Tennis Elbow 4 News

Sorry for the longer delay than usual since the last update : I was very taken with the PlayStation port.

But it didn't mean I didn't work on the game either, and this update got its fair part of additions, tuning & bug fixes, as usual..! 🙂

[h2]New Features :[/h2]
- UI : you can now raise the font size in Settings -> Misc ; this is done automatically on the 1st run on SteamDeck (for new users)
- Online : you can now permanently ban a player (and unban him at any time from Online / LAN -> Banned players)
- Preview : added different ball impact previews (set it in Settings -> 3D Match)
- Modding : it's now possible to move the match time & speed texts (read the section "7) Moving the Speed & Match time texts around" here for explanations : topic60-34047.php )

[h2]Changes :[/h2]
- AI : the Incredible CPU will now be much much harder to be aced by another CPU player (against humans, it's still the same)
- Modding : modded animations aren't all loaded anymore on game start-up, to speed up the init and save some memory

[h2]Bug Fixes :[/h2]
- AI : the CPU could let the ball pass after having jumped at the net
- Animation : the CPU could hit the ball with his racket far from it because he didn't reach for it
- Animation : some strike animations could get very strange when done while running or just after finished to run :fear:
- Xbox : the game was very slow to load with big Mods


Cu next month for the 1.0..? 😋

ManuTOO
=== Mana Games ===

Here we go with a maintenance update, mostly for fixing the button labels in the Tutorial, which was quite an annoying bug... 😓

There are also a few other little bugs fixed. Nothing more, because I'm mostly working on porting the game to PlayStation. 🙂


[h2]Changes :[/h2]
- Online : now "Settings -> Training Club -> Online: hide opponent's preview" will also hide the opponent's aiming preview

[h2]Bug Fixes :[/h2]
- Tutorial : the button labels were always for the generic controller even when you had an Xbox or PlayStation controller Tag Type
- AI : in some situations, the CPU wasn't jumping at the net (note : there's no animation, the player just moves a bit fast for a fraction of a second)
- World Tour : some players were getting way too strong during their junior years
- Online : if an Xbox player was joining a Coop Doubles, it'd make the game hangs
- Rendering : the lines were not correctly anti-aliased when the 2D Background was enabled
- Xbox : having no Profile picture was making the game hang on launch

ManuTOO
=== Mana Games ===

[h2]Bug Fixes :[/h2]
- Helpers : the Preview wasn't correctly set from the Help screen
- Commentary : serve context was always on the 1st serve, even during the 2nd serve, giving a series of wrong comments (it was still not completely fixed by the SubBuild 2024.6.26 😓 )

Here's an update bringing a long requested feature : the Service Aiming Preview ! As well as an important fix for Xbox helping to lower Mod memory consumption, in addition to several little fixes & changes, as usual. Enjoy ! 🙂

Here's the complete changelog :

[h2]New Features :[/h2]
- Helpers : added the aiming preview for the service (note : your preview in the World Tour might be changed, you can set it back to your wanted level, go to your Character Sheet)
- Modding : it's not possible to rotate the NPCs and hide the middle line judge (see section 5 here topic60-34047.php )

[h2]Changes :[/h2]
- Service : lowered the maximum possible spin for the very slow services (under ~100km/h), because the curve was way too pronounced
- Online : raised the number of Talent Stars from 4 to 5

[h2]Bug Fixes :[/h2]
- Replay : the ball impact mark could be slightly misplaced on serve
- AI : in some cases, the CPU could think the ball was going into the net while actually it wasn't, leading to having no strike anim and possibly other issues
- Menus : the player photos could get distorted
- World Tour : disabling the Alternate Acceleration Style wasn't saved
- Modding : textures whose dimensions were not power-of-2 were using double the needed memory (note : it's much better to have power-of-2 sized textures so they can get compressed and use 75% less memory !)

ManuTOO
=== Mana Games ===

[h2]New Features :[/h2]
- Rendering : highly optimized the distant crowd so it takes 5 times less polygons and memory, which should greatly help to lower the number of random game closing on Xbox ; in addition, on consoles, the Near crowd detail is now slightly lower (about 45% less polygons) ; in the US Slam stadium (the 2nd biggest stadium after Shanghai), the total memory use for Near + Distant Crowd is now ~500MB instead of ~1.6GB

[h2]Changes :[/h2]
- Strike : when the player stands 3.5m behind the baseline or further, the acceleration depth is like before the Build 131 (to avoid too curvy accelerations)

[h2]Bug Fixes :[/h2]
- Online : if a CPU player had an AI Strategy, it was making the competitive doubles desync because the Client didn't clear the Strategy