Second Thoughts – Sore Arms and a Wider Topic Coverage?
September 4, 2008Last night I joined a raiding guild in AoC, and it had something along the lines of 50 or 60 max-level people! Unfortunately, due to the raid number restrictions and me being new, I just sat outside with my mammoth sitting on top of the cave that was the instance (Pissing off members of another raiding guild whose T3 battlekeep we recently sacked.
So I took some time to work on my code and get the PERFECT swing recognition code possible. Lo and Behold! I couldn’t get the reading of the damn accelerometers working correctly! Apparently, there is this law that for every force in the universe there is an equal an opposite force countering that…. I HAVE NEVER HEARD OF THAT BEFORE!!!! (jk)
Well, I didn’t think about that at all when I was writing my script for GlovePIE, and so when I swing down, the accelerometers read negative gy (Y acceleration) and then positive gy at the end of it, because I’m slowing down my swing at the end. So I’m going to have to somehow make it time-based, and when my arm catches up to initial speed (for example: down) then it cuts off any reading for … 3 seconds or whatever.
So I gave up last night after a few beers, and a very sore arm. I continue my scripting tonight or this weekend (or while I’m at work teehee!)
I was reading West Karana and realized that maybe this blog shouldn’t be about simply creating a new immersive controller for AoC, but should touch on gaming immersion in general and how I’m simply sick of the mouse/keyboard set-up. I mean, there have to be other people interested in this idea (granted, I’m writing for the carthartic experience and to learn something new, not entertain others). Well, one step at a time, and once I get this AoC thing hammered out, I can start rambling on about different changes and add-ons from there (VR goggles anyone?)
It’s just, Tipa from West Karana goes on to describe gaming and it’s many aspects like a philosophy. The fact that the new Wizard101 game allows for horizontal progression (in a way) is extremely interesting. I’m not a Conan fanboi (although I’m reading the short stories right now, and they’re good), but I simply really really like this game. Maybe it’s just the shiny graphics, and the combat system, I’m not sure. It’s enough to satisfy and at the same time ignore the godloads amount of bugs and missing content in the game that the developers are taking their sweet ol’ time to fix. Sorry, woops my bold key was accidentally pressed. Sorry, I digress.
While game content, style, and play is extremely important, games like Rock Band proved that you can do something different with immersive controllers: thus explaining me ordering a Bokken, and wooden Gladius to try to mix up with my Wiimote for some real sword swingin! I feel like gaming is on the verge of something big, something that could transcend gaming into and past the realm of sports. Could we be seeing VR Fantasy battles on the television in the future? Damn right we could, if the gaming industry got off its ass and did something unique, innovative, and gutsy. Not the same ol’ same ol’ WoW-like copy after copy that truly began with Everquest, ok MAYbe Ultima Online, and now is split off into many iterations and specific niche groups aside from the Mammoth-like WoW stomping wherever it wants to.
If you’re reading this game devs (I doubt so, since it’s new), I want a ‘Rock (Fantasy Warrior) Band’. Give me a sword with buttons that I can swing around and pretend like I’m a rockstar barbarian! I’m not exactly a cosplay nerd, or a LARP kid, but give me something to get my blood pumping and my ass off the couch!
Attempting to play Age of Conan using a Wiimote 
Thanks for the linkback 🙂
Re: the accelerometers — couldn’t you take a first derivative of the acceleration readings and just look for sign changes that signal a change in the direction of the swing? Also, have you looked at the new super-accurate accelerometer doohickey that attaches to the end of the Wiimote?
Re: Using wooden/plastic swords as controllers for MMOs — someone’s gonna put one through a monitor, guaranteed.
There was a guy who figured out how to use two Wiimotes to run an MMO, I think EQ2. Have you seen the two guys who adapted a treadmill to force them to run in real life to run in World of Warcraft? The irony of using a treadmill to play a game with treadmill-y gameplay is fun 🙂
There was someone doing some research in Second Life that used a web cam to analyze what a player was doing in real life to control the avatar. That might tie into what you’re doing.
Hmm, I’m not sure if I should put my reply here, or on your site, but it makes sense I guess to respond here!
In regards to taking the first derivative of the acceleration readings, if you know much about scripting, I’ll post my copy of the GlovePIE code and you can take a look. Right now the swing reading isn’t functional, but I think I may be on to something.
I left my memory USB stick at work over the weekend, but I’ll take a look at it tonight & post it on the blog.
As far as my wooden sword being dangerous for my monitor, I have a 47″ HDTV and while it does present a bigger target. I would be able to stand far enough away from the TV for it not to be an issue (I think). The slashing movements would be an exercise in control (I’m hoping) somewhat like martial arts, so there would not be too much ‘swing’ force per say.
I have actually looked at the EQ2 with 2 Wiimotes, and the treadmill (which I thought was VERY interesting)
I saw that Second Life thing, but only once and it was a while back. There is also a guy who uses the Wii Balance Board to ‘surf’ through WoW & Google Earth.
Anyways, thanks for the comments!
I read the rest of your site and found you were using GlovePIE, which doesn’t look like it gives you enough info. Maybe you could just keep a velocity counter by continually adding the acceleration divided by the time interval between updates to it, then look for the change in sign?
This is really fascinating stuff, and I can’t wait until you have the whole thing working. I didn’t know about GlovePIE (haven’t really looked into doing stuff like that with my Wii). I wonder if you can talk to it with a more fully-featured scripting language, like my favorite, Python…