NHL 17 Gameplay Trailer

[Yzerman101]

Torontos new jerseys and logo are they in the game at launch?

[Simple Mathematics]

Oh believe me, gameplay is number 1 in my mind. I have donated thousands of hours of my life to editing rosters over the past number of years just to get the game to play better.

It's 2016 though. I don't think I'm out of line by asking for good gameplay AND good presentation.

[jake19ny]

Quote: Originally Posted by Simple Mathematics

Oh believe me, gameplay is number 1 in my mind. I have donated thousands of hours of my life to editing rosters over the past number of years just to get the game to play better. It's 2016 though. I don't think I'm out of line by asking for good gameplay AND good presentation.

Here here.....and nobody here who has enjoyed your rosters does not appreciate or long for a day when we can enjoy them again. Your works does not go unnoticed my friend and I wish we could say thanks in advance for revamped rosters 2017 but not this year......maybe next 👍🏻

[TheBuddyHobbs]

An NHL player dabbing? REALLY?! SMH...

[spidertour02]

Quote: Originally Posted by Simple Mathematics

I'd like to know what the struggle behind putting a 5-man hug celebration into the game is. It really doesn't seem that hard.

It's actually difficult to animate something like that because the players are different sizes. This applies to almost any game where the gamer can customize the shape of his/her character (most RPGs) or where the same animation applies to a range of fixed characters of different heights (including sports games).

A two-person high-five is easy, for example, because it only requires one point of contact (Character 1 hand to Character 2 hand) and only needs to have calculated animations for the arms bending (to compensate for the difference in size; a shorter guy has to straighten his arm more to reach farther) and the location of the hand-to-hand contact.

A two-person hug can lead to some goofy and downright buggy animations between characters with a large differential in height. NHL 16 has this problem -- if you use the Rangers, you've probably seen a few awkward hugs between Rick Nash and Mats Zuccarello. The main point of contention is the placement of the hands/arms. Say that Character 1's right arm is scripted to reach around Character 2's neck, which is done with a quick calculation. If Character 1 is very short and Character 2 very tall, it could break the animation and lead to Character 1's arm partially clipping Character 2's clavicle to reach (among other buggy possibilities). One solution is to always have the shorter guy hug the taller guy around the waist, which is a safer animation with a similar calculation. Another solution is to cheat by shrinking the taller guy down to the shorter guy's size and using a fixed animation. (Check out Fable III for this. It's as clumsy as it sounds!) A third option is to simply leave the problem as-is and hope that the problem is relatively uncommon. Another possibility is to use a larger number of calculations to get a more accurate approximation of arm placement, at the likely cost of performance.

Once you start getting into multi-person hugs, all hell breaks loose. It's doable, of course, but since the game would need to do a lot of calculations very quickly to place all of the hands in the correct places (with more calculations needed for a more realistic animation), the chances of bad clipping, bugs, and/or performance drops greatly increases. If NHL 17 has three-man hugs, I would immediately assume that it's a case of the dev team finding a solution to the clipping problem but having to compromise for performance by limiting it to three players.

TL;DR: It's harder than you think because height is a variable rather than a constant.

[Hockeynut99]

Graphics and gameplay. If I wanted just great game play I stil be playing High Heat baseball and NHL 97 and NHL 2k8. And seriuos they don't have the 5 man hug? All the teams do this in real life. Come on EA use all this smart programmers and make it happen.

[Hockeynut99]

Quote: Originally Posted by spidertour02

It's actually difficult to animate something like that because the players are different sizes. This applies to almost any game where the gamer can customize the shape of his/her character (most RPGs) or where the same animation applies to a range of fixed characters of different heights (including sports games). A two-person high-five is easy, for example, because it only requires one point of contact (Character 1 hand to Character 2 hand) and only needs to have calculated animations for the arms bending (to compensate for the difference in size; a shorter guy has to straighten his arm more to reach farther) and the location of the hand-to-hand contact. A two-person hug can lead to some goofy and downright buggy animations between characters with a large differential in height. NHL 16 has this problem -- if you use the Rangers, you've probably seen a few awkward hugs between Rick Nash and Mats Zuccarello. The main point of contention is the placement of the hands/arms. Say that Character 1's right arm is scripted to reach around Character 2's neck, which is done with a quick calculation. If Character 1 is very short and Character 2 very tall, it could break the animation and lead to Character 1's arm partially clipping Character 2's clavicle to reach (among other buggy possibilities). One solution is to always have the shorter guy hug the taller guy around the waist, which is a safer animation with a similar calculation. Another solution is to cheat by shrinking the taller guy down to the shorter guy's size and using a fixed animation. (Check out Fable III for this. It's as clumsy as it sounds!) A third option is to simply leave the problem as-is and hope that the problem is relatively uncommon. Another possibility is to use a larger number of calculations to get a more accurate approximation of arm placement, at the likely cost of performance. Once you start getting into multi-person hugs, all hell breaks loose. It's doable, of course, but since the game would need to do a lot of calculations very quickly to place all of the hands in the correct places (with more calculations needed for a more realistic animation), the chances of bad clipping, bugs, and/or performance drops greatly increases. If NHL 17 has three-man hugs, I would immediately assume that it's a case of the dev team finding a solution to the clipping problem but having to compromise for performance by limiting it to three players. TL;DR: It's harder than you think because height is a variable rather than a constant.

That was like Charlie brown's adults talking to me.

So I guess it is harder than it looks. Bummer. I do remember one excuse they use years ago was the locations of the players on the ice was an issue for the 5 man hug. Maybe the PS5 will give us the 5 man hug.

[GROGtheNailer]

That looked like all replays/highlights and not gameoplay so I don't know why they call it a gameplay trailer. They should show off like 5 mins of actually gameplay. I haven't bought EA's NHL game for 2 years now and I cannot see anything to bring me back. Maybe that will change before release but I am thinking probably not.