Day 4 – Layout & 3D Graphics

Firstly, I would like to apologize for not posting anything up yesterday. I do have a reason for not writing anything and it is quite simple, I needed to play FM! I hadn’t really had a chance to advance with my game and get some solid playing time in, not to mention the fact I was desperately running out of things to write about, which is not good. I don’t believe in forced writing, writing about something because you have nothing else to write about. Anyway, things are back to normal today as I take a look at the game once again, only this time I will not be reviewing a new feature I have come across, I will be expressing my thoughts on new graphics and layout in FM10!

Layout

We have got used to the same kind of layout over the last couple of years, quite dull, quite basic and quite ordinary. However, it worked. Everyone knew were everything was and everyone felt comfortable navigating there way around it. Until I seen one of the first FM10 screenshots, I thought it was going to be the same as usual with a few tweaks. Not this time, the layout had undergone a complete makoever, it looked completely different to the game I had minimized at the bottom of my screen, it also looked very confusing. When your viewing the layout from a still image, you can’t really get a feel for how good or bad it is, which is why I refused to make an early judgement on the new setup. Deep down however, I knew what I felt of it.

When I downloaded my copy of the demo and booted it up, I was already expecting quite a lot, people had already been telling me how good it looked, how smooth it felt and how much of a leap forward it was from last years game. Obviously the very beginnings of the game were hardly breathtaking visually, they were just the same as they have always been. The main menu looked nice and vibrant which had already set off a nice positive aura of the game, the profile area was very basic, just how it needed to be. When I eventually got to view the manager overview screen, I was taken back. The arrangement of everything was superb, there was lots of information displayed on the page yet the it still looked very clean and very pretty. I also found out later on in the day that the information displayed was customizable, by that I mean you can chop and change what information you want the screen to show.

Moving on from overview screen, the news page is pretty much the same as last year if you focus your eyes on lower the 3/4′s of the page. The top of the screen is very much different, there is now a calendar bar that runs across the top, with a logo of the club on the date you are facing them. The calendar bar really is a good addition, it is now much easier to get a sense of how close you are to your next game. All the club and managers affairs are now neatly tucked away under the calendar bar. The continue button has travelled to the top right hand corner of the page and has took the preferences button with it. All in all, everything that has been changed has improved the layout, I can’t really say that I preferred anything the way it was on 09, everything seems to make more sense this way. In terms of navigation, everything is relatively easy to find providing you have spent more than an hour on the game. The game also now runs a lot smoother, I haven’t experienced any clicking delays that haunted my FM09 experiences and the game has never crashed on me. Which is more than I could say for FM09

I am definitely a lover of the new layout, I’m aware that it is not some peoples cup of tea and the fact that SI are releasing an FM09 duplicate skin with the STEAM release is a sign that they are not the only ones who have problems. Fortunately, I won’t have to download the FM09 skin or any other skin for that matter as for once, Sports Interactive have given me a skin to begin with that is actually quite good!

3D Graphics

Moving on to the real inspiration of this article, the 3D pitch. Last year, I hated the new 3D none sense. I was quite happy with my 2D players running about freely without skipping, jumping or crashing. The 3D was a brilliant idea, but it was an idea that was incomplete. The 3D ran so un-smoothly for me it was unbearable and the lack of graphics on the screen bored me to death. Having shared opinions with other people on this issue many of a time, I know that I wasn’t the only one who had grown strong hatred for the 3D pitch. It was also slightly disappointing, knowing that it was such a great idea that if implemented correctly, could of been revolutionary to the way we all view our matches. I was hoping they would do something about it rather then let it waste away.

I wasn’t aware that they were going to do anything to the 3D view before I looked at the demo, all I knew was that I wouldn’t be using it, at least that’s what I thought. As I wondered into my first match, I thought I would take a look at the 3D before I switched to 2D classic. It took ages to load as usual but when it did finally appear on my screen, I was shocked. The most obvious change was the fact we now had a crowd, which was excellent. The game now felt a lot more atmospheric and a lot more ‘real’. The players looked a lot better, they were more accurately shaped and they were more natural in motion. Most of all, despite the new graphical additions, the game ran a lot, lot smoother and quicker than it did last year. With the new Touchline Instructions, I really thought that I could give it a go this year.

As promised, I did give the 3D pitch a go and I did come away weighing up the pros and cons of both the 3D view and the much loved 2D classic view. The 3D view gave a better look at how the team was playing and how certain individuals were playing. The 2D pitch was a lot quicker and a lot more fluent. Decisions, Decisions. This may seem a bit anti-climatic, but I chose the 2D view, it’s just much quicker! However, I will still use the 3D view in games that I deem important’, that way I am getting the best of both worlds. The main point of this article is not which I have chosen, more so to prove how well SI have done to improve the 3D view, from a messy, unresponsive, unfinished concept to a…..well I’ll let you decide that.