Slashdot Mirror
Nintendo Patents Insanity
theodp writes "Nintendo scored a patent Tuesday for a Sanity system for video game, which covers causing a game character to hallucinate - e.g., see bleeding walls and hear maniacal laughter - as its sanity decreases in response to encountering a creature or gruesome situation."
I wonder of the writers/copyright holders of Call of Cthulhu would say to that.
morcego
Anyone played Doom while on LSD?
--LWM
STUPIDITY!
Didn't they do this already with Eternal Darkness for the Gamecube? Way to patent something years after you put out the product!
does that mean my boss needs to pay Nintendo?
Sounds more profitable than to patent Sanity :)
How to Destroy Angels II
Isn't this patently obvious? How can one patent something so unoriginal? Besides, my in-laws are prime examples of prior art...
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
Filed: December 14, 2000
PCT Filed: December 14, 2000
PCT NO: PCT/US00/33717
371 Date: September 3, 2002
102(e) Date: September 3, 2002
PCT PUB.NO.: WO01/62359
PCT PUB. Date: August 30, 2001
This is not a dream, not a dream...we are transmitting from the year 1-9-9-9.
I'm sure I won't be the last one to mention this...it's on their own hardware, no less. I'm disappointed. I'd have thought Nintendo would be above stuff like this.
The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
Much like that game Eternal Darkness for Gamecube. Is it just me or does it seem a bit strange that they could patent a videogame idea?
There is no theory of evolution. Just a list of animals Chuck Norris allows to live.
Rogue/ Nethack had this 20 YEARS ago, albeit in ASCII.
That's insane.
Seriously, how can this type of patent not get laughed out of the office?
As the character's sanity level decreases, game play is effected such as by controlling game effects, audio effects, creating hallucinations and the like.
This type of action was part of all the levels in Parappa the Rapper and Um Jammer Lammy. If you played badly, the screen would become wavy or some other effect indicating that there was a clear loss of control.
I am just going to have to go along with the groupthink and agree that this is a gross misapplication of patent law.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
..almost insane on reading the title.. uh oh, did I infringe upon the patent?
Well at least we can see our tax dollars at work.
Does this mean the USPTO could be sued by Nintendo in the future for all these ridiculous software patents.
i would say this does make sense since they are patenting interactions. they also probably started filing the patent a little after sanity's requiem
Think your commodore 64's really neato? What kinda chip you got in there, a dorito?
Next up: Insanity over radio (patent pending) Insanity over internet (patent pending) Insanity at the dinner table (patent pending)
Linux Video Tutorial Project, Tutoring the masses.
The only game I can recall with a decent sanity system was Eternal Darkness for the gamecube. I'm sure there were others, but that was the only one that left an impression on me.
The Silent Hill games have an insanity system, but it's less related to the characters and more related to the world.
In theory, the new Cthulhu game has a sanity system, which may count as prior art, and that brings up an interesting idea. Does a system that has been developed but not yet released count as prior art?
I'm just hopeful that this leads to some new games exploring insanity.
My question is this: how is this different than patenting a plot device in, say, a book or movie?
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
in addition to the other examples already given.
On a related note, Redneck Rampage got all squirrly when Leonard drank too much. Someone planning to patent in-game drunkeness?
A goal is a dream with a deadline
Nethack has been around for a long time, and if you suck down a potion of hallucination your player experiences all kinds of far-out things. ("Oh wow! Everything looks so cosmic!")
There is a spellbook here; eat it? [ynq]
I'm going to patent a game system where multiple facets of human health and behavior can be affected during game play. For example, if a character is ready for an encounter, he can take a special pill or cast a special spell to give him protection from the encounter. Damage will be much less or non-existant. Depending on whether or not the player is ready, his health, speed, sight, hearing, response time, etc. can all be affected at different levels.
I'll even make it non-linear for the AIs, based on past behavior. If a player helps or hurts another character in the game, that character will act differently in the future.
Man, I'm going to make millions. I better get to the patent office before anyone hears of this supergreat idea.
-- Fugacity: Confusing chemists since 1908
You can't fool me....there ain't no Sanity Clause...
While I cannot think off-hand of a game which has already done this, it seems such a mundane thing to be able to patent - it is just a system which adds points when you rest and subtracts them when you run into a scary creature.
And depending on that it adjusts the audio effects or adds various graphical effects right? Consider the flashbang effect in Half Life where you have retina-burn or the ringing effect from a nearby explosion, as seen in many games these days. How is this any more innovative except that the circumstance under which graphics or audio is changed is specific. Would it be OK if someone patented those effects?
Would it be OK for me to 'patent' a plot where some item has been taken by an enemy of the player character and must be recovered, which is the basis of the game's quest? Of course not - it is such a generic thing to patent. If graphics and aural effects were plots, then this would be just like patenting a different type of plot.
Granted, some of the effects (listed below) are cool and innovative, and would be interesting to encounter - but it shouldn't be patentable.
