As any diehard Madden fan knows, receiver artificial intelligence has been lacking for some time. Whether you're running an out route or a fade to the corner, problems popped up at every turn. For an out route, your receiver had little to no idea where the sideline was, so he'd consistently forget to get two feet inbounds or, if he did remember, he'd immediately go darting out of bounds instead of knowing to fight for extra yardage when a first down was close. As if that wasn't frustrating enough, making a pass to the deep-part of the end zone was often hit or miss. A real NFL player knows to get both feet down. Beyond that, they know the more finite rules of the game and they use those rules to make big plays. EA Sports is hoping that a new creation called the Catch Debugging Tool will help them address these issues and more.
The Catch Debugging Tool essentially allows developers to analyze and break down catch animations and the behaviors that lead to certain actions on the field. Aside from the miscues that I mentioned above, players in past Madden games seemed to have an incredible propensity for catching the ball and running the wrong way. Almost as though they were caught using turbo when running towards their own endzone. With the Catch Debugging Tool, EA Sports' Ian Cummings (creative director on Madden) told IGN that they've been able to get "frame-by-frame results of what catches best match the situation for all players involved as the ball is in the air." Cummings says that the end result for users is "a much larger variety of animations than ever before."
Not only will players recognize the boundaries of the field, but Cummings also said that they'd be fully aware of the location of first down markers. "We have specifically tuned and added support to make it so receivers wait for the ball on a curl and have awareness for the first down. Also, receivers will now be working to catch the ball in stride on crossing routes so they don't end up slowing down or losing yardage," said Cummings. He later conceded that receivers will occasionally lose yardage if it means coming back to the ball and avoiding an interception. I, for one, can live with that.
But what about defense? It seems with all this newfound firepower for the offense, the defensive guys might have fallen by the wayside. Cummings assured us that wasn't the case, saying, "We never want to make it so the offense is too powerful, so we have really focused on giving the defenders the ability to go up and also knock the ball out in mid-air. We've added all new animations for mid-air collisions so defenders have an even better ability to get up with a receiver and fight for the ball. With recent changes, players will definitely play the ball more aggressively, but the elite guys are the ones who are going to be able to hang on to it." So while you'll see wide receivers like Larry Fitzgerald going up in traffic and coming down with an astounding grab, there's certainly the opportunity for defenders like Ed Reed to make you sorry you ever tried working the ball into the middle of the field.
Subject: Madden 11 Catching 
Sat Apr 03, 2010 10:55 am
