2020 Vision

Season Mode Dev Update

Here’s a progress update on Super Slam Dunk Touchdown development for Season Mode and Xbox One. Maybe you knew that from reading this post.

Training Games

Much work done on the second revision of these, and they’re feeling a lot better.

Soccer Training: Bull’s Eye

bull's eye boys and girls.
Looking sharper

Instead of balls dropping from the sky onto the ground, they now drop from the sky onto the dummies, teaching you the valuable art of stealing the ball. Beyond that, the training game is more flushed out and other than another review for tutorial text improvements, it’s looking pretty done-ish.

Aside: The soccer player got an update during testing where his Slide Tackle will stop once the ball is stolen, enabling a quicker getaway. The penalty for whiffing was increased however.

Hockey Training: Ricochet

More like rockochet
Even more better

The rules have changed, for the better! Now for each round you have until the bonus timer expires to score in the net. Every dummy you ricochet with the ball adds to your bonus time. After scoring, you get all the points in the Bonus pool, plus one. This simplifies the game and is self-rewarding: If you ricochet off all the dummies and score in one shot, you get more points per round. If you go for the net and ignore the ricochet mechanic, the clock will run out before you get very many points. I’ve been tweaking the puzzles and this is now a much more solid training game.

Football Training: Streakaway

Everything is realistic
This is a normal problem in sports

Now this is different! The goal has been replaced by scoring platforms. The streakers still have all the balls, and accurate tackling is key to scoring lots of points. To get the most points, field goal kick the ball to the top platform. Lighter balls can be tossed onto the medium platform more quickly. This one needs some work on the streaker behavior and the tutorial text but is more interesting now.

Roller Derby Training: Touchdown!

Touchdown?
Touchdown!

I’ve tweaked the difficulty a bit but otherwise this one is pretty untouched. Block/attack/ricochet the ball off of enemies and skate into the end zone!

Basketball Training: Free Throw

Free throwin
Now I’m free

Not much different to see here, but the arena is cleaned up a bit and the game is a bit more organized. The major improvement was to the basketball player’s aiming ability!

Get that double you
He shoots, he scores

Full disclosure: I got a D in calculus. But a very helpful & very mathful buddy took some time to step me through the calculation to make the beauty you see above. I have since made the basketball player’s ability to shoot perfect baskets a factor of aiming the stick and holding down the shoot button until just before a full charge. This has really stepped up the basketball player as a skill character, and makes the training game that much more fun. Oh and pro-tip: He’s got an aiming bonus now during his post-steal “fast break”.

Baseball Training: Target Shot

Don't forget the rings dogg
Targets and rings tho

This training mode has been vastly improved by adding pop-fly rings instead of trying to hit little targets in the air. Additionally, the ball can “bust thru” targets, so if you time your shots you can snatch up all the bonus points quickly and move on to the next round.

Team HQ / Shop

I did a bit of work here giving more space to the shop so that it could fit all the options for your arena. Not much to talk about but hey, it’s a column on my really accurate graph.

Endings / Story

Not much to report here yet until I get further along with…

Unlocks / Secrets

The unlock system has been in place, but it wasn’t tied in outside of Season Mode. Now when you unlock the cricket ball in Season Mode, it is available in Quick Match and you can toggle it on the game options. No biggs, but most of the unlocks are now in and functioning. There are a couple more and at least one is tied in with the endings so I’ll have to work on those two pieces in tandem.

Misc / Xbox

I’ll get there! Four columns of a really accurate graph need to be close to 100% before it makes sense to get back into my Xbox pants. All in good time.

contains real science flavor
110% Science Juice

Arcade Edition

The only commercial arcade version continues to live at The Detour in San Francisco, CA. It’s received a new “how to play” attract mode, and I’ll be updating it again in the future to reflect the improvements in the Basketball and Soccer players. Check it out if you can!

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