Natural Motion Football: "Backbreaker"

Yeah, the patch fixed a lot but broke running. I found creating a custom team with a great OL "fixes" the issue. Sad they won't be doing a patch as boosting the OL stats (e.g. 25% across the board) seems to solve the tweaks to the physics. Also, too many near catch drops.

That said... Look @ 55 seconds here. Now THAT is a gang tackle. (2:39 and 3:42-4:00 are also pretty nifty)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWtPYiD8bhY&feature=related



I hear the NFL user mod works fine. Great video--I am gonna give it a try.

It really is too bad they don't have a small clean up patch to resolve the couple things that they broke that did work in the non-patched version.

 

I want to read a good tech interview with Natural Motion ... Digital Foundry anyone? I want to see physics like this in more games, and I'm curious to know how demanding it is. EA has done a bit with Fight Night and NHL, but it's nothing like this. Madden looks absolutely outdated compared to Backbreaker. I know it has a lot of features Backbreaker doesn't have, but Backbreaker looks a lot more like the sport.

 

wow

 

BACKBREAKER HOCKEY! I just starting crying uncontrollably. It's so beautiful! No real footage, but the "hint" isn't so much of a hint as a clear as day, "We are making a hockey game." Someone at NaturalMotion loves me.

http://www.naturalmotiongames.com/games/coming-soon-1/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/11493629

Please, AlStrong, give me the goods! Give me the big reveal I've always dreamed of!

Oh, and they have another title in the works, but no hints. I'm tempted to run out and buy Backbreaker, just because I want to support them.

 

NaturalMotion Details Morpheme 3 Release With Kinect, Move Support

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/3...ve_Support.php

 

what can we expect from this?

 

Relating it to a fight game, you could take the 1:1 input of the palyer to direct the avatar, but animate the avatar through Morpheme to get smoother motions, and tie them in to some degree with the avatar getting knocked about and changing his footing to compensate. Or even when knocked down, the transition to animated avatar getting up off the floor to player-controlled avatar fighting again should be seemless. It could also potentially impose more realistic limits, with the avatar adjusting to real situations the player, in their comfortable living room, doesn't have to put up with, but that could lead to considerable frustration with the avatar not doing what the player wants.

This sort of tech should be released freely for the homebrew peeps to experiement with, and they'll find what works and what doesn't, rather than developers all experimenting and not sharing findings.

 

Fixed link...

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...rpheme_3_Release_With_Kinect_Move_Support.php

Tommy McClain

 

If you look at the splash page for their unannounced game, it shows what looks like rolling English countryside. Not sure what that game would be. There are no other hints. Other than that, they've got hockey on the way. It'll be interesting if either of their upcoming games support Move/Kinect.

It would also be interesting to see if their solution works better than Microsoft's for Kinect. Microsoft spent a huge amount of money on research and R&D to get their skeletal tracking system working.

We're kind of straying way off topic on Backbreaker. I've watched a couple of those Backbreaker vids over and over and over. What they've done is really something special, despite whatever flaws there are in the gameplay.

 

Watch this for some cool clips of Back Breaker in zero gravity. I don't have audio at work, so I don't know if the talk is interesting.

http://vimeo.com/17987152