ITST Mod 1.18 - What do you need to get started!

[Elias]

January 16th 2014: Update to ITST Mod 1.16

Warning

ITST Mod 1.16 installer is copying files to a different folder than before. Therefore it is necessary to do a fresh install in order to avoid issues. Also if you are thinking about copying Tennis.ini and ITST.ini files wich contain references about how many anims/sounds are available, or max interface items displayable, keep in mind that this might lead to bugs and in the worst case Desyncs.

Better to always do a fresh install, and re-creating an ITST profile. Report manually your key bindings (you can copy and paste them from your old ITST.ini to the new one, you can find it in the [Keys1] or [Joy1] section in ITST.ini).


ITST Mod 1.16 (as Installer; 265 MB)

http://www.mediafire.com/download/6xmd9 ... taller.exe

Classic manual install .rar archive (***** MB) : will come later.


ITST Mod 1.16 No Ads Patch (as .rar archive; 5 KB)

This patch removes the graphic Ads on 3D courts, if you want to remove them for visual cumfort purposes.
Please not that there is no more Full Mod version for the NoAds feature. It's now a very
lightweight patch that you have to apply after installing ITST Mod 1.16.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/a1y4zoaap2tba81/ITST_Mod_1.16_NoAds_Patch.rar

the no-adds patch is a small .rar archive wich you can drop directly the contents in your TE folder.
warning though ; the early users of the very first 1.16 release + Update Fix, will have to rename
the Pak04.Pak, to Pak05.Pak, in this archive, to have it work (or it will overwrite the update fix).


Updated Roster Stats Overview in Google Spreadsheet

Updated Roster Stats Overview

To get a general overview on the decisions made regarding stats and some cosmetic changes to the mod read further on.

1. Roster Stat's Changes from ITST Mod 1.15 to ITST Mod 1.16

In ITST Mod 1.14 and ITST Mod 1.15 has been generally well-received, especially the baseline gameplay -- at least in the first few weeks -- felt really nice. However, we could still see some matches with Average Rally Length of 10 or 11 on grass and indoor hard. So, there were things to be addressed.

The passages in italic mention the changes, whereas one can show the explanation (if there is one) for the changes by showing the spoiler (for those interested).

1.1 Speed vs. Power

A general reduction of maximum Speed to 71% and an appropriate adjustment across the whole roster.

A bit increased Power overall (with some exceptions not needing more Power), resulting in larger difference between Power and Speed.

Spoiler: show

In ITST Mod 1.14/1.15 we went towards this direction, but apparently it was not enough or too conservative. So, for this version a more radical approach.

1.2 Run Acceleration and Tonicity

In ITST Mod 1.14 we had finally control over Run Acceleration of characters. In this version we more or less kept the Run Acceleration as before (slight increase), i.e. we increased Tonicity to compensate for decreased Speed.

Spoiler: show

The slight increase in Run Acceleration makes the characters a bit more responsive, especially regarding net play and quick positional adjustments for shots.

1.3 Adjustments of weak/strong wings regarding Consistency and Precision

In general: Weak wings a bit stronger regarding Power in general increased total Precision of a character.

Special cases: Characters like Haas, Wawrinka and Gasquet now have -- like in ITST Mod 1.13 -- Precision gimp on FH and Precision bonus on BH (or the opposite).

Spoiler: show

Reason for general increased Precision is the same as before: For our setup with Slow AutoPosition and No Previews increased Precisions allows to play faster with the wing having a Precision bonus or turning around the BH to hit a FH.

Even with Precision gimp on FH, characters like Gasquet and Wawrinka run around the can hit many FH winners, so it is still good to run around the BH.

1.4 Serves

In general: Increased Consistencies and slightly more Power across the whole roster. This will lead to higher Average First Serve Speed and/or higher First Serve Percentage.

Spoiler: show

It should be easier to hold serve now.

1.5 Stamina

Has been increased globally even more than before.

Spoiler: show

Better to have more of it than having boring low Stamina rallies, hopefully this time it will be enough.

1.6 Playing Styles

Most Power Baseliners are now Punchers, Hewitt makes an appearance as Counter.

Spoiler: show

There is not much difference between Power Baseliner and Puncher, so we decided to help net play by giving Power Baseliners a bit more natural net jump. Hewitt as Counter is a logical choice, we will see how he has turned out.

1.7 Animations

Lots of new animations: Most importantly Lucian86's Animation Pack , then several anims from Meagyaem, phucnguyen0209, and Emmainf.


2. Courts

Here a quick review of what has been done.

2.1 General

Several 2D courts have been added respectively replaced:

Brisbane, Chennai, Sidney, AO Rod Laver, AO Hisense, Casablanca, Houston, Bucharest, Munich, Belgrade,
Madrid Red Central, Rome first court, added RG Lenglen 2013, Stuttgart, Bastad, Umag (here i used a court by .. Panchulo i think, and iedited it to add Lenglen clay texture to replace some blurry clay, same for Skistar), Hamburg,
Gstaad, Washington, Toronto (= Montreal), Cincinnati, Us Open 3 courts (new by rogerfed1), Eastbourne, Wimbledon central, + some other grass courts I don't remember, Bangkok, Beijing, Vienna, Basel, Paris Bercy, WTF London.



