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Wii-mote In Action
Jack Lancer writes "Gameworld Network (which is either a network of gameworlds or a gameworld of networks) has
posted an epic collection of streaming E3 videos which clearly depicts each and every playable Wii game and how exactly one has to swing, wave, shake, point, wiggle and/or jostle the Wiimote in order to play." And once again this poses the question — is this the future of gaming UI? Sure seems like a great idea for a FPS.
Someone has to ask... Why?
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Does that mean I'm getting old? Now that I think about it, it sounds like my dad, who rocked the joystick back when we had an Atari XE, didn't really get newer controllers until he was actually playing a game (and usually got confused by the multiple things to control).
But yeah, wiggling and shaking demonstrates how it works, but given the fine control w/ the "Wii-mote," I still think it'll be until people have it in their hand that they really get it. Didn't people at E3 say that people started out gesticulating wildly, and then calmed down when it "clicked"? Luckily it seems like a very easy thing to pick up.
From what I've read, from people who have gotten to play it at E3 demos and such (IGN, etc.). It's not as nice as the videos suggest, since you have to overcompensate in any direction you want to aim, making big elabourate movements instead of calculated manuvers.
Of course the jury is out until the games and system comes out.
I've been seeing the DS/DS Lite make inroads with people I work with - especially when they see me playing "Brain Age" or "Big Brain Academy" - I had my DS Lite passed around the office for about an hour as people tried out the test from the latter game. At least one or two people - in their 40's, never played games before, but now are seriously thinking about picking up a DS for their kids and maybe the Brain Age for themselves.
So I wonder if Nintendo's "Blue Ocean" approach will work with the Wii. Iwata, as I understand it, has mentioned that he'd like for people to play the Wii every day - much like my wife and I play the DS (she digs the Brain Games and "Magnetica" - this from a women that for the last 12 years wouldn't touch a computer game unless it had the words "Tetris" or "Solitaire" on it).
Which is all they need - my wife plays Brain Age a little bit every day. I'm wondering if Nintendo can't leverage the Wii sports games with "Work out every day for 30 minutes - helps get you in shape!" Tie in some workouts, perhaps like the Brain Age games put in the competitive aspects (which has helped each of us play the DS every day to try and one-up each other - so far, I'm at a B+ in Academy.
Obviously we'll have to wait and see, but the other day a coworker asked me "Hey, that Nintendo thing coming out - that's the competor for the Xbox, isn't it?" I'm not sure which was more telling: that he knew that there was a Nintendo thing coming out - or that he thought that was the Xbox competitor, not the new Playstation.
Well, just another 4-5 months to go.
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Maybe the submitter also submitted this to nintendowiifanboy.com, but if not he just lifted the summary and made no reference to the source.
g e-of-every-wii-game-at-e3/
http://www.nintendowiifanboy.com/2006/06/20/foota
Who thinks this will wear off really quick? I like game immersion in a seemless fashion where i can think, plan and strategize and the standard controller fits that perfectly.. The action of waving my arms around or shaking hands or even swaying back and forth just appears to be as another style of button mashing to me.
I think its a got a "neat-o" factor but hardly something I see myself adopting for anything longer then a party game system when i just want to BS around and not actually get immsersed into what i'm trying to accomplish.
I really wanted to buy the Wii, but now it seems, that with my significant other unable to enjoy much of the games, it's not an option.
I liked the two Sega games - Sonic and Monkey Ball. Both worked pretty well with the controller and the Monkey Ball minigames in particular were a lot of fun. Although, for several of them you'd need 2 controllers per player. We haven't yet seen the pricing on additional controllers...
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I will buy when nintendo combines this with the power pad. You acctually have to walk to move in an FPS or walk and jump in mario. Talk about a work out, maybe bring back the guns and combine all three for the ultimate FPS game or sensory over load I'm not sure which one.
I really have to give Nintendo a lot of credit for going out on a limb and trying something new. When you think about it, game controllers haven't changed much in the last 20 years. You have a controller with a joystick or direction pad and a couple of buttons. Making the joystick analog instead of directional is an evolutionary change, as is having more and more buttons. The rest is just ergonomics - making the controller comfortable and sleek rather than a thumb-killer. Folks have been able to dress up controllers to look really cool, but they are essentially unchanged from the days of Atari and the NES.
