UEFA EURO 2008
Producer blog
By Gary Paterson, associate producer
When we first sat down to talk about what it was we wanted to achieve on UEFA Euro 2008 it was clear that we wanted our focus to be on quality and emotion. Quality in that we wanted to continue to enhance the football engine that we had been developing for the previous 3 years, and emotion in that we wanted to capture the feeling and passion of the Euro tournament. In addition to this we wanted to create a gameplay feeling that was clearly different to what had already been released on Xbox 360 & PS3.
To achieve this we looked at what it was about the Euro finals and qualifying games that made them so dramatic. What we found was that a team’s tactics often set the tone for the match. Smaller nations often played defensively against the larger nations, getting men behind the ball, trying to stifle their superior opponents. This in itself creates an emotion and a tension throughout the game – will the ‘big’ team be able to break them down, or can they hold out. So this is one aspect that we have carried through into our game. Each team will alter their tactics pre-game and during game depending on their status and the tournament and match context. The effect is dramatic, emotional and very rewarding. Seeing teams go 5-4-1 when defending a lead or pushing forward in a 4-3-3 to try and get a vital equalizer creates a very fulfilling, unique gameplay experience.
In addition to this tactical intelligence, international tournaments are known for the spectacular. In order to recreate these moments of magic we spent time enhancing our shooting, dribbling and passing systems. Star players now have more weapons in their arsenal in order to break down those dogged defenses. Shooting was enhanced, making it possible to score those spectacular long range efforts but not to the extent that they happen too frequently. Additional skill moves were added for skillful players and skill moves as a whole were made more accessible for gamers who had difficulty with the system. Through passes have been made more intelligent, making it possible to pick apart tight defenses, but again they are not over done so that they are too powerful.
Outside of the emotion and atmosphere of the Euro tournament, we also made numerous other improvements to the engine. We gathered feedback from the community and combined this with our own plans for the engine and came up with a feature set that we felt would make a significant step forward in the evolution of our engine. The vision that we had for Euro was that it would be a faster, more immediate version of our engine with some new features that complemented what was already there and lots of refining of what we already had.
One of the first and most significant changes that we wanted to make was around responsiveness and game pace. To do this we refined our dribble, passing, trapping and player acceleration systems. Dribbling now has slightly less momentum and reacts slightly faster to user input, passes are crisper, players show more effort - stretching or sliding to get the ball if necessary - and player acceleration has been increased in order to give the players a more immediate feel and also to further differentiate players of differing abilities. This results in a faster, more responsive gameplay experience which can lead to some shout out loud moments of frantic edge of the seat excitement, especially in the knockout rounds of the tournament.
Another area we chose to develop was that of in-air gameplay, by that I mean jostling and fighting for position while the ball is in the air. We overhauled this system giving the user more control and thus introducing more gameplay into those situations. Users now have control of their player when the ball is in the air and have to fight for position before launching a header.
Of course we worked on lots of other areas of the game. Penalty Kicks play a more significant role in tournament play so of course we refined the shooting model and the goalkeeper being able to move and gesture before the kick is taken. Difficulty levels were adjusted so the game is easier at the lowest levels but still a challenge at the highest. CPU AI, trapping and GK all saw improvements and of course the ball physics were adjusted for the new weather effects. The result is a game that we feel re-creates the drama and emotion of the Euro tournament but is also a significant step forward for our football engine. Oh and we have pad rumble now for when the ball hits the frame of the goal or at a crucial penalty.
We’ve had a lot of fun developing and playing Euro, so I hope you like it too. Part 2: Rain, Mud, New Stadia & Managers
So as Gary described in part one of the blog, the gameplay is certainly very different to FIFA 08. Most people in the office now much prefer playing Euro, as the faster pace leads to a more exciting end to end game. Goals are easier to score than they were in FIFA 08 too, although I’ve had my share of 0-0s in addition to plenty of 3-2 thrillers.
However one of my favourite changes that affects gameplay isn’t really a gameplay feature. It’s rain. Yes, at last we’ve been able to add rain to the gameplay engine and it can lead to some classic matches.
You see it’s not just a cosmetic implementation; the rain can have a large effect on how the ball reacts to the pitch, and how controlling the players feels. When the pitch is loaded before the match it has a map of different underfoot conditions applied to it. These areas can be normal, wet, sodden or puddle. As the ball moves around the pitch its bounce and speed is affected according to the area it moves through. So sometimes a pass will hit the sodden area and slow right down before it gets to the intended receiver. Other times the ball might skid off the surface more than it would on a dry pitch.
There are different levels of rain, and different rain maps for the pitch. Sometimes it’s only a light drizzle and the pitch is hardly affected. Other times it can be a downpour and the pitch can have significant areas of mud or sodden ground that can swiftly stop the ball, plus there are multiple splashes from the ball and the player’s interaction with the pitch.
Personally I love the matches in the mud best of all, for some reason it suits my game.. I seem to be better than most at using the slide tackle well, and so the extra length you get in the wet makes that ability even more of an advantage. Plus of course the fact I am not so good at performing skill moves is now less of an issue when the ground is covered in puddles. I get disappointed when I have to play a match on a dry hard pitch, that’s a set of conditions I never seem to win on.
Once in the wet I even had the misfortune of a goal bound shot come to a halt before it crossed the line, allowing a defender to get back to clear the ball. That was a moment of extreme frustration, but also amazement that the feature could work to such a cool level of detail.
Euro is the perfect game to introduce rain. We wanted to be able to contrast the dark, cold, wet winter matches in qualifying with the beautiful warm summer evenings of the finals. So to that end last June we went on a fact finding trip to some Euro qualifiers. We started off in the Faroe Islands to see them host Italy in probably their biggest match ever. Our time there was amazing, at that time of year it doesn’t get fully dark and it was reasonably warm. That is until the hour before the match. The heavens opened, the temperature dropped and the match was played out in the pouring rain with us freezing in the uncovered stand. Then we went off to Germany and took in a friendly between Turkey & Brazil which led to a whistling crowd audio feature I’ll describe at a later date. Finally we headed to Croatia to see and hear the renowned Croat fans in an Eastern European clash against Russia. From this trip we gathered a lot of reference material which enabled us to produce some very varied environments to play matches in.
In terms of which stadia we have in the game, we wanted a very different approach to what you see in FIFA. Of course with the tournament being in Austria & Switzerland, that meant we had 8 new stadia to build. These stadia are not that well know at the moment, so that’s a lot of fresh new content for the gamers. Then for the qualifying campaign we don’t need a lot of the grounds that feature in FIFA as each country only really needs one stadium for their home games, so instead we used our resource to create stadia and backdrops that reflect the incredible variety that is present in the 50 nations that entered Euro. So when you play away in the Faroes, you will get the small stadium with the rolling hills in the background. When you go to Eastern Europe, it may well be in an old concrete bowl style stadium, or perhaps a more quaint ground with the historic buildings of the Old Town in the background. With each ground having the sunny, dry, overcast and rainy looks it feels as if there are so many things to see each time you play.
Finally to support the national team feel of the competition we made sure that we added the team managers where our licenses would allow. Whenever you watch a Euro or a World Cup game, there are always plenty of shots of the coach gesturing to the team from the technical area, so we wanted to have some of these guys featuring heavily in the game. So if you want to see the likes of Joachim Löw, Luiz Felipe Scolari, Raymond Domenech, Luis Aragonés & Roberto Donadoni then Euro is the game for you. As for managers who have since departed, such as McLeish & McClaren, you’ll have to wait to see if they make an appearance or not…
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