NCAA Football 10: Its In The Details

In the second blog focused on NCAA Football 10, designer Adam Thompson goes over some of the new additions to the game that would be considered as small but authentic details. Included are field goal nets, camera flashes, and team specific bowl endzones. You can read the full posting on the Inside EA Blog which includes a few screenshots here.

Before we had to use  a single piece of art for every field. With 120 teams and 38 bowl and championship games there was no way to create a field for every game with every possible team matchup and fit it on the disk (I was going to do the math but gave up quickly!).  Instead we have 38 bowl and championship fields with blank endzones, and 120 custom endzones (one for each team). When you load into a bowl or championship game, the Texture Compositor takes the three pieces of art and combines them into one field.

Again these should help to improve the feel of the game. I am concerned seeing the camera flashes mentioned after last year. In moderation that can be effective to increase atmosphere but only when presented selectively. Instances such as opening kickoffs, after scores, or in big games. While he states they are tuning the intensity and that bigger games will have a higher amount of flashes we heard similar about Madden 09. Seeing flashes going off constantly is just annoying, distracting and unrealistic especially during day games.