This, on the other hand, is like a whole 'nother branch on the evolutionary tree. I hope that it gains some real traction and gets game developers thinking in unconventional ways. The samples from E3 indicate that they have already begun to do so. And, if imitation is the best form of flattery, it appears that sony is paying attention, too.
I think the best thing Nintendo has done is to recognize that FPS games have a very limited appeal. They aren't going after the hardcore gamers. They recognize that if they want to grow the gaming market they have to recreate it into something that will appeal across generational and gender lines. Think Suduko and not GTA
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Is it really only 3 dimensions?
Think:
D1: Forward/Back
D2: Up/Down
D3: Left/Right
D4: Twist (around vertical axis)
D5: Rotate (around horizontal axis)
D5: Rotateb (around left/right axis)
Then there are factors like acceleration, velocity, etc.
How many of these can the wiimote sense, and how sensitive is it?
Sounds like more than 3 dimensions to me.
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I love it when people flinch or duck when playing games, they look so silly since it clearly does not affect anything (well, before Wii). I do it too, though....usually a sign that you are pretty immersed in the game.
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I first need to say that I am a fan of Nintendo and to a large degree Sony. Now having said that, I can't see a controller "selling" a console. The only advantage the Wii has that the other console makers can't copy is "Mario and company" and possibly price. The HUGE disadvantage it has is its performance compared to a year old 360 and even more to the PS3.
I hope Nindendo does well, and there are a ton of fanboys out there that will buy whatever Nintendo puts out, but I honestly don't see this doing much better than their gamecube. Now I am not saying that the cube did bad, but I honestly don't think a controller will win Nintendo the next console war. What has and will help them possibly win it is the price of the PS3. However, that is a somewhat scary position to be in. All it takes is a serious price drop in the PS3 and a "similar" controller to take away two of Nintendos strongest advantages. That leaves them with "Mario" again, and to be honest that may be enough. I am curious about how many 3rd parties jump on board this time around, and what their development kits offer. Also, I am curious where the 360 will fit in to this mix. It appears that they will have Nintendo on the "low" end and Sony on the high end. I can't see the average consumer picking a 360, at its current price point over the Nintendo (because of Mario and friends), or a PS3 because of the backward compatibility and the hardware advantage. Now if Microsoft lowers the price of the 360 to the same level as the Wii then that will put some pressure on Nintendo, but again you have the "Mario" factor.
So my long winded point is that I don't see a controller putting Nintendo to #1 in the console wars. If the controller is the coolest thing since sliced bread, it will be copied by everyone within a year. So at the end of the day it comes down to the games and hardware. Will Nintendo have the games? Will the 360 just have rehashed PC games?
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Otherwise, I think this is a great idea and would love to swordfight some dude in a game.
Practicing Kendo in my free time, that was really the first thought I had when I heard about the Wii controller.
If there is such a game, and the controller is anything near usable, hell, I'll probably mount the controller onto my Shinai for playing!
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The Wii controller seems to still use the same method of control that every other console FPS uses: You move the crosshair to the edge of the screen and WAIT for it to pan over. This is exactly what the analog stick provides, the Wii just put a new face on it.
I am very disappointed that the crosshair does not stay centered. It looks like the Wii is still not the solution for "twitch" gameplay.
I'll still get a Wii, but this is a huge disappointment to me.
If that's the ONLY strike against the Wii, then why is he a sucker to want to buy it? Perhaps he simply doesn't care about HD. I know that I, personally, will likely not have an HDTV for the next several years...
Similarly, my family isn't planning on getting a Wii or any other home console during this round because each of us now has a Nintendo DS (the wife and I bought one when the Lite came out). We moved from playing multiplayer Mariokart on the TV where we each had our own section of the screen to playing multiplayer Mariokart where we all have our own handheld console.
I understand we're not getting the near photorealistic graphics that a modern console or good PC could deliver, nor the game depth that a disk- (vs. cartridge-) based game sometimes delivers. However, the DS delivers everything that our family DOES want out of a console, and is portable to boot. Once the web browser is released it'll have even more portable utility.
