Tennis Elbow 4 Early Access Review - Showing Promise

[ChaseB]

In recent years, there's been no shortage of tennis video games on the market, which has...

Written By: Kevin Scott

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[ManuTOO]

Hello,

I'm the author of the Tennis Elbow game series.

So 1st, thanks for the nice & fair review of the Early Access version of Tennis Elbow 4..!

I'd like to bring a few clarifications, though :
1) I'm indeed working alone on that project. I hired freelancers in the past, and may hire some more in the future, but outside of their precise tasks, they're not involved in the project.
Thus said, I get some very useful feedback by many people playing the game, so I don't feel too alone..!

2) The visuals won't change, they are more or less final. TE2013 looked more like 2003 game, and TE4 will look more like a 2013 game.

3) The animations will be improved : the sliding was just added last month, and I'm currently reworking the volley animation (mostly to add the high volleys).
Other improvements should come as well, as I have the budget for it, but it'll take a long time, because I have tons of features to implement and I'll always balance between what's the most important & fastest to add at any point...

4) For the weird animations, there are 2 categories :
- if your player does a 360°, this is a bug, and people getting such a kind of issues are welcome to report them using the in-game Bug Report system : the HowTo is on Mana Games' Forum on topic5-31732 (I cannot post link )
The only bug I won't fix is the off-hand arm going into the body ; after checking, this one would require to switch to another IK system and I'm even not sure it'd work better overall or not
- your player is mispositioned and does weird stuff to reach for the ball : this one is meant to be like this (although I agree in some cases having dedicated animations wouldn't hurt !) ; so if your player does such an animation, you know you have to work on your positioning. If you observe the CPU, you'll notice that he does very few of them, because he's always at least somewhat decently positioned.

5) The online mode menus won't change : they allow to pick by yourself the opponent that interest you the most ; ie: if there are several match hosts waiting, you can choose between the best ping, an opponent stronger, weaker or the same as you.
It's similar to TE2013's one that worked decently well.
Although, for the moment, the online mode is often pretty desert though, so it's good to get on the Discord channel to try to find people to play with (click on the "Chat" button in-game to access it).

[MJ200]

Quote: Originally Posted by ManuTOO

Hello, I'm the author of the Tennis Elbow game series. So 1st, thanks for the nice & fair review of the Early Access version of Tennis Elbow 4..! I'd like to bring a few clarifications, though : 1) I'm indeed working alone on that project. I hired freelancers in the past, and may hire some more in the future, but outside of their precise tasks, they're not involved in the project. Thus said, I get some very useful feedback by many people playing the game, so I don't feel too alone..! 2) The visuals won't change, they are more or less final. TE2013 looked more like 2003 game, and TE4 will look more like a 2013 game. 3) The animations will be improved : the sliding was just added last month, and I'm currently reworking the volley animation (mostly to add the high volleys). Other improvements should come as well, as I have the budget for it, but it'll take a long time, because I have tons of features to implement and I'll always balance between what's the most important & fastest to add at any point... 4) For the weird animations, there are 2 categories : - if your player does a 360°, this is a bug, and people getting such a kind of issues are welcome to report them using the in-game Bug Report system : the HowTo is on Mana Games' Forum on topic5-31732 (I cannot post link ) The only bug I won't fix is the off-hand arm going into the body ; after checking, this one would require to switch to another IK system and I'm even not sure it'd work better overall or not - your player is mispositioned and does weird stuff to reach for the ball : this one is meant to be like this (although I agree in some cases having dedicated animations wouldn't hurt !) ; so if your player does such an animation, you know you have to work on your positioning. If you observe the CPU, you'll notice that he does very few of them, because he's always at least somewhat decently positioned. 5) The online mode menus won't change : they allow to pick by yourself the opponent that interest you the most ; ie: if there are several match hosts waiting, you can choose between the best ping, an opponent stronger, weaker or the same as you. It's similar to TE2013's one that worked decently well. Although, for the moment, the online mode is often pretty desert though, so it's good to get on the Discord channel to try to find people to play with (click on the "Chat" button in-game to access it).

game looks great. any chance it comes to tge consoles??

[ManuTOO]

MJ200,
yes, the game is planned on PS4 & XBox One (and thus should be compatible with latest generations of consoles as well).
I was hoping to get them on consoles end of this year, but considering the current development pace, it'll be for next year (hopefully, if I don't get more road-bumps).

[Kayla]

Not a bad one-handed background in the image

[jafioad2607]

Not a bad background in the picture with one hand.