EA Vancouver has reworked the standup to offer it extra pop in UFC 4.
The UFC games have all the time been good, however the sense of uncooked energy has all the time been lacking from the standup game – the twist of the hips transferring into an outstretched fist smashing towards jawbone isn’t straightforward to seize in a sim. Luckily, the animations and underlying techniques have been reworked for this sequel to lend these palms extra weight.
“One of the biggest things that we’ve changed in relation to stand-up is actually a change of the entire control scheme,” inventive director Brian Hayes defined in our interview. “So, we have dynamic striking inputs now.”
Most of the core moveset stays the identical – your jab, cross, hooks, leg kicks, and many others – however now the extra superior strikes don’t require you to play finger Twister to drag off.
“The dynamic striking inputs are basically introducing a tap versus hold mechanic,” Hayes stated. “With the tap versus hold mechanic, we’ve reduced or eliminated altogether the instances in our game where you have to hold down five and six buttons at the same time to just pull off one strike. And that was obviously very complicated, just ergonomically. It was like, ‘Let me hope I get this strike right,’ because if you mistime one of the buttons, you’re going to get something you weren’t intending.”
That’s not the one factor that may influence the hanging game in UFC 4, nevertheless.
“As we investigated trying to solve for that, we also updated the animation system so that there’s actually less input latency than we’ve had on previous games,” Hayes continued. “So, every single strike in the game is either one or two frames more responsive than it used to be, because we used to have to wait to see, ‘Wait, how many buttons are you holding down?’ to make sure we tried to give you the strike you were looking for.
“Now, we have the system where a strike initiation starts happening immediately, but then, once we determine that you’re holding, not tapping, we branch into the appropriate animation to complete what you were asking for. So, the strikes are actually more responsive from an animation perspective, but ergonomically, less challenging on the hands from the controller.”
On high of those tweaks, there’s additionally a brand new competency system the place sure varieties of bread and butter strikes have completely different proficiency ranges.
“If you are a level one straight punch or leg kick, it looks technically challenged, let’s say,” Hayes stated. £But when you’re degree 5, it begins to return out with some actual snap, and good flip of the hips, and many others. So, added some parts like that to increase the hanging game, as properly. But largely, the most important distinction is the controls have modified to make throwing quite a lot of strikes slightly bit much less ergonomically difficult, and all the things needs to be slightly bit extra responsive as properly.”