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Dude, if you would read the next line of Pablo's post, you would realize that he's saying Nintendo has done well in the areas of development and marketing both to developers and to consumers. While I agree that this doesn't neccesarily mean that the Wii will be a good system, I myself plan to get a Wii on launch day, a few extra controllers, and some games. I've played every major (and some minor) game consoles since the NES, and I've always prefered Nintendo. I got the CameCube the Christmas it came out, and although my dad got a PS2 and Xbox for free shortly thereafter, I've been most satisfied with the Gamecube. So I'm willing to take the risk that Wii won't be that good, because the risk is slim. I see no reason to pay $600 (plus games & accessories) to play upgraded versions of the PS2 games that were more of the same even in the previous generation. Worse yet, $400 (plus yadda yadda) so I can play the crummy game that PDZ is (tried it at a friend's, hated it), or to get the opportunity to download zuma, which I can find online. And if it turns out that the Wii's new control scheme isn't as fun as I had hoped, there's still a good number of old games I missed out on availble on VC.
Your technical details about lightguns are a little bit out of date.
The type you described, which has a single-direction lens and a light level or color sensor, that's pretty much the oldest type. It's what was used for the NES, and also for older systems - I had a portable Pong rig that included a lightgun game that worked that way. These types required the screen to flash (or else just have all targets be really high-contrast) in order for the lightgun to get a reading. You can see this effect in games like Duck Hunt.
Then you have the raster scan method. I believe this is what's used on most current console lightguns. Basically it finds out when precisely the TV's raster crosses the point the gun is aimed at, and compares that to the video signal output by the game console to figure out where the gun is pointed. The downside of this method is that it won't work on certain types of TVs, it's mainly a CRT thing. Plus you need to get the video sync signal from the console - on PS2 light guns they do this with an external connector on the lightgun cord, I believe, while on the X-Box a video timing signal is actually included on the controller port. I believe for the sensor to work the video at the target point on-screen does have to be reasonably bright (that is, not black) but I could be wrong about that.
Then you have IR emitter/sensor lightguns. These are used in current and relatively recent arcade lightgun games like House of the Dead series and so on. Basically they use a combination of emitters and sensors to figure out where the gun is pointed. The gun reports the relative intensity of the signal it receives from each emitter (it can discern which is which through timing) and that gives the machine a good idea where the gun is pointed. Some types also use tilt sensors in the gun itself to get better information. The strength of this system is that it's completely independent of the video monitor. So long as it's properly calibrated you can use it with any video display technology at all. There's a home version of this type of lightgun sold at Lik-Sang, and the technology of the Wii pointer is very similar to this type of lightgun. That is why the Wii remote is so commonly compared to lightguns. When people make that comparison, they're talking about this type of lightgun. The fact that most lightgun games don't care about the fact that the lightgun is capable of a fairly accurate 3-D position and orientation report is pretty much incidental.
See also, Wikipedia's Entry on Lightguns
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Even still I would imagine most games (or even the console/controller) would come with some kind of sensitivity adjustment much like most games that use analog controllers will allow you to adjust the sensitivity of the sticks. Besides as others have pointed out I think most of the exaggerated movements are done by PR schmucks trying to make sure you understand moving makes things happen on the screen.
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That actually reminds me of an interview http://wii.ign.com/articles/713/713627p1.html on IGN where Nintendo's leaders basically state that the DS will prove to be a bigger competitor to the Wii than the 360 or PS3, simply because both are similarly innovative and many families can't or won't buy more than one system, portable or no. Personally though, my family has (thankfully) always recognized the distinction between portable and tv-bound systems when allowing systems into the house. I play the DS when I'm out and about, and my home console instead of watching a movie at home during evening family time. The family gets into watching me play almost as much they get into watching a movie.
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Thats not what I'm most concerned about...my big concern is how can you have realistic sword fights when there is nothing to forcibly stop the controller from moving past a certain point if your character makes contact in the game.
I especially see this as a problem for multiplayer swordfighting (think a multiplayer Star Wars game) where two people might be waving their swords, but if they cross blades, the controller keeps moving past the contact point, thus screwing up the positioning of the players hands with the remote.
Not really. It's fairly simple. Remember the Wii controller also has a speaker. What you do is have an audio "clang" when your sword hits another, or a "buzz" when your light saber touches another one.
Also, in the game mechanics, once your sword comes in contact with another, you just stop the forward motion of the displayed sword, and use any further forward motion as "push" motion against the opponent sword, used to simulate strength.
Now, it might take a bit of getting used to, especially if you had a true swords and sorcery game, where someone might be wearing heavy armor - in that a blow straight against someone with plate mail won't penetrate, but will glance off, but it's a fairly simple programming exercise to translate any motion after armor hit or after sword hit into the appropriate vector. The main thing is to use both audio feedback - both Wii controller and speakers - and force feedback (vibration on controllers if applicable) to indicate what's really happening. Most players will quickly adapt.
