidelne and stuff. But Ian got to remember that Players do run out of bounds why trying to catch. They shouldn't just throw the animation in there and say there you go. It needs to trigger at the right time and not all the time. These players should still be able catch ball out of bounds like in real life. Players catching passes with 2 feet in near the sideline is a random thing. This is where awareness ratings should really used in madden 11 now. Having all WR catch inbounds tipy toe animation 80% of the time would be to unreal. But not going to judge anything until I see full video of this sometime in the next month from Ian and company. Thanks for the blog Ian.

Ya'll just up the good work.

**sb24** · 03-24-2010, 01:51 PM

Re: Ian Cummings' Catch Tuning Blog (3/24)

Wow I cant even see half the content in this thread. I cant scroll past any of marktg30's post.

**da bucs gm** · 03-24-2010, 01:58 PM

Re: Madden NFL 11 Blog: Catch Tuning

mark stop posting the link. because the ppl with the IE problems can't see anybody else posts after you post the link up til a new page has to be made for comments.

**leo2k2ndc** · 03-24-2010, 02:00 PM

Re: Madden NFL 11 Blog: Catch Tuning

LoL ... This is an alright blog, but I am disappointed for another reason ... I was on pastapadre site and saw it had a video mentioned ... I thought it was new game animations ... FAIL!!

**noshun** · 03-24-2010, 02:36 PM

Re: Madden NFL 11 Blog: Catch Tuning

Madden glitches are making their ways into the forums literally. Seems like the 'no blog' glitch to me. I kid.. I kid.
anyways off to read.

**Segagendude** · 03-24-2010, 03:01 PM

Re: Madden NFL 11 Blog: Catch Tuning

this thread is acting weird....cannot advance thru pages???

**Pared** · 03-24-2010, 03:03 PM

Re: Ian Cummings' Catch Tuning Blog (3/24)

Originally posted by Deli

As a matter of fact yes it was necessary. I only inquire so I do not purchase the game under false pretenses as I purchased last year's iteration. Thank you for your concern.

Then rent it and leave the drama off the boards. If you don't want to take these blogs at face value, don't. But cut the snide remarks. It adds nothing to the thread.

**jeremym480** · 03-24-2010, 03:08 PM

Re: Madden NFL 11 Blog: Catch Tuning

Not bad for the first blog. If it works as explained this should definitely take the passing game to a whole new level. I'm looking forward to more new info.

**BigZell20** · 03-24-2010, 03:09 PM

Re: Madden NFL 11 Blog: Catch Tuning

It's nice that the first blog is taking a huge complaint from years past head on instead of tip-toeing around the elephant in the room and talking about new mouth gaurds or something.

But, like many people have said...I will believe it's fixed when I see it work properly in game.

**NavigatorD83** · 03-24-2010, 03:17 PM

Lets see these new catches

**ch46647** · 03-24-2010, 03:19 PM

Re: Madden NFL 11 Blog: Catch Tuning

Well hopefully this fix actually works, if so then the catching will have made big strides over previous versions. I also think they should add the ability to jump for the ball as a reciever, not that ridiculous rocket catching but just a normal jump for the ball.

Hopefully they have also added "route based passing" and better ball velocity to take care of the passing game.

Madden NFL 11 Blog: Catch Tuning

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