Media Dev-Blog
Thursday, 26 November 2009 10:24 Last Updated on Monday, 26 April 2010 12:42
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Next turn: the dev-team
Realistic animations and detailed drawn characters are one thing while developing a handball action game. The other big challenge is to „awake the game to life“. Commercial game programming in general is not a job anymore which is done by a small hobby team in a garage, it’s a high complicated business. From the embedding of the AI, the physic programming up to create the menu, partial some specific task, which are handled by external software provider. But also the „middleware“ has to be included into the code of the game and of course it has to work. A tricky job, but we got some experts who will give you an inside look to their work in the following article.
If you take a look at other sport games, there are certain elements, which you will find in every game (menu, score, game clock). Will you follow the example or will you also include other elements or rather leave some out?
Maro:
We will definitely have the common elements in our game but a special recognition value is very important for us. But since we are producing the first real handball action game we are also able to import some new things. Our style will be similar to the live TV coverage, but we will as go some new ways. The most important thing for us is the implementation of game moves and tactics. They have to be visualized and to be a help for inexperienced gamers. Known solutions from American football games are to clear and distinctive for us and we will have some alternatives.
The „artificial intelligence“ (AI) is probably the most important part of video games. How far are you able to implement the AI in Handball Challenge and in which area?
Maro:
In our eyes the AI is presented as in important part by many video games, but still gets neglected. One reason is that a strong AI will take away some of the fun, another reason is the high standard of requirements to the game system, like the physics or animations. That’s why you see in a lot of ball games, that you can shoot or pass with getting contact, because the AI already has taken its shot decision independent from the physics or animations. We would like to make all of our technical expertise become a part of the AI and as one of the first sports games ever would like to offer a learning computer. The computer should be able to fit the opponent and offer alternatives after wins or losses. That will become a very important part when it comes to the moves, because the training skills of the team will play a major role. Only the repeated training or moves used frequently during games will give the team the needed experience to use them successfully during games. But also the opponents will learn fast and close all holes in the defense.