Here are the graphical effects:
* Wall carvings coming to life and reaching out for the character
* Something in wall or under floor moving by the character (Frighteners type of thing)
* Statue watching the character (Head tracking)
* Suit of armor moving (Relaxed to on guard stance)
* Static statue or object that appears to follow the character when they're not looking
* False doors that appear and disappear when the attempt to open is made
* Glowing eyes blinking in the darkness, yet when the area is illuminated they disappear
* Painting that shifts and changes along with its meaning
* Points of interest markers that the character's head will watch
And the audio effects:
* Ambient environmental sounds that get amplified or distorted
* Heartbeat of character increases (May also be synchronized with Rumble Pak, a product offered by Nintendo)
* Wind
* Lightening
* Cavern/damp-dripping sewer sound
* Creatures sounds
* Footsteps
* Earth rumbles (e.g. great beast foot steps, may also be synchronized with Rumble Pak and camera shake)
* Loud noises coming from beyond a doorway, but when opened there is only silence
* Whispering sounds coming from random locations that fade in and out
Miscellaneous effects:
* Hallucination: lights go out, and a creature appears as lights come on, then the lights go back off, then the light comes back on and the creature is gone
* Stretching walls and corridors so they require more time to traverse
* Bleeding walls
* Enormous roar that emits from a tiny rodent (Mouse or rat)
* Dripping water from above, but when the character takes a second look it is now blood
* Shadows that appear to shift and change
* Character's torch mysteriously blows out, loud noise then it is once again lit
* Faint maniacal laughter (That gets louder and louder as the character draws deeper into insanity)
* Ambient audio, such as a water drip could become louder as insanity increases, so a really insane character will occasionally have this irritating dripping sound to distract him
* Lagging shadow (the character's shadow appears to follow the character)
In the Abstract of the patent, there's two clear errors and two things of which I am not totally sure. Affect and effect seem to have been switched, twice, and there is a random period in the last sentence, not to mention it is redundant. Offending sentences below (emphasis added):
That is, if a character is prepared for the particular occurrence, the occurrence may have little or no affect on the character's sanity level. As the character's sanity level decreases, game play is effected such as by controlling game effects, audio effects, creating hallucinations and the like. In this context. the same game can be played differently each time it is played.
when companies actually recieve patents for such broad things like the sound of wind, will they revoke it or not enforce that patent?
InsanityTM is the only way to describe their business plan over the past ten years, be it the Donkey Congas, the Mario Party series, or the N64 game system.
To a Nintendo fanboy, this will somehow be justified. I can't wait to read their posts.
Nuff said
Anyone who takes advantage of the stupid patent laws is just... smart.
It is stupid that you can patent things like this... but, anyone who criticizes anyone for putting a patent on someone is probably just jealous they didn't think of it first.
Are they kidding? such a system was already implemented in Bozo's Night out, a commodore 64 game where a drunk guy see pink elephants and other strange stuff depending on the number of beer pints he consumed. The higher the pints, the lower the control and strangeness will pop up more frequently.
b /bozos_night_out_1.gif
just a link to remember this great game
http://www.classicgaming.com/area64/games/images/
-- "If A equals success, then the formula is A=X+Y+Z. X is work. Y is play. Z is keep your mouth shut." - Einstein
How can you patent something naturally occuring? That would be like if I patented mirage's, or air and charged someone everytime they saw one, or took a breath.
Way too general of a patent. Having the game character react to the parameters of a game? I've always thought games should have adopted a system where your abilities decrease as your health goes down. (This has only been adopted in the last few years...but you'd think they would have realized in the Street Fighter II era that a real person who's one punch away from death should be staggering around, rather than being able to punch, kick, and block as if they were at full health) Can Nintendo blow the whistle on such a concept and demand royalties?
Anyone who has played 'nethack' will know the visual and auditory effects of applying a cursed unicorn horn or drinking a "Potion of Hallucination" anywhere in dungeon, and the possibly fatal effects.
And anyone who has played 'falconseye', an isometric user interface for 'nethack' will note that these effects are implemented both visually and accoustically.
To quote 'nethack':
"You hear an attorney jingling in the distance"
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Yes, it does appear to be a case of prior art in some ways, but that never stopped a patent in this country.
.... muh hah hah hah hah ....
.
I for one welcome our ancient insane patent overlords
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Seems to me that insanity is most definitely the Intellectual Property of the SCO Group.
It was a joke! When you give me that look it was a joke.
I remember in Rise of the Triads you could run into a muschroom (i think?) and all of the sudden you'd be "drunk" and fire missiles all over the place. Was a bitch to play.
you can't patent something that's already well known to the trade. Microsoft has been field testing their hallucination generator for some time now-- it's called their "help" pages.
You may laugh, but why not patent human emotions? It's not so far fetched.
Take the hormone oxytocin, for example. What if a synthetic variant is created and patented that provokes a certain emotional response? Would that response also be patented?
