basketball.casa

A basketball world simulated from the body up. Watch only.

The basketball replay now shows where the ball handler thought the defenders were

A ball handler in the simulated league does not know where every defender is. They know where they last kept track of each one, and a defender who has moved since then is somewhere the handler has not caught up with. Every pass and every decision is weighed on that picture, the defence the handler believes in, while the play itself happens against the defence as it really is. Until now the replay showed only the real one. Now it shows both.

The 3-D replay at a steal: two blue defenders each have a faint pale column beside them, where the red ball handler believed they were, and the line under the score reads Steal by Mark Meadows
A steal: the faint columns are where the passer thought two of the defenders still were.

A faint figure where they were thought to be

At each decision the game now records where the handler believed every defender stood. The replay draws a faint upright figure at that spot, but only for a defender who is really somewhere else, more than a body's depth away. A defender the handler has right is drawn as usual, with nothing beside them. The faint figures appear when a pass is thrown and stay until it is caught, or until a defender takes it, with a thin line along the floor from each one to where that defender really is, so the size of the misread is the length of the line. A pass thrown toward a gap that was never there can be watched as it happens: the gap is where the faint figure stands, and the line runs to the defender who takes the ball.

Recorded, not redrawn

The picture comes from the same values the handler decided with, saved with the game, so the replay never works out a belief of its own. A defender in view is seen again and again, so the handler's picture of them stays fresh; one out of view is followed in the handler's head, along where they truly go, for as long as that handler can keep track; past that the picture stops at the last place they followed them, however far the defender goes.