2.2 Plexicushion

In this version we have made Plexicushion a bit faster and slightly lower bouncing according to the following values:

Friction from 0.575 to 0.58
Bounce from 0.84 to 0.835


3. Cosmetic / UI Changes

Another goal of the ITST Mod is to always improve the experience.

A more user-friendly CRC Check has been included, which will now show a player's name in red at the start of the match when he has a wrong CRC Number!

The little scoreboard will also show the player name in red whenever his CRC is wrong, when playing online only.

Also, Using ITST1000, ATP500, ATP250, WTF, and AO2012 scoreboards, the game will detect wich characters
are used and display their names in the Entry Panels for a short laps of time at the start of a match (These panels
are not there with other scoreboards like Wimbledon, RG, UsOpen).

PLease not that Characters played by CPU will always have a wrong CRC, it's a normal thing.



On the upper right corner you won't see the nicknames in red like on the screenshot, it was used for checking purposes.

Summary: No need to check CRC Number with F5 or F6 anymore! (But it still works).

El Croato's Sounds Pack 3.0 has been included except for the commentary.

New Grunts: Nadal (2 new gruntpacks), Djokovic (2 new gruntpacks), Bellucci, Berlocq, Djokovic, Dodig, Ferrer, Fognini, Giraldo, Granollers, Haas, Hewitt, Janowicz, Monaco, Murray, Robredo, Rosol, Seppi, Zeballos

New type font (ATP Font by rogerfed1), which some may like and some dislike.

New ITST Net HD by Rounders.

Now the Scoreboard has X and Y movers.

We have 68 Players to choose from now.




Finally: Thanks to various players for some valuable comments and to El Croato for the nice Sound Packages and many more for courts, animations, clothes etc.! Here a list of the right contributions, give credit to where it is due.



Have fun and shorter rallies ! (please)

[Elias]

PLease note that i found a first little issue with 1.16 (too late it's released and i need to sleep) :

It's nothing reaaly bad : The third Melbourne AO court physics has not be changed (i probably forgot it unfortunately).

As our plexicushion is now slightly faster for all other courts, this court should'nt be used to play plexicushion tournaments.

So the court to be avoided is Grand Slam Tennis 2 AO Court (third one in the list).

[NameNumber]

Great work. Looking forward to playing around with this.

Just want to say, though. Mahut's backhand animation is really, really awkward.

[Uchiha Muss]

It's a minor issue not even related to the patch. Roster overview in google docs is from 1.14 instead of 1.16.
Speed and a lot of stats are old.
It would be nice if you really updated it when you have time again.

Also Dev Mode is on. Is that ok thing?

[inseedious]

Thanks Elias, you're rensponsible for my AO signup

[pidzi]

Thanks Elias for a biggest patch since TE was launched on ITST, great job really, already tested.

P.S. That Berlocq grunts are f*****g awesome , cant stop laughing really . I can see how these can iritate opponent.

Edit: Just tested new Nadal and it feels sooo distinctively from previous version i feel like its very close to real nadal who can defend like no one else but also he can produce brutal spinny angles which are almost uncatchable, good job Elias.

[tomi]

The patch is great thanks to elias

But i have some issues with the stamina bar,Just made a short video sorry for the bad quality

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rp2O-KpNOf0&edit=vd

Do you guys have this too?

[VMoe86]

The patch is great thanks to elias

But i have some issues with the stamina bar,Just made a short video sorry for the bad quality

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rp2O-KpNOf0&edit=vd

Do you guys have this too?

I did not have this, but I am not using the AO Scoreboard (I just use ITST 1000 Scoreboard until I die ).

[tomi]

I did a mistake and copied the new ITST.ini over the old..sorry

But now it works

[C4iLL]

I've to say I'm a bit shocked by the awesome quality of this update, gameplay, sounds and graphically speaking
We'll see with time, but from what I've tried, I think it's by far the best version ever released of the mod. It's near perfection, it's extremely pleasant to play it (even in offline) it's art ! It's like a new game

Gaphics & Sound = very good idea to display the character used, it's really good to know who you're playing, especially in exhibitions as there are now 60-70 characters in the ITST roster.
The sound environement is really impressive (congratulations to Croato also), the new "ITST World Tour" 3D net you included is beautiful and the little sound *BIP* you included everytime the ball goes on the net changes the whole paradigm for immersion (maybe it was there before ? First time I have it anyway).
Plus the grunts, especially Nadal, it's great, I never had that much feeling to be on the court.

Gameplay = it can be surprising at the very beginning, but after a few minutes, the gameplay becomes extremely pleasant.

- The shots down the line are more effective, the Spin is now perfectly adjusted to be realistic and efficient (and not annoyingly unrealistic like before).
Globally, I've the feeling the game will now require even more skill because it is faster than before and in the same time, you can't defend as crazy as before, even with Nadal I think.

- Nadal as Pidzi said, seems to be a real success : really realistic with his strenghts and not overpowered. If you manage to charge a short accel with his FH, the ball with the spin becomes extremely heavy as in real life, and very difficult to control for opponent (or just unreachable).

