Hoop Universe

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Re: Hoop Universe (Working Title)

Postby Dr B on Sat Jun 22, 2019 12:52 am

I've been working on adding a jump shot animation and player accessories (some screens below), but took a break from that last night during the draft to start thinking about how I would try to capture a draft experience in a game. This is something that has always left me a little disappointed in video games. It seems like I'm either mindlessly skipping through one computer pick after another (since I only control 1 of 30 teams) or just trying to make trades for the #1 pick before the start of the draft. I think pre-draft research & strategy is part of makes the draft so exciting - we hear about all of these guys for a year and all of the potential trades for at least a couple months - so I'll have to find a way factor in things like work outs, setting up your draft board and establishing your trade preferences. I want to try to turn the draft into a strategy mini-game type of experience. I put together some quick mock-ups (screens also below - these are very rough prototypes) of what it might look like to allow a player to bounce back and forth between analyzing prospects and findings trades but also see that on-stage, team hat, commissioner handshake moment.

If you were to create a draft mini-game from scratch what would you want it to include/exclude?


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some new arm & leg accessories


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jump shot animation


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draft stage idea


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draft war room ideas
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Re: Hoop Universe (Working Title)

Postby Dr B on Tue Jan 14, 2020 2:02 pm

New update available... Updated first post with links to downloads section.

You can now shoot in practice mode but currently every shot goes in. I'm just trying to get some of the mechanics figured out so enjoy lighting it up for now. I also added FT and 3-point contest drills and created a new style of mechanic for that. In those drills, every shot looks like it goes in but the calculations of what is considered a miss and what's a make are shown in the text.

Other smaller changes include some early work on a stadium/background image, added a 2nd league mimicking a college league with a different style of court, a new hoop design and some basic teammate animations in practice mode.

You'll notice several ongoing bugs like shoes/socks and accessories disappearing with certain animations. I just haven't created those yet. Eventually accessories for each player will be customizable.

I’ll be working on memory optimization next. I experience some slowdowns from time to time, let me know the times/situations when they happen to you. In terms of gameplay the 1-on-1 isolation mechanics are my next big project as well as just adding more artwork like the accessory animations mentioned above. If you’re interested in helping to design some fictional teams (i.e. logos, courts, jerseys or rosters) let me know!

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Re: Hoop Universe (Working Title)

Postby Dr B on Sun Jan 19, 2020 3:37 pm

Just working on some art concepts for the game logo and fictional teams and wanted to share. I'll try to get these loaded into the game and post some screens soon if anybody is interested.

Possible Hoop Universe Logo
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New York Imperialists Logo, Home & Away Jerseys and Court
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Chicago Charge Logo, Home & Away Jerseys and Court
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Re: Hoop Universe (Working Title)

Postby Andrew on Sun Jan 19, 2020 3:56 pm

I definitely like the idea of logos and branding that are inspired by/half-parodying the real teams.
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Re: Hoop Universe (Working Title)

Postby pacers3 on Thu Feb 13, 2020 1:55 pm

Can I play this game on Windows 7 x86 (32bits) ?
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Re: Hoop Universe (Working Title)

Postby [Q] on Fri Feb 14, 2020 9:36 am

Dr B wrote:Just working on some art concepts for the game logo and fictional teams and wanted to share. I'll try to get these loaded into the game and post some screens soon if anybody is interested.

Possible Hoop Universe Logo
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New York Imperialists Logo, Home & Away Jerseys and Court
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Chicago Charge Logo, Home & Away Jerseys and Court
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Do you need help with names? I can come up with a few!
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Re: Hoop Universe (Working Title)

Postby Dr B on Fri Feb 14, 2020 12:32 pm

pacers3 wrote:Can I play this game on Windows 7 x86 (32bits) ?

This is a really amateur response but I have no idea. It looks like Windows 7 is the minimum to run the program that I'm making the game in so I imaging the game itself should work. It's free to download and test (link in the first post) so give it a try and let me know how it runs! The more people test it, the better I can make it.

[Q] wrote:Do you need help with names? I can come up with a few!

Team names or player names? Either way, sure! I have a set of 30 pro team names that I made up and 300 or so "college" style names that are just a city followed by "University", "College", "State", "Tech", A&M" or something like that. All the player names are just randomly generated from a large set of first and last names. I'm not really married to any of the names currently in the game, it was just a way for me to start testing the controls out. If you want to upgrade some of them or create an entire separate fictional league, I'd be more than happy to add it to the base game.
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Re: Hoop Universe

Postby Dr B on Wed Apr 08, 2020 12:25 pm

I'm not sure how many people are paying attention to this thread but I had another crazy idea, this time for a new type of online career mode. It's clearly going to take a long time for me to build a playable game (should have another update coming soon, still making some slow but fun progress) let alone an online career mode so if you like the idea, feel free to steal it for wishlist threads.

I'm calling it Parallel Universe Mode - I couldn't help myself with the play on words. Here's how it would work...