On the other hand, if you stick to fighting gelatinous blobs, your sword will literally chop straight through them. And a light saber - unless it meets a force field or another light saber (also force field) - will also keep going through the body it chops into. But there should be some audio and other feedback to represent the energy drain.
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That is precisely what my friends have been discussing about the Wii (I'm sure its a popular conversation). I get the impression that people imagine it will truly be a 'virtual magic wand' but its not going to quite work out that way. It automatically makes you think of swordfighting games, that remote, but as you said how do you deal with someone waving their 'sword' right through someone else's 'block'? Vibration or sound effects are not good enough. Players would end up 'pulling their swings' in order to react faster to the virtual 'block' and end up looking pretty unnatural, one would think.
You can deal with this limitation as far as fighting NPC enemies - just tweak the game mechanics - but for 2-player, yeah, I think the jury is out on that one.
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Here's a link to Gamasutra with some real basic info on it to show I'm not making it up: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?st ory=9270
I have a bit more inside info. but I can't share any of it for quite some time... so you'll just have to believe me when I say that your comments above are a good bet to be 100% on target as far as the game goes and that this "rumor" is most likely reality.
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What I don't see with the wiimote is a way to replace the c-stick. Having experienced camera freedom in Mario Sunshine and Wind Waker, I can't imagine going back to the limitations of the N64 iterations (basic centering and zoom in/zoom/out in Mario64 and behind the player centering in Zelda:OOT & Majora's Mask). Motion sensing of the wiimote has mostly been implemented to get a pointer (as far as I can tell) in the next generation iterations of both Mario and Zelda. I sure hope Nintendo hasn't decided that the N64 camera systems will be acceptable. Perhpas there will be an a way to use the wiimote for the camera as an alternate mode, like if a button is held...
"I can't see a controller 'selling' a console."
Funny, I'm planning to buy a Wii primarily for the controller -- because it will be the only game controller on the market that my non-gaming family and friends can grok easily.
The choices are as follows:
1. Buy an XBox or a PS2/PS3, and have it played by myself and my son.
2. Buy a Wii, and have it played by myself, my son, my wife, my parents, my in-laws, friends, visitors...
Call me crazy, but I think making gaming more accessible to everyone is a good thing -- and having a family that games together is doubleplusgood for this geek. If it takes a radical new controller to do the job, then so be it.
--R.J.
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In case anyone else has had the same issues. At least some of the downloaded zips confuse the crap out of Windows and WinRAR they simply wont be able to extract them. Explorer will get confused over what the directory structure is doing. WinRAR wont even show you the directory the mov is in. (This may be because my winRAR isnt fully up to date.)
The current winACE will open the file fine though.
As to why im not so sure. For metroid the directory that causes the problems is \\227.mov (explorer reads it as WINDOWS) I can only assume this is because the thing was made on a Unix system and that folder will work on Unix will not work on Windows.
Needless to say there wasnt really any reason to have any folder structure zipped up, let alone a folder that can cause issues. Still its free so cant complain. (Well I can, and have... but you should probably ignore that.)
"'recoils' from a block and makes the player back up.. interesting thought."
:)
Well either recoils or continues the movement but with the camera only.
Let me see if this is a better description.
You move the controller right which swings the sword right, which pans the camera locked to the person in a clockwise fashion, when the sword hits another object or sword (point of contact or POC) the camera keeps panning the view in the clockwise fashion as long as the player keeps moving the controller in that direction. Then the player would have to move the controller the opposite way which would pan the camera counter-clockwise until past the point where the sword made contact, once past that point the sword would move away from the PCO.
This could be scripted in different ways like past the POC the panning slows down to a stop until reverse movement is made.
OR you could even have the POV as first person but when it makes contact have it widen out into a 3rd person view with the panning, then back again into first person when contact is disengaged.
This is a bit jolting but I have played this type of camera veiwing scheme before (forget which game ATM) and you get used to it pretty easily...
As long as the camera is locked on the player the movement should be fluid enough to avoid being disconcerting (sp?) when using a 3rd person perspective.
Is that better?
You should probably try to play a few more DS games. I'd suggest starting with Kirby Canvas Curse and Trauma Center, two games with gameplay that could not be implemented without the DS' touchscreen.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Forget FPS. I want a lightsaber game. I've been wanting one for almost thirty years.