- Till now, I never had fun playing offline but for the first time with the new version, I had fun vs incredible AI, playing unbelievable points, but realistic and not frustrating.
I think the combination of the increased sound/graphics ambiance + the new gameplay is a pure success and makes the mod the best tennis experience one can finds around.

After such an update, I will play AO more seriously
ps : nice to see again Inseedious !

[Elias]

Thanks Elias, you're rensponsible for my AO signup

Glad to hear that, i hope you'll have more fun with this version

Just want to say, though. Mahut's backhand animation is really, really awkward.

True, i hesitated a bit. I made some arbitrary choices regarding anim, trying not to have the same ones everywhere, having some gameplay variations then, but i agree Gonzales backhand anim is a bit tricky to use We'll see with time, it may be a matter of getting used to, if it's to difficult or too much of a disadvantage gameplay wise then we'll change it .. next time (not that soon )

It's a minor issue not even related to the patch. Roster overview in google docs is from 1.14 instead of 1.16.
Speed and a lot of stats are old.
It would be nice if you really updated it when you have time again.

Also Dev Mode is on. Is that ok thing?

Well yeah right i didn't made an 1.16 spreadsheet, that one will be longer to create. It was that crazy last week with the mod that i can't find the will to to it rght now. I'll do this later.

Dev mode available, well no it's not a problem. It's available in vanilla version i think, before i disabled it in the menus. But anyway that shouldn't lead to any problem, it's used to create courts (geometry), or accelerating the game (i use this for AI testing/balancing).

Another menu item wich i disabled before and is available now (i forgot to disable), is :

Offline Skills : Freemode

Always let this option on Freemode. If you set it to Fair or Realistic, it will change the stats of the characters, when you play offline.

Thanks Elias for a biggest patch since TE was launched on ITST, great job really, already tested.

P.S. That Berlocq grunts are f*****g awesome , cant stop laughing really . I can see how these can iritate opponent.

Edit: Just tested new Nadal and it feels sooo distinctively from previous version i feel like its very close to real nadal who can defend like no one else but also he can produce brutal spinny angles which are almost uncatchable, good job Elias.

Thanks buddy That was a bit painful in the last run i have to say. Glad to hear you like. I really had some fun making the new grunts, and BErlocq is one of the most satisfying result indeed I wanted to do more grunts but didn't had enough tme for it. It's pretty long to do when you want to do it well, especially for long two-particles grunts when you can often hear the shot impact during the grunt, so that you have some tricky sound editing to make, to deaden the impact sound, without killing the grunt either.

About Nadal, i agree he seems pretty nice to play like this, that's also thanks to your (and C4iLL) valuable feedback and suggestions about spin & playstyle.

I've to say I'm a bit shocked by the awesome quality of this update, gameplay, sounds and graphically speaking
We'll see with time, but from what I've tried, I think it's by far the best version ever released of the mod. It's near perfection, it's extremely pleasant to play it (even in offline) it's art ! It's like a new game

Thanks for a nice post C4iLL, it's a nice feel to read such great comments, cause it was a bit painful last weeks for me to finish it, especially as i had to rethink and re-do the balancing and stat scheme two times. Indeed ElCroato ambiant sounds are really great, plus i think i made a good job as well with the grunting, i will do more of them in the future.

At least, it seems it was worth the wait

[C4iLL]

The Janowicz grunt is also very special lol

[eliomelma]

wow, great comments, i will try to found some free time to try it!

[Elias]

By the way, i recorded Nadal and Djokovic grunts from their Roland Garros 2013 Semi Final
Grunts are better to record from clay matches, cause there is no hardcourt skid sounds then.
But you can find a second grunt pack for each of them, recorded from one of their AO encounter. But one can hear
some skid sounds in these grunts, so they should be eventually used only on hardcourts, to avoid wasting the immersion

Usually TE grunts released until now always had few varations (only 3 samples), these are much more varied as in fact we're not limited to 3 but we can go as far as 26. So for instancehere Nadal grunting is cycling thru 20 different samples, thus the new weight of 1.16 (270mo), mostly due to the new sounds, including ElCroato ones

[El Croato]

Elias, your work has been outstanding, really! I have the feeling to play with a brand new game both in terms of aesthetics and gameplay.

The net is gorgeous, the type font is pretty clean, the outfits very stylish, especially Wawrinka's WTF outfit, the grunts are beyond high quality, my two favourite ones are Djokovic's and Nadal's while Fognini's made my sister think I was watching a documentary on Neanderthals.

Gameplay-wise, I think much improvement has been made on the Nadal character who seems to have less trouble reaching deep balls on his backhand side, a very good point and this is the first time I have enjoyed playing with him.

As for the new characters, I have tried out Dodig, Fognini and Hewitt so far, and they will be part of my players' selection from now on so that from time to time, I will give my Federer a bit of rest.

All in all, I have never really been disappointed by any ITST mod, but with 1.16, you are taking it to the next level. So, congrats once again on the colossal work and enjoy your well-earned rest!

See you!