Slashdot Mirror
Tracking Gaming Stats With Video Capture Devices
galtish writes "M. Schrag has put together an amazing PC stat tracking system called 'Soul Calimeter' for use with the GameCube version of fighting game Soul Calibur II. The software is as yet unreleased, but uses a cheap video capture card to analyze the video feed from the console and create a stat database. It's not just stats, there's also a web browser-based front-end for analyzing the stats and starting circuit matches, and voice synthesis using AT&T Natural Voices for in-game commentaries on the action. His website includes pics of the stats screens, and samples of the synthesized audio commentary. Pretty sweet - I'd love something like this for the weekly Halo LAN matches..."
http://www.schaefer.nu/mirrors/homepage.mac.com/ms chrag/SoulCalimeter/
Nothing like making a developer's life hell by making them interface it like this.
IAALS.
While his project is altogether useless and probably a complete waste of time, the site is well-documented, well written, and the project is very high in hack-value. More stories like this, please!
Obviously this is just the first step of this project. It looks like they can identify characters and health meters, as well as winners and losers, however the next obvious step is to identify moves on-the-fly so that a running commentary can be played. Also, since they are running video capture HW/SW, they could even have their epic fights saved and played back with computer commentary. Now that would be geeky!
I have been pwned because my
Running commentary on everything that happens in the office? Priceless!
"Hey, man, another coffee?"
"Hey, Aztec, you scored good in that meeting. Give ya a kickdrop and a sideswing. Need more stamina though..."
"Hey, Sandy, nice skirt you're wearing there! You already got ten eyeballs."
"Hey... WTF!? You can't unplug m-/$!
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Don't point the camera at games.slashdot.org . . . it might blow the PC up!
If you don't have anything insightful to contribute, post anonymousely.
the project is very high in hack-value
Wouldn't it be higher in hack-value if their method was to track the game's internal variables directly rather than trying to digitize the video feed and backward-engineer the variables?
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
I've never imagined that a 1ghz computer could capture in real time stats from a video feed. This is amazing.
Reading the descriptions, it watches the health bars and the squares at the character select screen. Which would be simple enough image detection, since they're always in the same x,y coordinates.
It would be really cool if it could grok the movements of the fighters and say things like "Kilik delivers a fierce scissor-kick to an uppercut combo!".. But you cant have everything.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I must turn off my PS2 for playing Strip Poker!
I know some people who have WAY too much time on their hands..
Online Starcraft RPG? At
Dietary fiber is like asynchronous IO-- Non-blocking!
What would be convenient would be something like this, but for playing poker for $$$ online. So the computer can advise (or even play for you).
"I advise you fold this marginal hand."
"There is a 45% chance that this opponent is bluffing."
etc.
This is a great idea. We were just thinking the other day about a video capture based stat tracking system for our Halo LAN matches. Sometimes large portions of our potential Halo-playing time are taken up by arguments about team balancing (AKA "team wanking"), but if a computer could analyze the stats and make balanced teams for us we wouldn't have to worry about that anymore. Stats on who's best/worst at killing who, and with what weapons, would be really interesting. Plus the automated trash talking would be great fun! Having a robotic voice affirm your greatness after you get a triple killtacular would just be that much more awesome :-)
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
This is a truely breathtaking impressive hack. By people who've been playing Soul Calibur for more than 3 years every day. The last part would actually ask for some stupid jokes, but as somebody who writes software for a living I must say I'm really impressed by this cool piece of work. :-)
And I really don't wanna compete with those guys in Soul Calibur.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
It would be really cool if it could grok the movements of the fighters and say things like "Kilik delivers a fierce scissor-kick to an uppercut combo!".. But you cant have everything.
Actually, you can have everything. But it won't arrive until approximately the heat death of the universe.
-kgj
-kgj
pokerhud does something like you suggest for on-line poker.
Wow. As an avid Soul Calibur fan whose roommate is always talking trash, it'd be nice to have some hard stats to back up the asskickings.
If these guys don't make any movements towards sharing this with the general public, I very well may have to work on hacking up something like this myself.
If only they had bigger breasts. I'd buy it then.
"Saddam Hussein cavorts with terrorists."
I've done some computations, but the MLE seems to diverge here. That *can't* be, oh wait, this is Slashdot, I guess it makes a lot of sense.
