Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dylan604 | Hacker News Reader

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The thing that works for baseball is how slow the game is. There's plenty of time in between pitches to make the animation simple. With sports with constant movement like a WC match would require a lot more resources. Might as well be a game engine at that point.

Watching one of these live just brings home exactly how low activity a baseball match is. You can easily miss a pitch if you're not actively watching it and keep your attention span on it. It also brings to mind how much the commentary during a game keeps the viewer engaged. Live video and a good director cutting to different cameras also helps. Radio with out the color would be insanely boring:

Here's the pitch, low and outside.Ball 1.

30 secs of silence.

Here's the pitch, fast ball down the middle. Swing and a miss. Count is now 1-1.

30 secs of silence.

Football MIGHT be slow enough that you could animate the plays Techmo Bowl style.

It would certainly be fun to attempt it. You might have to mix in some pre-defined animations for "run up the middle", that could do minimal updates like Jersey numbers.

The gamecast from places like ESPN already have a good enough version for American Throwball games. It works because it is slow enough so they can show play by play with animation showing the progress of each play. While it's not pixel art it is more than sufficient to have in a window to have open in the background.

Only if we can watch historical games from the late 80s of the LA Raiders, and then 5% of the time, it animates Bo Jackson running actual circles around the defense.

For sure. And agree it wouldn't work as well for active sports like soccer or basketball.

Have some ideas on how to make this a bit more engaging for baseball, still. But ultimately it isn't really made for active viewing or to replace a live broadcast. I think of this more for the fan who wants to keep it on in the background or on the TV while they work or multitask.

Perfect to have on while you are on a call or otherwise can’t have audio playing. If the audio isn’t a distraction, I’d rather put the radio on or a tv game with the audio lower than I’d have it if I were actively watching.

But I love this idea and it brings back memories of my first baseball video games. Someone else mentioned Earl Weaver. My friends and I spent an entire summer playing almost nothing else.

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