After trying to get the monkey off his back and suffering from a neverending case of crabs, it sounds like Mario has finally lost it!!
Prior Art
Quaff what? [elr or *] r
Wow! Everything seems so cosmic now!
You hear the quarterback calling the play.
You hear Nieman and Marcus arguing.
You hear Doctor Doolittle!
You hear bees in your (nonexistant) bonnet!
The Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal bites!
You hit the samurai rabbit.
The Christmas-tree monster bites!
Open what? [fGi or *] f
The Barney the Dinosaur bites!
The Totoro bites!
The rodent of unusual size bites!
The tin contains sauteed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Eat? [yn] y
You consume sauteed cockatrice.
You die...
Do you want your posessions identified? [yn]
Rock Us, Dukakis.
Doom3 had basically this exact system. You kept seeing scary things that weren't there, and you constantly heard insane laughter. This patent practically describes most of Doom3.
You're an idiot, and this patent is stupid, regardless of who filed it.
Sounds a lot like the sanity system of the paper RPG Call of Cthulhu, which has been around since 1981. A computer version of the similar play rules seems pretty obvious to me. In fact, I don't see many claims not covered in part by Call of Cthulhu.
Anm
I'm not a big fan of software or method patents in the slightest. However, if you have to make a method patent... barring prior art *within the realm of computer and video games*, this patent looks like a fairly reasonable one.
Call of Cthulhu and even Unearthed Arcana from d20 have implemeneted sanity points with varying effects. However, to my knowledge it had not been implemented in an interactive computer gaming environment prior to Nintendo's work, and it was an innovative solution. Although a method patent is unreasonable by its very nature, Nintendo and its programmers did some innovative work and that deserves legal respect.
You know, I kind of regret writing that. I'll feel really filthy in the morning.
...you don't need to simulate sanity loss. Instead you try to reduce the player's sanity. I'm sure that some kind of hybrid between Doom 3, Silent Hill and goatse would do the trick.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
As a Canadian, watching the suffocating growth in Intellectual Property rights in America, I get a recurring image of the epiphyte choking the life of that giant tree. One day what nurished American industry will disappear choked off by patents, maybe we won't even see it die.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
...is LSD?
Hey, thanks for putting words in my mouth. Didn't mean to offend you, coward.
..But does this patent apply for effects occurring to the in-game character or for effects experienced by the person actually playing the game?
:D
*Imagines a game inducing hallucinatory experiences on the 10-year old gamer*
File not found. Fake it(Y/N)? _
Why, that's crazy!
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Wasn't there a scene in Kings Quest (or maybe one of the SQ or PQ games) that the character got drunk and couldn't walk straight?
/. consciousness.
Prior art?
Sorry, didn't RTFA, but I wanted to keep Sierra games within the collective
Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. --Nietzsche
This may be a bit OT, but I have to admit that the idea itself is actually quite cool. There's so much focus on physics engines and graphics engines, yet developers almost seem to forget that the marine in Doom should really just be peeing himself and freaking out.
At least in the original Half-Life, they acknowledge Gordon being freaked out by focusing on his breathing and heartbeat in the first early cutscene during the accident. Considering the stressful situations most protagonists in modern games go through, you would think that there would be some effect on their sanity and basis in the "real" world.
A really neat trick though would be using a sanity engine to actually inspire dread IN THE GAMER, instead of just to the gamer's character onscreen.
i'm amazed that i survived - an airbag saved my life.
Illbleed (a really strange DC game) was exactly this, and is definitely prior art.
Nice to see Nintendo has no idea of the difference between affect and effect, either.
their business strategy!
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
I tried to patent the concept of crippling my country's technological advancement by tying its high tech industry up in constant legal battles over the ownership of seemingly random and increasingly tenuous fragments of intellectual property that anyone with half an ounce of brain could see were obvious, in the public domain or covered by prior art leaving the other half of the world to get on with it.
Trouble is the US government had already got that one ):
Hmmmmmm..... Deep fried and look like Squirrel.
it's hard enough maintaining my sanity without a licencing fee.
not everything is a science experiment!
Let me get this straight...does this patent cover the patent system itself? Or only video game representations of patent systems? Because this clearly falls under the category of 'insane'.
Max Payne
> Inventors: Sterchi; Henry C. (Redmond, WA); Ridgeway; Edward A. (Redmond, WA); Dyack; Denis P. (Ontario, CA)
Umm... this "Redmond, WA" remembers me of very small and soft... something evil... something *insane*... MMMWAHAHAHAHAHA.....
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
In video games, walls bleed and maniacs laugh. What's "insane" about that?
--
make install -not war
Hmm. Wouldn't ROTT (Rise of the Triad) be prior art (circa 1997-1998 maybe?). I remember it having a 'shroomin' mode - where if you ate some mushrooms, it got all trippy for a minute or two...
But I guess that taking drugs is not covered by this patent:
character's sanity level that is affected by occurrences in the game such as encountering a game creature or gruesome situation
Let the pill popping games begin!
all of your items.
can hear yourself being attacked.
