few more weeks. . .
‘NBA 2K21’ new next-gen gameplay animations unveiled by 2K Sports, as the first real piece of information for Xbox Series X and PS5 consoles. Unlike others blown away by the next-gen graphics, we’re focused on what really matters on NBA 2K21: Gameplay. This week, Mike Wang unleashed a blog, to give an in-depth explanation of animations for 2K Sports.
While it looks nice, graphically, we’re expecting to see the same bullshit 2K Sports has delivered to their fans over the last 7 years. Considering the developers actually took time to break down gameplay, hopefully the series is heading in the right direction – but we have little faith anymore.
Take a look at their breakdown below.
Next-gen movement
There’s nothing more exciting for a developer than the arrival of new consoles. Every new generation gives us the opportunity to step back and reimagine how we can push the sports gaming genre forward. If I had to pick one aspect of gameplay that’s probably benefited the most from the jump to next-gen, the answer would probably have to be on-court locomotion. Movement is the foundation for a solid basketball game. When that foundation isn’t solid, a lot of aspects of the game fall apart. We put a lot of resources toward improving locomotion with and without the ball, and I’m excited how far it’s come to kick off year one of the next generation of 2K hoops.
Dribble movement
The dribbler was rebuilt from the ground up for next-gen and the difference is night and day. We retained the concept of signature dribble styles that we introduced a couple years ago, but otherwise, everything was scrapped and re-architected bringing a completely different feel with the ball in your hands for next-gen. Additionally, protect and post movement saw massive upgrades. The aspect of dribble movement that excites me the most is the predictability and consistency of it. It’s much easier to go exactly where you want on the floor, and in the manner that you’d expect to get there. No unwanted turns or having your player face the wrong way. No bursting up to speed or failed cuts. It just works. And because it’s built using the same engine as the Pro Stick dribble move system, movement and moves work cohesively together. Player speeds are more accurate to real life and the sense of weight feels more lifelike. It’s a complete package and I don’t think I can overstate how much it’s elevated my enjoyment of playing the game.
Defense and Off-Ball
All non-dribbling movement from on-ball defense, to off-ball offense and defense is run by our motion engine which is in its third year of development. The motion team has been working tirelessly to bring a next-gen feel to moving without the ball, and it both looks and feels fantastic. Here are some of the upgrades that stand out:
Unique contextual motion assets for various basketball situations (Transition Stops, Leak Out, Guard Break, Anchor, Space Perimeter) bring an awareness to the look of the players on the floor and give them more life.
Improved pathing, cuts, and stops make defenders feel more grounded and fix a lot of the sliding from the previous generation.
Overall improvement to motion stability and response. In other words, we smoothed out the twitchiness and players can more accurately follow exactly what you’re doing on the sticks.
Updated player-size detection logic and greater emphasis on player differentiation. Bigs move like bigs, and guards move like guards. This includes a lot of new animation content to support.
Foot Planting
Sliding in basketball is no good. But it’s something we’ve had to live with in the past because of limitations in technology. I’m happy to say that 2K21 next gen takes a huge leap in that department. Our engineers re-wrote our foot planting tech from scratch and it led to one of the most striking visual improvements when you put current gen side-by-side with next gen. Players can now take procedural steps instead of sliding their feet when they need to make micro-adjustments. I love seeing proper footwork as players are making hard cuts, accelerating, stopping… even just standing and making subtle movements in place. It just brings 2K hoops one more step (see what I did there?) closer to real life.
Body Ups
That’s our internal name for all of the interactions between the ball handler and defender. It’s always a tricky balance trying to accurately model the cat & mouse game between the offense and the defense. Our goal with body ups was to highlight the improvements that we were able to make to both dribbling and defensive movement. To that end, it meant less canned interactions and doing a better job of respecting user control. I think 2K21 strikes a great balance between rewarding taking proper driving angles and respecting contact. Attempting to drive head first directly into a defender will stop them in their tracks, lead to charges, or force pickups.
When ball handlers get to the hip of the defender but the defender matches well, it will lead to more realistic rides that neither player will feel stuck in. And on the other extreme, slow footed (or slow to react) defenders will be punished with blow by’s and if they try to force the contact too late, might get hit with a blocking foul. Strong ball handlers can also hard stop out of a ride and crab defenders more effectively so it’s not always about speed when trying to probe into the paint. The logic for the types of resolutions that play out is much more robust and takes into account every little detail you can think of. The end result is a better 1-on-1 game that more accurately mirrors the real NBA.
Off-Ball Contact
Just like with body ups, we wanted to translate those same principles off-ball. The motion team completely re-worked the off-ball contact system, which now features everything from “let throughs” (incidental contact) to hard collisions. There’s a great freedom of movement when you’re working away from the ball but also realistic contact when it’s called for, all with no snatching or sliding. My favorite aspect of these collisions can be seen in the new screen interactions. Gone are the “vacuum screens” that have plagued basketball games in the past where defenders would get pulled into a screen collision and run in a direction they weren’t asking for. You can reject screens appropriately, go over or under as you’d expect, and “die” on a screen if you have a weak defender trying to barrel through a big. It all looks great, but more importantly, feels great for both the offense and defense to get the outcomes that make sense in such an important aspect of team basketball.
Impact Engines
One of the biggest challenges we face when balancing offense and defense is contact in the paint. As you can tell, with next-gen we really stressed the importance of respecting user control and not warping defenders into place for the sake of game balance. But it’s vital to be able to have reliable contact, especially for protecting the basket, in order to prevent bloated points in the paint. For NBA 2K21 next-gen, we developed a new in-air contact shot system that we internally call the Impact Engine. The goal was to completely remove the snatching that we’d been using in past games and resolve collisions on the fly as players hit each other in mid-air.
The Impact Engine gives us the flexibility to do just that. By creating reliable contact when players are in flight, we no longer have to take control of defenders while they’re on the ground and pull them into place just to force certain outcomes. This will be most noticeable for paint defenders as they’ll have the freedom to maneuver their players into position and make a play on the ball themselves rather than the game dictating what happens based on whatever animations happen to trigger. To further aid paint defense, the logic that goes into block targeting was improved and we’re using IK more heavily now to get the hand to track the ball (as well as to minimize clipping.) One of the main beneficiaries of the new engine is that we now have contact alley-oop and putback dunk-ons for the first time in 2K, which look sick and feel rewarding when you can pull them off!