Male: My name is Brian Hayes. I’m the Gameplay Producer in Fight Night Round 4.
As far as improvement to the physics system from Round 3 to Round 4, from Fight Night Round 3, physics really only came into play when a fighter got knocked down.
In Fight Night Round 3, because the boxer moving with somewhat slow in robotic, you often found that the gameplay degraded into two guys standing into front of each other and just trading blows. So there was always an invisible blow between each boxer. They would never allow any boxer to get very close together because there is the excessive flipping of arms passing through heads and bodies and torsos. With the new physics based gameplay engine in Fight Night Round 4, you can get those guys get really up close and personal, so they can really stand head to head and exchange blows at close range. And that brings a lot of strategic depth and variety to the gameplay.
One of the big things for Fight Night Round 3 was the strength of each punch was determined by how far you wham back the analog sticks. It was really a game about hit or miss, there were no glancing blows. It was a game of feat rather than the game of inches or millimeters. The difference of an inch or a millimeter makes all the difference in the world in the real sport and in our game.
With the physics based gameplay engine in Fight Night Round 4, the strength of each punch is determined by how it hits the target. So there’s clean punches there’s glancing blows there’s punches that are partially deflected and there’s punches that miss all together.
Definitely a big focus for us has been the speed of combination punching. In Fight Night Round 3 the combinations were sometimes a little bit slow and a little bit unresponsive. So we’ve really been focus on given the use of the ability to throw combinations like an elite championship level boxing.
Boxing is a sport about hitting and not getting hit. Not hitting and standing in front of your opponent and trying to swat his punch into the air so you can paralyze him for two seconds. So for Fight Night Round 4, we’re really focusing on defense of head movement and defense of footwork so you can step to the side and move your head to make your opponent miss and then make him pay.
The knockout moment in Fight Night Round 3 was a big moment, it was actually really fun to see, really fun to watch but it was very repetitive, a canned animation effect that happened every single time. With the physics based gameplay engine we’re actually using physics to drive the face of distortion and all the effects that happen. When you see that big punch, no two punches will look the same in that respect, it’s gonna look different everytime based on the angle, the speed, and the power of the punch, and where it lands in the guys face it’ll create a dynamic effect each and everytime.
The sweat, the blood spray, the spit in Fight Night Round 4, big step up from Fight Night Round 3 where you saw very repetetive, very canned visual effects. In Round 4, we’re using physics once again to drive those effects so that they are different and they’re dynamic and they’re unique at the same time. So each time you punch a guy, again it takes to new account, the direction, the speed and the force of each punch and it drives the sweat spray off its head in a realistic manner.
So take in everything together, what we’re really trying to deliver is the most realistic simulation in sport of boxing ever in a video game. In Fight Night Round 3 you saw very scripted, very repetetive experience where people stood in front of each other, try to swat their punch into the air and counterpunch. In Fight Night Round 4, you’ll see a much more fluid natural game with footwork, head movement, people making each other miss and making them pay.
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