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Snooker 19 [PS4/XBO/Switch/PC]

Hey @Chris Davies . Thx for opening the thread.
I played hustle kings in the past. Don’t mind spending a 20 bucks on a new tittle. I can wait till it drops in price. :)
One question. Can we make this sticky or a “rule” when opening a new thread for a game? It helps a lot, imo. Guess a lot of user would benefit from it.
Like this: https://www.evo-web.co.uk/threads/pes-2019-discussion-thread-ps4-xb1.79222/

I don’t know if it’s possible to implement it to the board via modules. But this is an easy solution. I like to go to the opening post myself and find it helpful when there is everything in one place. Plus, users “take care” of “their” thread. ;)
Just asking. Maybe users will adopt and do it themselves, so no rule will be needed. ;) :)
 
kamy100 said:
Another preview, this time from Kotaku:

http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2019/03/15/snooker-2019-cues-up-for-a-big-break
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Really hyped, especially for the "play along" functionality with the tournaments.

I think a lot of people will be disappointed with the janky animations and bugs, but hopefully it sells enough and makes enough money for them to consider patching it for a while post-release (and to create a sequel).

There are too many sports-game devs like this that take your money and disappear, though. The guys behind The Golf Club don't post on their forums any more, the guys behind Jack Nicklaus Perfect Golf disappeared from their forums literally years ago, the AO International Tennis guys released a great little update for it but they've moved onto mobile games now (a mobile cricket game).

I really hope these guys stick around and have the resources to do more with things like the career mode at some point in the future, even if it's not for the first game.
 
AO tennis team (Big Ant) are developing a full cricket game due out in May, they are hoping to get back to the Tennis game after that with AO International Tennis 2 out in January 2020 and possibly another patch for AO Internation Tennis before that in the summer:

https://www.ecb.co.uk/news/1087746/...100000476238230+&utm_campaign=Other+Campaigns

But yes I agree, hope peopke can see beyond the Animations and that they du support this via post release. AO tennis a great example, it was awful when it released in January 2018, however with patches the game got better and better.
 
I'm most interested to see how the AI plays.

I bought Pure Pool (with the free Snooker add-on) for PS4 a year or two back and it was pretty good for £10 - I liked how it played. However, there was nothing interesting about playing the AI - just a bunch of made up names and you didn't see them at the table, and no proper tournaments to speak of, so no lasting appeal.

This game has the potential to be far more immersive because you'll see and recognise who you're playing against and it's got proper tournaments.

However, I hope the AI players have a good range of stats (ideally that we can interrogate) that affect their attacking and defensive abilities, style of play and how they react to different match situations. Every AI player is essentially pure maths and so is capable of scoring a perfect 147 from break-off every frame, so there needs to be some realistic human fallability about each AI player, with some clearly less technically able than others, some very attacking and flamboyant whilst others are more cautious, and also some less mentally strong than others. Some should be more impatient and concede frames when they need only a snooker or two whilst other should be more stubborn and carry on even if they need 6 snookers. Players' form should also rise and fall, so the best players have bad sessions and bad matches. It would be a real let-down if every AI player, whenever required, (in PES19 super-human AI style) just turns into Ronnie and bangs in a total clearance, no matter their real-life probably of achieving it and no matter the effect real-life pressure would have on their game in given match situations. Easy pots should have a higher probability of being missed by the AI in high pressure situations, particularly by less mentally resilient players.

I hope that has been given due consideration and isn't too hard to achieve. If they don't achieve anything close to this, I doubt I'll buy. I'm not interested in on-line play.

The other thing with Pure Pool was it was too hard to play really soft shots, like trying to tickle the cue ball already in the baulk area in behind a baulk colour to lay a snooker. There wasn't sufficient level of sensitivity in the controller stick to play these shots with the touch you would in real life - the tendency was to either just touch the stick and completely under-hit the shot or to avoid such under-hits, over compensate and completely over-hit it. The game needed a facility, such as pressing an extra button, that would temporarily set the controller stick to a much higher level of sensitivity when playing such delicate shots.

I wish them well and I'm intrigued to see how this turns out but as it's pretty much a full-price game, it's got to deliver the ability to play every shot and have an AI which feels like more than maths with some scanned faces.
 
