Ultimate Baseball Online Preview

So-called massively multiplayer games--games that let tens, hundreds, or even thousands play together in a persistent online world--have been around for some time now, but most of them have been role-playing games that feature one or more of the following: elves, gold pieces, and skeletons. Southern California-based studio Netamin has decided to try its hand at making such a game, but instead of making a role-playing game, the developer is working on the world's first massively multiplayer sports game. Ultimate Baseball Online will let you create your own virtual ballplayers and bring them online to play in either quick pickup games or league games with other players. Recently, we were fortunate enough to try out a very early version of this intriguing game.

One of the few things that Ultimate Baseball Online will have in common with online role-playing games is the way you create your ball players. Specifically, you'll be able to create up to three different ball players, each of whom can be either male or female, and each of whom can be a catcher, a fielder, or a pitcher. You'll also be able to outfit your players with different faces, body types, hitting styles (including whether they bat left- or right-handed), throwing styles, and pitching styles (including whether they pitch right- or left-handed, and whether they use an overhand, sidearm, or underhand delivery). Netamin also hopes to eventually incorporate an "upload your own photo" option to let players put 3D-skinned versions of themselves into the game.

Each player has a series of statistics, such as throwing accuracy, speed, and stamina, and various skills, such as different types of pitches. As your ballplayers play through more and more games, they'll gain ability points that they can spend to improve their various statistics, and they'll also be able to unlock and learn new skills, similar to the way experience-point systems function in online role-playing games. Ultimate Baseball Online won't have any official licenses, teams, or real-world players or stadiums, so all new players will start out in generic farm leagues as amateurs. However, you'll probably want to try to develop your players in certain ways--for instance, if you want to create a top-tier pitcher, you might focus on building up your throwing strength and accuracy statistics. Though pitchers will start with nothing more than a standard fastball and slider, they'll eventually be able to learn up to 11 different pitches, including curveballs and sinkers. All players' stats will be tracked in real time and be available on Netamin's Web site.

As mentioned above, Ultimate Baseball Online will have two different ways to play: in quick pickup games or in team-based league games. Pickup games can be joined at more or less any time, and they will feature computer-controlled characters to help fill out the teams if there aren't nine players available for each side. Additionally, in the interest of making sure the game doesn't require a huge investment of time, games can be set to end after three, six, or nine innings. But Netamin hopes that most players will get together and play team games, and even form their own leagues by way of the message boards on Netamin's Web site. You'll be able to join either sort of game in the matchmaking lobby, which will let you choose servers to play on and chat with other players who are on deck, waiting for a game. The lobby will also have a diagram of the field and its various positions, and you'll be able choose your player's position simply by clicking on it in the diagram.

Once you choose your position and a game has started, you'll take to the field, and when you're not pitching or at bat, you'll be able to view the field from 10 different angles using the appropriate function key on your keyboard. But just like in real-life baseball games, the real showdown will be between the pitcher and the batter. Ultimate Baseball Online will feature complex but easy-to-use systems for both pitching and swinging, thanks to its intuitive control scheme. Most of the game is played using standard first-person shooter controls: The W, A, S, and D keys are used to move, and the mouse is used to look in a certain direction and aim your pitches, swings, and catches.

Play Ball

If you're on the pitcher's mound, you'll be able to get set up to pitch by right-clicking your mouse, which will bring up a menu that lists the different types of pitches your character has mastered. Netamin hopes to eventually implement pitcher and catcher signals so the players who are behind the plate and on the mound can exchange signals with gesture animations, but these signals will be limited to 20 seconds of real time before the pitcher is forced to throw. Once you bring up the pitching menu, you simply click on the sort of pitch you wish to throw and then take aim.

Ultimate Baseball Online will have colored indicators that will show the approximate trajectory of the ball and about where it will cross the plate, so once you've settled on a good place to aim, you'll click your mouse again, which will activate the throw meter. The meter will move up and down in real time. If you let the meter run high, you'll put more power behind the pitch, but your pitcher will expend more stamina, and the pitch itself will be less accurate. If you let the meter run low, you'll get better placement, but you may end up delivering a gentle toss right to the batter. Regardless of which pitching style they use, pitchers will grow more fatigued the longer they stay on the mound, though the game will automatically allow all players a brief stamina break every three innings.

Going up to bat will require a bit less strategy than pitching, but it will definitely require better reflexes. Before you take a swing at the ball, you'll be able to right-click your mouse to bring up the power-accuracy slider. If you move the slider to make your swing more accurate, you'll have an easier time making contact, but you won't knock one out of the park, while going completely for power will let you swing for the fences but will also make getting a hit a bit more difficult. In the final game, you'll even be able to adjust the slider all the way down toward accuracy in favor of power, which will cause your batter to bunt. But no matter which hitting style you use, you'll need to keep your eye on the ball in order to hit--once the ball is pitched to you, the destination of the ball will appear somewhere within your hitting range, and you'll need to act quickly and time your swing properly, depending on whether you're hitting for power or accuracy. In addition, you'll find that experienced pitchers will be able to put more spin on the ball and increase the breaking angle on their delivery, essentially causing the pitch to drift away from its original destination.

If you've played online games before, you might already be thinking about latency, or lag time, and how it might affect Ultimate Baseball Online. Latency is caused by delays that occur while information, such as the ball's location or a player's swing type, is being sent back and forth from your computer to the game's server. It's common to online games, and it might very well ruin the timing for a game in which batters and pitchers swing and throw in real time--except that Netamin has come up with a simple and rather elegant solution. Ultimate Baseball Online will have brief delays after the moment the pitcher releases the ball and after the batter scores a hit. These pauses are extremely brief and don't seem to be the least bit jarring, but they help make sure that everyone playing in the game is synced up with the game's server so no one misses any of the action. These brief pauses also allow enough buffer time for fielders to get ready to dash after hits and leap after them by clicking their mouse, while runners click their mice to slide into the next base. According to the developers at Netamin, this system is already working well, even over a dialup connection.

A massively multiplayer sports game may sound unusual, but Netamin clearly has a lot of good ideas about how Ultimate Baseball Online should work. The developer plans to run a public beta test in a few months, and the game itself is scheduled for release later this year.