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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/
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
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!!!!
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?" `":" #");}
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
In the (sadly few) posts in this story I see an amazingly underwelming response to this achievement which, personally, I find rather amazing. Maybe it's because I've worked with image processing (CISP at Lockheed Martin during college) and appreciate how damn difficult reliable image recognition is, even when recognizing sub-images from a fixed (but still decently large) selection of image inputs.
/. in months. This is excellent work to solve a technically difficult problem in an unorthodox (and risky, in terms of complexity) way, and they do it with style (the commentary stuff is mint) and extensibility (the API is very open FWICT.) The only thing I lament is a lack of more detail (maybe that's the problem?), but I think the site has switched to simple static pages to minimize the slashdot effect (though probably not needed in this case) and I expect to be able to find more details
on a later visit.
IMHO this is one of the most clever and thorough hackings I've read about on
And I'm afraid I must disagree with your notion that somehow it is a shame that it was so difficult to do. Necessity is the mother of invention, and here it shows (and pays off) in spades. What, are we supposed to rally against Nintendo (and all console makers, for that matter) for failing to provide a port with some open API to scan internal game variables? Frankly, I'd be way less impressed were they to in fact do that by either hacking onto the motherboard electrically, or worse running the game on an emulator (MAME or such) and peeking at RAM.
Nothing like making a developer's life hell by making them interface it like this.
Eh? These are not "developers" and no console maker expects antyone to want (much less implement) anything like this! They are hackers!
Again, I just want to say that I think this is one of the most underrated and under-commented yet excellent stories I've read here in a long time, and I plan to revisit the site later to learn more. This may be applicable to many other things from security cameras and home automation to MythTV-type device commercial skipping.
Then again, maybe I just don't realize how easy it is to do real-time image processing with object recognition in a reliable way using cheap under $50 capture cards on a 1GHz Athlon these days. Were that the case, though, I'd expect to read more about such efforts. This is a first for me.
Thanks for reading. And no, I do not know the authors(s) and I've never heard of this until now.
everything in moderation
Documented proof of my ass getting kicked.
http://www.kubuntu.org/
You're writing software to measure Soul Caliber. WHY isn't it called Soul Caliper?
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So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!