The Solo Frontend
As a player you can select from 3 modes of play - Player, Coach or Front Office.
Player - Like MyPlayer or any other type of career mode where you use a single player and follow that player no matter the team or league. You'd work your way through chasing championships, records and achievements and when your playing career is over you can switch to one of the two other modes.
Coach - In this mode you would play games as the whole team like other typical league or exhibition modes. You would be in charge of setting game plans and lineups as you try to move up the coaching ranks and take new opportunities with new teams or even new leagues (along the lines of the College Hoops 2k career modes). As you develop skills and advance in the ranks your impact on your team grows. You can move from a coaching position to Front Office between seasons but they require different skills.
Front Office - In Front Office mode you would control the whole team for games but work your way from scout up through the front off ladder to GM. Similar to Coach mode, you can develop new skills have a greater impact on your team as you develop. You can move from one Front Office position to a vacancy with another team or move into Coaching between seasons.

The schedule would be designed so that in a given period of real time (i.e. every week or month) you have a certain number of games that you can choose to play or sim (in Coaching mode there would be special types of simulation with active game planning). If you don't do either, the games will get simulated for you after all the data from all of the parallel leagues gets aggregated for that time period. More on this below...


The Shared/Aggregated Backend
At the end of each time period all of the game data from your league and everyone else's leagues would get uploaded to the central server and aggregated to see which teams are winning the most across all leagues, which teams have the top scorers, best defenses, etc. Your player, your rosters, your art files, etc. would all be stored locally on your computer and wouldn't affect anyone else's rosters BUT league structures would be held constant across all leagues. So if there are multiple players using team #1 in league #1 (the Atlanta Condors in my current default setup) and they're all tearing up the league, that's going to improve that team in everyone else's leagues. You could change the name of that team if you wanted but everyone's data would be coded according to league number and team number. If there are a lot of people playing with a particular team at the college level and going undefeated, that team is going to be highly ranked in everyone's leagues and probably produce a lot of high draft picks.

This same concept would play out into the off-season. How well your team drafts or performs in free agency is likely to be decided by all of the players who are in Front Office mode. Their successes and failures will determine how successful your team is if you're in Player or Coach mode. What do you guys think? It makes sense in my head but I kind of feel like this trying to explain it...

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Re: Hoop Universe

Postby Dee4Three on Thu Apr 09, 2020 12:24 am

I've been keeping an eye on it, because it takes me back to the 16 bit era of games, where simple controls were the norm.

Like I said before, this graphics kind of remind me of Double Dribble: Playoff Edition in a way.

Keep up the good work.
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Re: Hoop Universe

Postby Dr B on Sat May 23, 2020 12:27 pm

New release, updated first post.

Things keep moving along. With each release I'm more and more surprised at what Stencyl allows me to do. I keep expecting to hit some sort of roadblock that makes this whole project impossible but it hasn't happened yet. As long as the game keeps working, I'll keep making it.

That said, I'm experiencing slow downs into the 25-30 FPS range when I test the Windows version. I think this is most likely because I'm on a 2015 Mac Book running Widows 10 on Boot Camp. I'm betting (hoping) it runs ok on a legit gaming rig.

I added some more functionality
- You can now move from a squat, allowing side steps, jump stops and step backs (I still haven't added all the animations for accessories and shoes, that's why he's barefoot).
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- You can now switch players (no passing yet).
- Jump shots have a "green release" function and shot feedback.
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- There's a 1-on-1 drill with some VERY BASIC defense coding. Pretty much the defender perfectly positions himself between you and the basket. Eventually I'll have some functionality to tweak defensive pressure and attributes. I'll also eventually include some defensive functionality for stealing vs. getting crossed over.
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I added some more art in the form of jerseys. Since the game is meant to be an update version of the mid-90s classics, I tried to make the jerseys in that same spirit.
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I've also settled on a logo:
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Re: Hoop Universe

Postby Andrew on Sat May 23, 2020 12:50 pm

Awesome stuff!
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Re: Hoop Universe - New player model

Postby Dr B on Sun Feb 06, 2022 7:57 am

It's been a while but I came back to the project in the last couple months. I've discovered Poser which allows me to animate WAY more quickly and then convert those 3d animations into 2d sprites. I was previously using old-school stop-action animation with an action figure before which was pretty painful. I've paired my new player models with a character generator to make a default head/face for each of the 14 skin tones I had in the game. I don't have anything new to release yet but there's a preview of the new model below. I will release a playable version once I've replaced all of my old animations. Then I'll start working on new ones. I also have a bunch of new uniforms and courts in the works.

If anyone out there enjoys creating 3d animations or fictional players and is willing to share I'll add them to the game along the way!

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Re: Hoop Universe

Postby Andrew on Sun Feb 06, 2022 10:44 pm

That's awesome! Sounds like a massive step forward, even with the workload ahead.
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Re: Hoop Universe

Postby BPDHoplite on Tue Feb 15, 2022 10:16 pm

Awesome :applaud:
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