- Modding : if you installed a Mod with too many players in the Players.ini , the game would eventually crash at some point ; this fix may lead to other issues if you were using such a mod (eg: a few disappearing players on the Tour)
- Save/Load : loading a newly started career was crashing the game - 3D Match : the returner couldn't hit the ball on a 2nd serve if the 1st serve had ended in the wall
- CPU vs CPU match & Match Replay : added "Deuce" and "All Tie-Break points" to the important point list
Bug Fixes:
- Animation : moving a bit from the ball because your player was too much on it could lead to wrong and/or truncated animation - Gameplay : the player could hit the ball after it hit the back wall, leading to a weird animation - Coached Players : Yearly Stats were wrong for additional coached players - Coached Players : renewing a contract could lead our player to be registered in the 1st tournament qualies of the year - Coached Players : renewing a contract on the last week of the year for a player who was going to play his final year was leading to having only a 1-week long contract
- Settings : the best video preset is now auto-detected on the 1st game launch, and you can manually auto-detect it again in Settings -> Video
Changes:
- AI : the CPU now selects a bit better between volley & drive volley in extreme cases - AI : the CPU is now more smart about deciding to rush back to the baseline or try to catch a ball far from him at the net (both against lobs & passing)
Bug Fixes:
- AI : the CPU player could miss the ball when rushing the net despite being on it - Animation : interpolation could lead to wrong positioning, especially on some service animations - Animation : returner's head was misorientated at the start of the serve - Controls : when a wheel or pedal was connected to the computer in addition to a normal controller, that normal controller could be ignored by the game instead of the wheel or pedal - Menus : the video settings Auto-Detection was hiding the 3D player in the Character Sheet - GUI : the stress bar was never going down (it was only a visual bug, the stress for the player was correctly handled internally) - World Tour : it was possible to get 100 XP in 1 win - Modding : when using a 2D camera as a 3D camera, the camera wasn't correctly initialized, which could lead to weird camera movements
The v1.0c of Tennis Elbow Manager 2 has just been released ! ːsteamhappyː
This new version sees a lot of important changes :
Gameplay enhancements : if you take the control of your player during the 3D match, you'll notice the gameplay pace is now closer to the real thing as before there were too many very strong acceleration strikes : now, it's very important to hit the ball at the top of its curve to produce the fastest accelerations !
Dynamic animation : now, your player adapts his position to always strike the ball with the center of his racket (as long as it's not too far nor too much on his body), so visually the strikes are more consistent ; it also creates a bit silly positions when the player is really misplaced so it's easier to know something went wrong there ! :-)
Physic revamp : the ball bounce is more realistic and the strike physics have been changed to provide the gameplay enhancements explained above
And here a more detailed list of the new features :
Animation : new dynamic system to the player centers his racket on the ball and can stretch a bit to do so, so the ball is always hit with the center of the racket as long as it's not too far away
Animation : new dynamic system to make the players look at the ball more naturally
Localization : added support for language selection from the Steam client
Localization : the Documentation has been translated to French
Changes :
Strike : deep changes in how the acceleration works ; now you need to hit the ball at the top of its curve else your acceleration speed will be harshly penalized
Strike : raised the topspin rate on the acceleration
Strike : raised the ball difficulty when it's high for the 1H Backhand, and when it's low for the 2H Backhand
Strike : the backhand maximum speed greatly decreased
Physics : retuned the bounce, so the topspin strike rebounds higher
AI : tuned the CPU so it uses a bit more efficiently the acceleration
AI : the CPU now uses the topspin more often when relevant, and do a bit better strike selection on passing-shots
Animation : the ball was bouncing a bit too low on the grass during the serve bouncing
Camera : lowest zoom now shows a lot more of the court
Controls : the analog stick now allows to lower the maximum running speed
Stats : balls hit with the frame of the racket aren't counted as winners anymore, but as forced errors instead
World Tour : Junior Grade D tournaments now give less ranking points, so it'll be more interesting to switch to playing Grade C ones
World Tour : ensure fictional players have high enough Concentration & Constancy to avoid them getting very high technical skills to compensate for their lack of constancy
Bug Fixes :
Animation : animation selection based on the chosen Forehand wasn't working for some gestures
Recording : the replay of a .dmo could lose sync when skipping a point where a player was running right on the 1st frame
World Tour : Junior players could see their Long Term Form capped under 100%
World Tour : some CPU vs CPU matches could lead to strange results (ie: the top players had too much chance to lose)
World Tour : game was crashing when starting a new game if one of your coached players had a qualifying at the end of the week after have played in a main draw
Players : in fictional years (ie: 2020 & onward), the young players who were already top players in real could get low rankings
Players : Offtime wasn't working, so some players that should miss a part of the year were still playing during the whole year
The v1.0b of Tennis Elbow Manager 2 has just been released ! ːsteamhappyː
The main new features and changes are :
Tour bases : Players & their rankings updated to the end of 2019
Tour bases : added 1 week of grass between the French Slam & the UK Slam
Junior Tour : added the Grade D tournament level, which should make it much easier to win a few matches during the 1st Junior year and maybe win a couple of tournaments on the 2nd year (if it's not the case, please report it !)
Legacy Base Support : the game can now load saved games using previous versions of the official Tour bases, so you should never lose your saved game again when updating
Players : fictional players now will mostly get fictional names instead of recycled names from the player base
If you have any problem loading your old saved games, please let me know. I think I have fixed the different cases where it didn't work, but I may have forgotten a couple ones.
Important Notes:
It's still recommended to start your 1st career as a Pro, to learn the game, before trying to start as a Junior
If the Junior Tour is still too hard at the start, please let me know as I can easily tune it now
If you have Modded your player or tournament bases, it is very recommended to pick the new v1.0b bases from the Modding SDK Kit (here => https://www.managames.com/Forum/topic11-31376.php ) when you start your next career, else you won't enjoy the new 2019 year, the new low-level Junior tournaments, nor the bugs fixed in the player base. Do not pick it right now else you won't be able to go on with your current career, though.
I hope you'll enjoy TEM2 even more with these improvements !
Now the game can be really seen as complete and I may remove its Early Access status at some point, although I'm still keeping it for now, still for the same reason : to encourage feedback to improve the game with free updates in the future.
Within a couple of weeks, the version 1.0b should arrive.
It'll mainly feature an easier tournament level for the Junior Tour, so it'll be possible to win more matches, more early, when you start with a Junior player.
It'll also have updated player rankings for the year 2019, and a couple of under-the-hood changes.
All that means I'm going to have a hard time maintaining the saved game compatibility.
I'm going to try to have the game still be able to read your current saved games, but if I fail to do so, you'll have to select a Beta branch called "previoussavedgameformat" like this : your Steam Library -> Right-click on Tennis Elbow Manager 2 -> Properties -> Betas Tab -> previoussavedgameformat .
A message at the start of the game will tell you if you have to do so.
And if you have missed the last recent update, here the new scoreboard & matchboard :