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On Fine-Tuning Wii Controls
MTV Games has a great article looking at how developers are refining Wii controls, now that they've had most of a year to work on them. The game cited is the Wii version of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance; the Wiimote is used to represent Thor's Hammer, Spidey's webshooters, and Wolverine's claws, among other things. From the article: "'Now in some cases people will do something that's not going to work right, and in that case they're probably going to have to adjust the way they do it,' said Chrzanowski, a black Wii development controller in hand. 'But that's a rare case.' He wasn't talking idly. He said a system developed by a Vicarious colleague, Jesse Raymond, a few weeks ago has been crunching the data of dozens of players who have tested the game on the Wii, analyzing the results of requests for players to do 10 swipes in a row or 10 stabs in a row, recognizing which moves the current version of the game fails to recognize as the intended gesture, tweaking the code, checking the pool of data from the gesture trials again for any new misunderstandings, repeat and recode, again and again."
I can control where my Wii goes perfectly. Don't need no fine tuning here.
:P)
(I've stooped to making a urine/Wii joke on Slashdot. This is truly the stuff of suicide notes.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Not only are they going to have lightsabers, but now:
Spidey's webshooters, and Wolverine's claws
Seems there's no limit to the possibilities. You can act out whatever superhero or whatnot fantasy you've had. Hack up zombies with chainsaws holstered to your arms? Have a Wiimote strapped to the back of your wrist to operate like Boba Fett's cord launcher? "Punch enemies" realistically? Have a Wiimote on each limb for a more complex version of DDR that can detect 3D body motions? Why not!
I'm really interested to see what developers will put on the market. (of what they'll let hobbyists do...)
Apology to Ubuntu forum.
To me that sounds prophetic. I think the Wii will get a bad reception - based on the graphical inequality of the software and the (percieved) difficulties 3rd parties will have utilising the Remote. But as that experience grows believe developers will be able to create a catalogue of games that can't be acquired anywhere else - and the Wii will really shine.
http://skeptobot.blogspot.com/ - A site for the Renaissance man and woman
It will be interesting to see the difference between a Nintendo game and an Ubisoft game. I expect that it will shed a bit of light on how well the 3rd party studios handle a new style of development.
If the release games for the Wii are good and use the Wii-mote fairly well, I can't wait to play the games that come out one or two years down the line.
Of course with new technology there's a period where the developers are learning how to fully utilize the new features... look at the DS.
Take Castlevania, for example. Dawn of Sorrow's annoying "seal" you had to draw after killing a boss was pointless and just a way to say "hey, we used the touch screen!" But once they learned that for their particular style of game, the advantage of the DS is in its two screens and not its touch screen, they did away with the seal system for the sequel.
It's definitely possible that games at release may go overboard with the Wii-mote, but as time goes on developers will learn how to best utilize the Wii's features.
Nintendo is truly changing the way we look at the letter "i". On seseme street, Big Bird was heard to say that today was brought to you by the number 2 and the letter "ii".
Jokes aside, I think it's great. Sure, there will be some kinks to work out. I'm betting the Wiimote will introduce an entire new world of bugs (and exploits) for tons of games. However, it's nice to see developers using what they have. While it would be easy to make "normal" games without using the advanced features for launch, they aren't. I could even see them waiting out for the second wave of releases, so as to have more time to fine tune the mechanics. I'd love a career as a game tester right now.
PS: That is what part of the alphabet would look like if the letters "Q" and "R" were removed.
I'm really glad to hear this. We all get the idea that games are developed in an airtight room with no outside input. But it looks like companies are really doing their part to get REAL data on what works and what doesn't work in terms of gamers using the Wiimote. Of course, some game manufacturers aren't going to get it right on the first try, but with a high amount of beta testing (especially since the early release of the Dev kits allowed for a liberal amount of time) I think we're likely to see some fairly honed precision control for the Wii fairly early on.
Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
After playing through a game it is often fun to fire up gamefaqs and see just what stupid things you can do with cheat codes, now I just can't wait to see how you input them!
"Ok, to turn on god mode you need to hold down "B" and "Z" draw a pentacle, a hexagon, and then flip the controller back and forth 5 times"
hehe
I can't for the life of me remember which article stated it, but I read an article talking about the differences in multi-platform games. Apparently, on the 360/PS3, you can map certain actions to certain buttons, but you never have full immediate access to all moves for all characters.
With the Wii, where every movement in a different direction is a mappable button unto itself, you have immediate access to every move for every character based on the motions.
I'm sure the porn industry could do quite well with interactive motion controllers...
I hope the wireless-ness doesn't impede my gameplay. Switching between wavebird and wired in a game like smash bros. there's a big difference in timing and accuracy.
... from being released on a Nintendo system. Have you seen the number of non-US release "Girl-Get" games for the GBA and DS?
In the US the thing companies are afraid of is the AO rating they will inevitably get, which means you won't find it at GameStop, Target, or WalMart.
Which for some reason, is preventing game manufacturers from doing anything that might earn that rating. I suppose it's because most big development houses with good relationships with Nintendo are concerned about retail channels in a big way, and getting blacklisted from WalMart is never good.
No, if a third party made a killer adult game for the Wii that was actually entertaining and sexy, they could market it. But they'd have to pony up the money themselves for getting Nintendo licensing and stuff, and hope that they can make it on Internet sales, catalog order, adult chains, etc.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
The article plainly states that some motion have trouble being recognized and the enormity of the problem just hit me.
Recognizing a specific move from a human hand is much like voice recognition (bear with me in this explanation):
There are millions of ways a human can make a word sound like. We all know how voice recognition works only from time to time. I still have nightmares of the game: Life Line, that was 99% controlled through voice recognition:
Those really happened to me in Life Line on numerous occasions (and they are just samples):
Player: "stop moving".
Girl on screen: "yes..."
Girl on screen: -starts to litterally run in circle around the table in the living room.
And my favorite:
Player: "look at the mirror"
Girl on screen: -takes her gun and shoot the mirror, destroying it.
Or even:
Player: - tried several times to make her understand: "look at the table."
Girl on screen: "i don't understand... You're awfully bad at giving orders."
Now about motion recognition, well there are millions of ways on how a human can make a swinging motion. I can just imagine this in that Marvel game:
Player: - swing from close to his chest and outward oblique to the right and up.
Wolverine: - slashes his claws in an upward pattern.
Player: - make the same motion again: swing from close to his chest and outward to the right and up.
Wolverine: - slashes his claws right to left.
Player: - make the same motion again for a third time: swing from close to his chest and outward to the right and up.
Wolverine: - slashes in an oblique way, upward and to the left.
Same move made three times, interpreted three differents ways by the game.
This could become a major stopper in numerous games. Unless the characters like Wolverine only get's one or two kinds of basic attacks.
If games that uses the Wii-mote requires only basic moves to solve that problem, that may cut seriously back on the type of games that could take advantage of this.
I now fully expect to see tons of games with problems regarding this. Unless they tie the entire upper-body of the character to the controller where it completely moves with the player, which will make for quite dorky characters on screen and will cause other problems by itself.
Leisure Suit Larry
Just *think* of the possibilities. . .
The article mentions there was originally a gesture for every move and they were big sweeping motions - like Wolverine's uppercut was a real uppercut. Then they made the guy simplify it to 5 common, simple wrist flicks. What? The Wii lets me do an uppercut for the first time, I want an uppercut! If I wanted abstracted wrist twitches I'd play Xbox. The Wii's goal is it feels natural - and a natural uppercut is an uppercut, not a wrist flick up.
Lame. Go back to the original plan, or at least leave it as an option. I was amped about this game until this article - now it's off my list.