I think that's what they're really patenting, not the blood-on-the-walls thing.
Effects taken From this GameFAQ
http://db.gamefaqs.com/console/gamecube/file/eter
Why is it that when you believe something it's an opinion, but when I believe something it's a manifesto?
For effect we are going to analyze the broadest claim the way it should be analyzed. Get out your notebooks cause you'll want to understand this before you complain about another patent.
1. A method of operating a video game including a game character controlled by a player, the method comprising:
This "preamble" tells us we are dealing with a mode of operating a video game. It further says that there is a game character and that said game character is player controlled. Straight forward so far, but we have limited ourself to the realms of video games and the user controlled characters there-in.
(a) setting a sanity level of the game character;
We are now assigning a sanity level to the game character that was mentioned before. This means that some sort of value for sanity is being set, this is somewhat similar to what would be done for health, mana, or the like; however, it is important to note at the same time that it IS DIFFERENT.
(b) modifying the sanity level of the game, character during game play according to occurrences in the game, wherein a modifying amount of is determined based on a charater reaction and an amount of character preparation;
We are now changing the sanity level for the character during game play, this limits the setting to occuring while the game is actually being played. Now there are two things that determine the modification amount: (1) characters reaction and (2) amount of character preparation.
This is now two more limitations that must be met in any prior art (including possible multiple references for 35 USC 103(a) obviousness).
(c) controlling game play according to the sanity level of the game character, game play being controlled at least by varying game effects according to the game charater sanity level
Now the game is affected by the sanity level of the mentioned game character. Now it states that at the very least game effects will be varied according to the game character's sanity level. This means that some degree of changes in some characters of game play will be changed based on this level.
Now to defend this over mentioned prior art, Nethack people keep mentioning the hallucination potion. This has 0 to do with the patent if that is true. The system used for Nethack could simply have stated, if potion=TRUE then change the effects. This is therefore different then the current patent, unless someone can show otherwise that the system as claimed above is EXACTLY how Nethack was done.
This similar thing goes for other games. If they used different methods then it would not preclude the patenability of this patent. Remember prior art needs to be before the filing date on this application, also remember that if the system used in other games is unknown, and unpublished the individual companies would have to make aware that they invented such a system to preclude patentability and get the patent nulled.
Remember what is in the claim is what the patent is for and do not confuse the spec for what the patent is good for. The specification is put there so the public knows the "Best Mode" for the invention. Any questions, please feel free to ask.
"Some days you just can't get rid of a bomb."
So when machines turn psychotic and start exterminating humans can we sue Nintendo for inventing this concept?
Besides a slew of other games that fit parts of the description, Sanitarum seems to hit most of the points, exactly. It was released in 1998.
Cthulhu fhtagn, Cthulhu fhtagn! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!
OK, unleashing the Old Ones to devour your competitors is a little unscrupulous, but at least it's not unleashing lawyers.
(And yeah, there's some prior art in Angband and other roguelikes, but I think it's more binary (off/on) than progressive in effect. There might be some substance to the patent.)
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
So...now they're gonna show what REALLY happens when you eat magic mushrooms!
I haven't played Doom while on LSD, but I have been hit by a spy's hallucination grenade while playing Team Fortress Classic (Half-Life mod).
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
These video game patents are some of the most ridiculously offensive pieces of IP. So many of them revolve around "the character" and the medium for their originality. ie: "This was the first game to give an athlete points for finesse!"
Oh please.
Multiple real world, and pre-existing fictional examples exist for every one of these concepts.
Laughing isn't "new". Hallucinating isn't "new". Nor is scoring a 720 above the rim with particular finesse anything new. These feats are only "new" in video games.
But video games *are an approximation of reality*.
And if every new level of reality-approximation results in a patent, it is extremely clear where we'll end up: we'll end up with a level of creativity which is *exactly equal* to everything that has already been achieved musically, fictionally, artistically, athletically and of prior human achievement will be owned by a small group of people who were not the innovators or the inventors -- they were merely the translators.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
I can think of a couple games that could use this..
Mario Party - 1970's edition
Mario Brothers - Asylum
that's crazy!
bad_outlook
--
Is this vague enough for you?
This raises the question if a convention used in a motion picture can be patented. For example many anime use the convention of the rushing blurred background while the character makes a strike with a katana.
That is a visual convention used in animation. Patentable? though the system that creates the convention in a video game is made up of code that (for some reason) is patentable. However, if I were to create a feature film using several conventions of say, drunkeness in the film. Could I patent that visual convention? Not really. And certainly if this was possible in the movie industry long ago, innovation ceases.
I think insanity in Max Payne is good prior art. What does it matter anyway. Eventually the people will be pushed far enough that the patent office will cease to exist.
...::----::...
I am in no way affiliated with this sig.
Hallucinating as a result of insanity (or whatever) is clearly something that's been done a million times in film etc.