The launch date looks to have been confirmed in this Xbox news article as April 19th.

normazimuth said:
I'm most interested to see how the AI plays.
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I've tweeted them a very basic question about the AI, asking if the experience will differ depending on their play style or their success rates with different types of shots. Will let you know if they reply!

EDIT:

 
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Sounds fairly promising. Given what one of the articles said about the on-line tournaments running concurrently with real-life tournaments, I wonder if the AI player stats vary over time and rise and fall with their real-life form - isn't that what the live-update stuff does in PES/FIFA? Given there are only 128 players, you'd hope that wouldn't be too difficult to deploy and maintain.
 
Good. I wanted to play a snooker game but haven't found any good snooker games in a while.

Last time I played a good snooker game was back in 2006 but I forgot what the name of that game was.
 
......and I still have Pure Pool, by these same pretenders, in my Steam games list.

Pure Pool has the most pathetic opponent AI (I am obviously talking about offline play here) that I have seen in a Pool/Snooker/Billiards game ever, there is no knowledge in the AI's coding about backspin, sidespin, topspin..........just hit and hope load of sh*te.

Pool Nation, Virtual Pool, Virtua Snooker, WSC 2015, WSC 20XX the games before that, they were PROPERLY coded for the AI players....

So I would fully expect these charlatans with their flash "Snooker 19" 'oooh, its licensed!!' to be giving us the same pile of sh*te this time around.

I hope to be proved wrong.............
 
oh and I forgot about the brilliant VR version of Pool Nation (Sports Bar VR) again, it had very realistic AI opponents.

But let me get one thing straight about Pure Pool and its ONLY saving grace..............it looked great and had decent ball physics.....and if you only want to play someone online, then its perfect for you and fairly realistic................but for me, I need a sports game that has had some genuine effort put into its AI opponents, and not the bullshit opponents that I was up against when playing offline.........and please dont get me started on the "download a human players DNA" nonsense that was a big part of Pure Pool, they played against you with a just as limited lack of kinetic ball positioning analysis and shot selection as the default AI, its as if the coders were a bunch of absolute conmen because this DNA was non-existent. By shot selection, it would have helped if the coders would have given the AI the knowledge of what back, side and top spin was....

I stick by what I have said, and I want these coders (yes, the coders, not the "front men" who advertise the game), to prove to me that they were aware of their utter piss-take with Pure Pool in terms of the AI and in terms of the bullshit that was the "DNA"......by giving Snooker 19 some proper coding, not JUST the graphics and ball physics....
 
The release date has been officially announced as April 17th.

It has also been confirmed via the newsletter that, at launch, you'll be able to play in a live event that mirrors the real-life World Snooker Championship at The Crucible.

Can't lie, I am ridiculously excited.

 
They've been demoing the game at EGX Rezzed - you can see a video of the game being played by clicking here and then, in the video description, clicking "16:00-16:20 Snooker 19".

Animations aren't amazing but the aiming aids look pretty good for those of us who'll play on the harder difficulty settings (rather than being straight lines, the ball path "fans out" to make a cone so you really struggle to get the aim exactly right).

Commentary is absolutely appalling...

Also, the menus have blatantly been ripped from FIFA! :D

PypnfZV.png
 
hmmm, I have my doubts about this one. I fully expect the gfx and physics to be top notch - and gratifyingly, the cushions and tables seem to have decent speed (Pure Pool's snooker add-on had dead cushions like a pool table in your local pub).

But not convinced by a few things:

the camera angle when you take a shot - it seems like you have to line it up and then press A to go to "Action" view before playing the actual shot. I want to play the shot from the 1st person perspective, head-down and looking down the cue. The Action view should be for the replay. Perhaps you can play the shot in 1st person view - it wasn't clear to me from the video.

the shot mechanic - not sure I like simply having to push forward on the stick at the right moment as the graphical power-bar surges. Maybe it'll be fine once you get used to it and maybe it'll help with those delicate shots I referred to in an earlier post. But it just seems like a simplistic and old-fashioned approach, like early golf games. I would have preferred to have required some skill with the right-stick, so the straighter you moved it, the better your contact and straighter the cue ball moves - a bit like having to have a decent cue action. This seems like it's basically all about timing the push to get the power right and nothing more. Is it possible to miscue or even play a slightly poor shot (other than power) based on your stick action?

atmosphere? are the matches played in total silence except for the (underwhelming) noise of clicking balls, score being called and exceeding sparse commentary? No hushed crowd sounds at the Crucible and different levels of background noise depending upon venue and importance of match? Varying levels of applause when you play good shots. Gasps when you play a bad one? A ripple of applause when you make a modest-sized break compared to fuller applause for bigger or more important breaks? The occasional cough or fart from the audience?