Not really. This way its completely unintrusive. Indeed, even if there were different builds of the game, as long as the user experience was unaltered the hack would continue to work. That's a good thing.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
His website includes pics of ...
I'm giving it 5 minutes.
If you have never heard what AT&T Natural Voices sound like you should listen to the demos. I first discovered these over two years ago and although they haven't changed that much quality wise, they are the best synthesized voices I have ever heard.
-- paper
A quality capture card that doesn't suck is the Winfast TV which runs about $60. It has no problem capturing 640x480 30fps DVD or higher compression video on a decent system.
No point "saving" $35 to buy a piece of junk that has virtually no uses except for one application.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
But then again, I guess that title works too, huh?
Or, creative people can turn this into "game-nanny" kind of stuff. This could be good or bad, as what net-nanny kind of software did... Having "game-nanny" may encourage adult-content games (and probably the game producer also cooperate). Hmm... lots of possibilities....
Just my 2c
--
Error 500: Internal sig error
news for losers. stuff that you wish you never knew.
Documented proof of my ass getting kicked.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
This is a truly wonderful hack, and there's way too little appreciation for it here. Hell, is this not Slashdot?
Now that I think about it, playing Soul Calibur for three years straight is probably no less proof of utter and uncurable geekdom than this hack is.
I think I speak for most people when I say that the reason I failed to get at all excited was:
I just could not understand what the hell they were talking about in the article text. I mean,
"analyze the video feed from the console and create a stat database"
huh? I don't know what sort of stats you're talking about, and what do you mean by analysing the video feed? Huh?
But now, after admitedly RTFA and your post, I have a greater understanding of what this is all about after reading your post than I do from the original article.
So, that's why it's not getting the attention it would seem to deserve (now that I understand just what they've done, which is pretty darn cool) is a poorly written submission, and a site that doesn't show anything flashy or cool to demonstrate how impressive what they've done is... although the commentaries, although pretty average in the voice department, are pretty cool in the content stakes. See this.
Maybe the editors should have added something to the post to get people to RTFA?
When I first saw this earlier today I was completely amazed and excited. I happen to have a GameCube, and I love Soul Calibur II. I noticed that you couldn't download this thing, but didn't make much of it. I had contemplated emailing them to see if I could get a copy, or whatever, but then decided against it.
But the more I've been thinking about this, I'm really starting to think this is a hoax. Think about it: how many times have you seen something home-grown like this and not been able to download anything? Not the app, not the source code, nothing. It's usually the reason these things get web pages to begin with. Why brag about it if you aren't going to distribute it, or at least sell it. All we have for proof are some screen shots and some wav files.
I guess I don't really have proof that it's fake other than a feeling. It just seems like this is a rather over-the-top way of dealing with the problem. The update he provided after getting on Slashdot about buying iButtons and talking about wireless connectivity with a Zaurus seems even more fake to me.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
You're writing software to measure Soul Caliber. WHY isn't it called Soul Caliper?
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
It's really, really cool. We need something like this for our games!
It's too bad it doesn't look like it can detect Guard Impacts, which can turn a fight around. (A Guard Impact is when you press toward or away from the opponent and press the block button the instant a hit would strike, causing you to parry or sidestep the attack and basically giving you a free hit on your opponent -- unless *he* Guard Impacts, that is.)
GOD I WILL KEEP THIS ONE IN MY BOOKMARKS FOR A LONG TIME!!! The link to ATT'S site for the voice synth mentioned, its great to make it say funny things like "smoke crack mate, crack is good!" in uk english. The address for that page is http://www.naturalvoices.att.com/demos/ HAVE FUN!!!!!
411 Y0UR 8453 4R3 8310NG 70 U5!! -NSA
Soul Calimeter? That's awful.
Soul [b]Caliper[/b] would have been a much better name.
Jeez, if there is one thing I hate about American society it's Trash Talk. Mindless (and usually entirely unjustifiable) braggadocio about imagined violent acts, usually done by pasty-faced milquetoasts as an accompaniment to something as far away from actual physical exertion as possible, like video games or pool, or attached to something like wrestling where it is even more ludicrous as the results are predetermined.
Mind you, I think I have just been traumatised by my last visit to America where I went to an internet cafe to read my webmail and had to sit beside about twenty 12 year olds literally screaming trash talk at each other as they played counterstrike. *Shudder*