The patent office needs to figure out that a _storytelling device_ that's been used a zillion times in other mediums shouldn't be patentable for the _sole reason_ that it's being manifested in a game.
By the logic of this patent I should be able to patent a red herring if it's presented in a video game instead of a book.
So, are we not allowed to be really really angry about this patent, because becoming so furious might conflict with the patent and get us sued?!
slashdot is on a roll. Once again totaly useless info. This was patented a long time ago as im sure others have already posted. So is this News or stuff that matters? Seriously.
If something exists that does not need a creator (god) then why must the cosmos need one?
I used to play a first person maze game called "Asylum" on the C64. As different things happened to your character, you would hear various strange things 'in the distance'. I don't recall sound effects, as everything was text on the bottom 2 lines of the screen. (The top of the screen was the graphical representation of the hallway maze you were trapped in). The game was designed to drive you crazy.
Nah, Yoshi's Island for the SNES. Level 2-7 I think, called "Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy", if you touched one of the fuzzy cotton balls, the screen would swirl, yoshi's eyes would dialate, the music would go wonky and it would be filled with weird psycadelic colours. I guess thats not insane though, just a stoned dinosaur...
Nintendo had that beat by a year in Yoshi's Island (1996). There were this danelion spors that caused the entire screen to weave and the music slowed down. You could even fall of a cliff if you standing on the edge and it bent down.
well, in Soviet Russia Insanity patents Nintendo!
there. an appropriate, sane post to an appropriate sane story.
You can't handle the truth.
Indeed... simply seeing bad things and thus going insane is rather unusual to implement. However, doing a similar thing as an effect from being hit by say a poison or neurotoxin (cumulative hallucination as you are hit by various toxic enemies) would be rather cool, make sense, and not be covered by the patent.
Just remember to bring your uncursed pack of cigarettes +0 with you when playing these games. -1 to constitution, but +5 to sanity :D
As for the fan-boys, they'll survive me poking fun at them just fine, so there's no need to start a charitible foundation to support their crushed egos just yet.
And as far as "calling me on" anything, it always strikes me as funny to see just how dead sarcasm is these days, unless messages are overflowing with winking emoticons.
So here you go then: ;^) Are you happy now? At least you won't have to worry about wasting any of your "precious" karma.
This is just a website, and a poorly run one at that. Stop taking it so seriously.
What is Nintendo doing in Redmond? Redmond = evil^(1/2)
In the interests of keeping the concept of sanity points/effects open to the gaming world Chaosium should sue Nintendo. Call of Cthulhu had this concept for over 20 years and even the current vaporware version of CoC was to feature insanity effects.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
I think prior art should be easy on this one... Well for anyone not working in the patent office that is.
So, could such a thing undo Nintendo's patent? I get sick to death of corporate pinheads trying to patent every idea under the sun.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
The patent is a pretty fun read actually, which makes me wonder if they put this through as more of a joke than something serious. I can imagine the listed inventors sitting around talking about the game and someone suggesting somewhat flippantly that they see if they can patent their sanity system. To a company like Nintendo, the cost of the patent process is insignificant and heck, they must do something to keep up with their famous Redmond neighbor in the patent race.
I love this part from the patent,
The human mind is a somewhat fragile control system. When circumstances beyond imagination are encountered, the brain must attempt to deal with the improbable and impossible as reality. Sometimes it is just too much for the individual to handle. In these instances, insanity may take hold of the individual, temporarily disabling or forcing the person into a catatonic state.
I wonder if the state of the current patent system is one of those circumstances mentioned...
To the making of books there is no end, so let's get started
So does this mean that the patent office is paying nintendo or are they violating this patent on a regular basis? Like every time they grant a patent on some software.
All the jokes about things like patenting the patent system and such...
You mean someone finally did it!!!
How about you mind your own business and take your own flamebait elsewhere? I almost got through to this one.
http://gamesdomain.yahoo.com/pc/call_of_cthulhu_da rk_corners_of_the_earth/preview/108608
l hudarkcote/preview_6125712.html
Human minds are fragile, and when they see things that are too frightening, too ghastly, or too wrong, they can start coming unglued in unfunny ways. If the player beholds any unbalancing element, the screen distorts with a number of unique "sanity" effects that not only make everything look more enigmatic and threatening, they also erode the player's ability to coherently aim and properly move about. There will also be distracting auditory hallucinations, taking the form of voices in one's head. And we all know how troubling that can be. Um, right?
If sanity erodes too drastically, the ultimate debilitating penalty may result; if Walters is holding a loaded firearm, he's liable to summarily turn it on himself and blow his own head off from terror, despair, or whatnot. Game over.