AI - can't really tell much from the video but has to be convincing.

At the moment, it looks like the sort of game worth spending £10 on a couple of months after release. Hopefully the actual game experience proves to be better than that but I'll definitely be waiting for more videos and feedback before buying this.
 
normazimuth said:
hmmm, I have my doubts about this one. I fully expect the gfx and physics to be top notch - and gratifyingly, the cushions and tables seem to have decent speed (Pure Pool's snooker add-on had dead cushions like a pool table in your local pub).

But not convinced by a few things:

the camera angle when you take a shot - it seems like you have to line it up and then press A to go to "Action" view before playing the actual shot. I want to play the shot from the 1st person perspective, head-down and looking down the cue. The Action view should be for the replay. Perhaps you can play the shot in 1st person view - it wasn't clear to me from the video.

the shot mechanic - not sure I like simply having to push forward on the stick at the right moment as the graphical power-bar surges. Maybe it'll be fine once you get used to it and maybe it'll help with those delicate shots I referred to in an earlier post. But it just seems like a simplistic and old-fashioned approach, like early golf games. I would have preferred to have required some skill with the right-stick, so the straighter you moved it, the better your contact and straighter the cue ball moves - a bit like having to have a decent cue action. This seems like it's basically all about timing the push to get the power right and nothing more. Is it possible to miscue or even play a slightly poor shot (other than power) based on your stick action?

atmosphere? are the matches played in total silence except for the (underwhelming) noise of clicking balls, score being called and exceeding sparse commentary? No hushed crowd sounds at the Crucible and different levels of background noise depending upon venue and importance of match? Varying levels of applause when you play good shots. Gasps when you play a bad one? A ripple of applause when you make a modest-sized break compared to fuller applause for bigger or more important breaks? The occasional cough or fart from the audience?

AI - can't really tell much from the video but has to be convincing.

At the moment, it looks like the sort of game worth spending £10 on a couple of months after release. Hopefully the actual game experience proves to be better than that but I'll definitely be waiting for more videos and feedback before buying this.
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You're expecting a hell of a lot from what is an absolutely tiny team - and only willing to spend £10 on a fully-licensed game that comes with a career mode... I don't think that's fair, nor to suggest a lot of work hasn't gone into it - they've developed their own physics system, they're running online side-by-side tournaments when real events are running... That's a huge feature for a niche game (and it's £30 when it could easily have been £50). This isn't Hustle Kings.

As for the shot mechanic - I agree that it would be nice if being off-centre with the right stick meant an off-centre shot, but that sounds like the control methods in other PS4 snooker/pool games and I find them fiddly and frustrating. This new system looks like it allows you to build a break, without it being much too easy - that's the sweet spot IMO (as he says in the interview above, nobody wants to play a game where they're as bad as real life - but you also don't want to clear up the table every other frame, and I think this control scheme sounds like a great idea).

Honestly, I have a lot of faith in these guys given their experience in creating snooker games (a lot of people from the old WSC games are working on this), so I think the physics will be fantastic, and the control method sounds different (I absolutely love the "fanned" shot paths when you aim, so you can't just line up every pot perfectly, even with aiming aids on).

My main fear is about playing online (and I hate playing online usually, but their "play alongside the pros" idea sounds great). What happens if everyone else uses "amateur" aiming, and I want to use the hardest setting? I have a sneaky suspicion it may just be "play on whatever you like"...
 
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Chris Davies said:
You're expecting a hell of a lot from what is an absolutely tiny team -
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Not really, a few sounds effects to give it atmosphere isn't asking a lot, nor is having AI players that are distinguishable from one another and so have some sort of personality. The shot mechanics and cameras will be a question of personal taste and it remains to be seen how they work and feel in game.
 
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