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..."

Comments

Mirror

[AndrewSchaefer]

http://www.schaefer.nu/mirrors/homepage.mac.com/ms chrag/SoulCalimeter/

Yay! A /. story that's interesting

[ObviousGuy]

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!