Mental damage, like physical damage, is cumulative through a level -- and the only immediate "treatment" for mounting mental instability is to decisively banish, blast, or otherwise stomp some Cthulhoid horror's eldritch ass to death. The temporary (if ultimately empty) physical victory gives our hero a sense of accomplishment, a little world-reordering sanity to set his mind at ease.
http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/adventure/callofcthu
We got to see some of the game's sanity effects as Walters starts to see the world through the eyes of his enemies, or starts to feel disoriented and dislocated. We were told that, if Walters gets too in over his head and loses all of his sanity, he may even involuntarily turn his weapons on himself. The sanity effects in the game are not governed by any onscreen meter, so it'll be up to players to try to see through Jack's mental issues.
Akarsz Magyar Gentoo fórumot? Akkor
Eternal Darkness sales have long since ceased, so this can't be to protect their interests there. What it does suggest, I hope, is that Eternal Darkness 2 (or some DS, Revolution incarnation of the original) is on it's way. Filing a patent like this is just one of a number of ways to start drumming up interest and publicity for that title.
Heh. I knew I friended him for that at some point... he's http://slashdot.org/~yerricde, and now posts as http://slashdot.org/~tepples
"Go to CNN [for a] spell-checked, fact-checked summary" -- CmdrTaco
Nintendo Patent Insanity
I Want To Believe
Had the "Drugs!" power-up, which made the display go all colourful and wavy for a bit.
:)
Then again, it also had the "Drunk Driving" power-up, which would cause random burping noises to play and all the controls would be reversed. Man, I played way too much of that game...
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
But what next, from NetHack can we expect Nintendo to patent?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
You consume sauteed cockatrice.
You die...
Great post, except it should be "You turn to stone."
Hack hack hack hack!
Happyness...
"A learning experience is one of those things that says, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.'" - DNA
...Amazon patented a single-click insanity transmission and delivery system. Microsoft patented three sub-types of psychosis while four others were open sourced by Linux zealots. And the end-users of the world continued to ignore all of the above by inflicting it on support technicians because no one patented the delivery via phone due to a half century of prior art.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
But I think it would be entertaining if people could reply with their own "off the top of our heads" list of patents stupider than this one. No wrong answers... it's opinion after all.
Thats right, patent yellow bricks and when someone makes a virtual Wizard of Oz you will reap the profits! I'm gonna sell rights to my bricks at $10 each. At 4 bricks per sq/ft a path 10 feet wide will cost $211,200 per mile! So if I can just figure out the distance from the Emerald City to the Land of the East...
Man that was a fun game.
I'm sure with a few 'funny' pills, some people could have a lot of fun with this.
[%] Cingular Ringtones
and this is a clear example of why.
it certainly isn't innovative or non-obvious to someone skilled in the art.
sum.zero
So, this means you can just pick an idea from an existing game (CoC), and patent its adaptation to a computer game? Nice...
"I don't mind God, it's his fan club I can't stand!" E8
Call of Cthulhu... when is it really coming out?
MadOgre.com
the two icons at the bottom of the patent page... "View Cart" & "Add to Cart"... makes me thing you can just go shopping for patents... see one you like and buy it
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
Can anyone say "Touch Fuzzy Get Dizzy"?
Has nobody seen the hilucination in max payne... man that was trippy.
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
...you can all go ahead and write games about fighting evil girls, though.
Dont forget: You have genocided Sony Executives
Insert witty comment *here*. I'm fresh out of wit...
In the old game Alone in the Dark, you interact with a book (read it), and afterwards your sanity level drops (you go nuts, start spinning around and scream). Doesn't that qualify as prior art?
Touch Fuzzy Get Dizzy
I wrote an amateur PC game in 1989 that did this called "serial killer". It used interchangable text to describe an event from a variety of viewpoints...some insane.
Basicly it was like text based adventure meets markov chain.
I'm not saying I Invented this idea and will be suing Nintendo, I'm saying its not exactly original in the least.
In Tetripz for DOS by Mute Fantasies (first published in what appears to be 1997), as the player took more virtual drugs, the visual distortion applied to the playfield would increase. The same thing happened in Tetanus On Drugs, a Windows game first published as free software in July 2000 and inspired by Tetripz.
The Game was made for N64 but was pushed back to the GameCube. So it was quite old before it hit the GameCube.
Its a WONDERFUL game. I WISH nintendo would have another one made. With the resources(marketing), it would truely be a Resident Evil killer. The game is already better, although I find myself beating Resident Evil 4 three times now---having done Eternal Darkness 3 times already.
PLEASE MAKE IT AGAIN...hell i'd buy a re-relase for Revolution...
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
There's no way Nintendo can patent insanity. Susan Powter's diet mantra of the early 1990's is a clear example of prior art...
Go, and never darken my towels again! -- Rufus
and thus have to pay Nintendo a hefty licensing fee.
I had a game idea once that I'd been developing on and off that had something like this in it. You started out insane, with an indicator (not a dynamic one, one as part of the environment), and then as you play you win parts of your sanity back and the game areas open up because your delusions have lessened (and the indicator updates accordingly) And so on and so forth. Not sure if the patent would cover that, but I guess it doesn't matter, I'll never finish the game.
I wonder what this will have to do with the Silent Hill series, as a good portion of the series deals with shit like bleeding walls and whatnot, and could technically be seen as a person losing sanity. Well, at least having a bad trip of white claudia (SH1), being a delusional tard (SH2), or just being messed up from living in the same room for a week (SH4). Really... I doubt it'll work within the context of SH, as for... Well, it's just absurd.
too bad they're not competent to stand trial =)
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
The US patent system is completely crazy - or should I say greedy ?). There is no invention nor innovation in this patent proposal. The next move would be to patent books elementary situations, but obviously it won't pay as it is for software. Money for nothing, it is...
Lysergic acid derived from rye bread has been known to cause fatalities. Mainly due to people saying "How hard can it be?"
Lysergic acid, in improper doses can have severe after effects, most prominently death. Personally, I like my perception of reality just fine.
"Inattention makes clowns of us all" -Bean
They get hired by the USPTO it seems.
SLASHDOT: news for people who can't concentrate on work or have no life at all and got tired of yelling back at the TV.
A few seconds later, they put you back at the start of the next room, but for those few seconds, they totally had me fooled, and not a little upset. Bastards :-)
In Ultima Underworld (which was released in 1992) if you ate a mushroom without having it be part of the worm soup you would get poisoned resulting in dizziness and impaired vision for a time.
The same effect occured if certain monsters bit you.
just = (My)Opinion.toCents();
Someone should patent "sexually explicit acts in a video game." They'd be rich.
On the garfield.com site there's a minigame that has garfield looking for clues and stuff, and he goes insane as various random things pop-up. If he goes completely insane, game over. Anyways, here's the link: http://www.garfield.com/fungames/scavengerhunt/sca vengerhunt.html
Its a pretty good timewaster for the office.
--MaxPowerDJ
NO IP!
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Where's the opening tag? I'm an XML parser, you insensitive clod!
"MY APOCALYPTIC TENOR HAS NOT BEEN DISPELLED!" - T-Rex, qwantz.com
1) Patent Insanity
2) Collect underpants by suing insane people for using your patented invention.
3) ???
4) Profit
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
You are describing Sierra's old classic, Quest for Glory 3. That was my favorite part of the game, well, that and throwing rocks.
You're fucking kidding me, right?
I loved how "Ultima Underground", in the early 90s(?) had a funky halucination if you ate mushrooms. Probably not prior art of this specific "innovation", but ... WTF, yet another stupid patent.
This is why we have revolutions folks. You can expect vested interests to change things without heads rolling, bloodshed, etc.
Here in NW Pennsylvania we don't typically associate gender with the word 'guys' -- That is, it's okay for us to address an all-female group with 'How are you guys?' or a mixed-gender group the same way. Now the word 'guy' (singular) on the other hand is different... go figure.
Required reading for internet skeptics
They INVENTED it *FOR A GAME,* not a RELIGION. Religion and Patent Office are "separate" due to separation of Church and State. Nintendo, with "Eternal Darkness" (IIRC the name of the game... I don't own a GameCube) first put out the "Insanity" aspect of a game and playing upon the pure fears of a *GAMER* (namely "losing your saved state," the "console suddenly shuts off," you "suddenly end up in a room full of zombies, can't move 'cuz controller won't work and you die, then *BOOM* you're back where you were as if nothing happened," They can patent. They've *MADE* the technology. It exists, and it's *UNIQUE.*
Therefore, it's patentable.
*NOW* the difference here is, you can't use their trademark, or call it what they call it, nor can you use the same type of code or routines to make the "Insanity" happen. But you may come to your own different code, your own different effects/ideas of insanity/meters for measuring your sanity are not used in a similar way (due to Design Patent) or copied directly (Copyright Law) then they're free to do what they will. Whatever Nintendo has *NOT* done and released and sold to the public is "Free (as in beer) Game."
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
"Yes, You are right."
"I am not a Jedi Knight."
"Nothing to see here. Please move along."
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
I replied to one post, but instead of replying to the dozens here, I'll just ask if this patent really applies to Nethack, being drunk, eating a mushroom, eating unicorn horn, bathing in a fountain of doom, or whatever.
The patent is very clear that it's about insanity from involvement in gruesome sitations, i.e. a post-traumatic stress thing. Artificially induced insanity doesn't seem to apply, aka "I drank a Potion of Insanity and got insane".
The patent even goes as far as to narrow it down to saying that the stress is only caused if the situation was unexpected.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
On the PSX, Crave (I think they're now-defunct, but they were awesome back in the day) released a game called Galerians. There was lots of insanity and insanity effects and shit. Eternal Darkness was most certainly not the first.
Just want chime in to say Eternal Darkness is awesome. It's the only console game that has ever really grabbed me. There are three different paths to play the game and I played all three, when I rarely bother completing any other game.
Umm, he's hallucinating, so it's not REALLY sauteed cockatrice. There's no telling what that poor @ ate in his potion induced state.
The Fighting Fantasy book "House of Hell" had a somewhat similar measure of "fear" in the player stats. The game didn't however change depending on your fear level. You just died once it reached a certain amount.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
I'll get the one for cyborg looking humans in video games and then we can start our own company and just make money by sitting on our asses doing nothing since even Movie based games would have to go through us to get Humans or human looking characters into their video games.
My favourite was having the standard TV volume OSD bar appear on screen and start moving up and down. It even had me fooled for a minute until I remembered I was playing on a Dell LCD without a volume OSD.
Umm, he's hallucinating, so it's not REALLY sauteed cockatrice. There's no telling what that poor @ ate in his potion induced state.
But it was instantly fatal, and very few edible things are instantly fatal. The riders and Medusa are the only ones I can think of, of those only Medusa can be tinned, and she turns you to stone as well.
Bah, I gotta stop reading rec.games.roguelike.nethack so much....
What happens if you play Tetanus On Drugs while under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs?
If you can't beat them, arrange to have them beaten. -George Carlin
Druuna: Morbus Gravis Was another game which had a sanity system, albeit it was implemented in an odd way. Each time you saved the game, or restored it, sanity would decrease just a little bit, until she became so insane, that the game was over.
2 0Morbus%20Gravis
The site for the Game: http://www.artematica.com/ENindex.asp?inc=Druuna%
The site for Druuna Herself: http://www.druuna.net/
*** Suerte a todos y Feliz dia!
That was my favorite effect too. That and the part where it would make it look like the TV had turned off. I Loved! that the game messed with you and not just your character. Brilliant!
Does anyone remember this game? I believe it was banned (at least here in Australia) Man, I want to play that again.
Things are good
I mean _really_. What do you guys do, just browse patents all day and think, "hmm, which of these could get a really lurid headline that would grab a reader's interest for ten seconds until he/she reads on and sees the vast differences between what we claim is being patented and what is actually being patented"?
Seriously, though, as an example of how unlike this you can be and still work the same general effect - FWIW, I've seen plenty of games that distort your vision and make things very strange after, say, a few beers...
the innovation is that they had a new idea, and they implemented it, and it worked, and they want to protect their creative product from cheap knockoffs. isn't that the point of patents?
copyright © 2005 Flamsmsmark the ravings of a melancholly i
I think i'll design a health system where a game character loses heath when they are hurt. They can replenish their health by collecting medikits but when their health metre reaches zero they die. Patent pending!
A scroll titled "ghikj llop de". Identify?[y]
It's a scroll of patent law! Read it?[y]
You are permanently confused!
Are simulations of existing things patentable?
that is, if you made a car driving game, and included some feature of a real car that is patented by an automobile maker, could they sue for infringment in a simulation?
It's like patenting a storytelling style whereby the narrator's exposition becomes darker/stranger/verbose as the story moves along. This is freaking ridiculous. Works of artistry are the realm of copyright law, not patent law.
Something else could have killed him, no?
Sig
And the best example of this: Yoshi's Island. Ah... who can forget the level "Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy"
Hallucinating indeed...
Generally, in Nethack, the message right before the "You die...." message is indicative of what did the killing. Like in:
The mumak hits! (more)
You feel here:
A cockatrice corpse.
(more)
You eat Pestilance's corpse. (more)
You genocide humans. (more)
Moloch hits you with a wide-angle disintegration beam! (more)
The killer bee's sting was poisoned! (more)
Beware, there will be no return! Still climb? (yn)
my personal favorite "nasty trick" was when the game spontaniously reset and I thought I lost all my progress. That one got me on edge quickly.
Eternal Darkness is definatly a unpresidented game.
------
I always liked "The X-Man hits you."
Although I cannot remember the original, there are other virtual schizophrenia devices. These are designed to either help others understand the disease, or to help those with it understand their own psychosis
Extra special bonus points to someone who finds the one I remember, which showed spooky faces coming out of nowhere and taunting you
Hey, if it helps those with the disease, and gives me a freaky good time to boot, that's good stuff
-- I have fans? Wow.
Didn't Darwin patent randomly flipping bits? :-)
Table-ized A.I.
...they grant a patent on entropy
Table-ized A.I.
Rise Of The Triad. Just eating the mushroom "power-up" in the game nullifies part C of the patent "automatically" since the game actually made you move in non-straight directions while you were tripping your balls off. Plus you couldn't shoot straight.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Yesterday Nintendo announced this patent. Gauranteeing coverage on /. and other web sites. Last night I saw the first TV ad for the DS game this patent was filed for. Coincidence? I don't think so. Nintendo marketers played teh media like a fiddle yesterday.
'mmmmmmmmm.... forbidden donut'
was the patent granted yesterday, or did Nintendo announce the patent yesterday? Hmmmmm...... think about it.
'mmmmmmmmm.... forbidden donut'
This is insane. I've seen this kind of systems being used in MUDs years ago. It seems patent laws in the US are getting out of hand. Soon technology and innovation will die because of this.