Below are the 15 most recent journal entries recorded in newgenerations' LiveJournal:

Thursday, April 6th, 2006
3:19 am	Street Fighter So how would you do a 2D fighting game, ala Street Fighter? I believe the optimal setup for this would use the Revmote & Nunchuk. The Nunchuk is used to move the character. Left, right, jump, duck and so forth. For special moves the Revmote is used. For quarter turns, half turns or full turns, simply perform that action with the revmote. Same for back forward movements, except you remove the need to hold (my favorite game genie code for Street Fighter 2 Turbo removed the need to hold for special movies). Or you can keep it in, it will work either way. Now for punches and kicks. There is no need to use the buttons for this. For a punch, just move the controller forward. For a jab, punch it forward a short distance, for a stronger punch, punch the Revmote forward farther. It'll take a few minutes at most to get used to what seperates a Jab, from a Strong from a Fierce. So a Hadoken is a quarter circle up-right followed by a quick punch forward with the controller. I guarantee you, this will prove superior to even the old acrade joysticks for ease of use and ability to get moves off quickly. And for kicks, you just tilt the controller backwards (so the front end of it goes up). Tilt it farther for a stronger kick. This will result in a bit longer learning curve to seperate weaker kicks from stronger (I don't remember what each one is called). This will work for most 2D fighting games, which use similar controls. In some cases you'll need to add a button press for blocks, tagging other characters in, or other special moves some games use. This control scheme has some advantages and one disadvantage. The first advantage is it will control much better than a standard gamepad. In fact, in some ways it'll control better than even an arcade stick. It's more intuitive with a more gentle learning curve. And it's potentially lots of fun. The downside is that it will tire out your arms, because you'll be moving them (especially your primary arm to punch/kick) a lot. I kinda think this is a good thing though, because it's a fighting game. When you're done, you'll feel like you actually won a fight. It'll give the same kind of rush I assume people get from Dance Dance Revolution (despite my personal loathing of that game), without actually having to punch the crap out of your friend's face. Current Mood: thoughtful (Comment on this)
Saturday, April 1st, 2006
12:39 am	So, you want speculation? Get ready fanboys. This one's for you. In the 3rd generation of gaming there were 3 companies vying for market. Nintendo, Sega & Atari. In the 4th generation of gaming there were 3 companies vying for market. Nintendo, Sega & NEC/Hudson. In the 5th generation of gaming there were 3 companies vying for market. Nintendo, Sega & Sony. In the 6th generation of gaming there were 3 companies vying for market. Nintendo, Sony & Microsoft. Now, before you get up in arms about the Dreamcast, I will admit that the Dreamcast was a 6th generation system, and that the 6th generation of gaming has been highly odd, because the Xbox wasn't really introduced until the Dreamcast was already a failure. So as far as I'm concerned there were only 3 companies in the running. Plus, it helps my argument, so just go with it. Each generation there seems to only be room for 3 companies in the home console gaming arena (handheld gaming seems to only accept 2 contenders at a time, but it's a smaller market in a lot of ways -- yes, pun intended damn you), and of of those companies is always fails. First it was Atari, then it was NEC, then it was Sega, and this time it was Nintendo. Some people will argue that Nintendo wasn't the failure this time around because they actually made more money. I contend that they were the failure because, well, Sony was clearly the winner with 100 million consoles sold compared to about 21-23 million sold for Nintendo & Microsoft respectively. The difference is, Microsoft went into this race expecting to lose billions of dollars, but they accomplished what they were therefore, not to dominate, but to get enough mindshare to be a going concern. Nintendo, on the other hand, came into this generation with the idea of catching up with Sony, and while they made lots of money, they failed in their objective. So, each generation only has room for 3 real competitors. Sure there are other systems (Atari was still trying to sell systems well into the 5th generation) but they never really generate much in the way of marketshare or mindshare. They're almost universally ignored for the big 3. However, just because one of the big 3 fails, doesn't mean they stop making systems, and doesn't mean they can't make a comeback. After all, if it weren't for Microsoft entering the console race, it's entirely possible that Sega would have salvaged enough on Dreamcast sales to lead them into this coming 7th generation (although not likely, the Saturn really hurt them pretty badly). However, there are never less than 3 big names in the race, there never have been. So what does that mean? Nature abhors a vacuum, and something must come of it. So here you have it, the grandest speculation ever: What will happen if one of the competitors has to drop out of the race? Don't get me wrong, I don't think it will happen, I think with the shape the market is taking, all 3 companies will continue into the 8th generation. On the other hand, there are many reasons to expect one or even 2 of the competitors to drop out of the race completely. Microsoft is hemorhagging money like a pecuniphiliac. Sony's Media & Electronic division keep screwing with the comparatively decent Games division. And Nintendo is attempting to alter the way we think and the way we game, even though they know people don't like change. Each company has a hurdle going into this generation, and each runs the risk of just not making it. So let's get into the gist of this entry, shall we? What if Microsoft drops out of the console race? It could happen. Microsoft can afford to lose money, but not forever. At a certain point, stockholders will demand profit. With the delays and issues with their Office & Windows products, there's a chance their profits could drop 25% in those areas over the course of the next 5 years (which would still leave them making more money than most corporations dream of, but that's not the point). And finally, a lot of people just are not impressed with the 360, which, coupled with production issues and the ever present hardware failures, put Microsoft in a less than ideal position. The thing is, where do things go from there? If Microsoft drops the 360, gives up on it, I say the advantage goes straight to Sony. The reason being, Sony & Nintendo stand to pretty much split the Japanese market, whereas Microsoft does better in the American market if only because most American developers work on Microsoft machines. They get a lot of pc ports as well, having an architecture and API built to directx specifications. Those developers are most likely to jump on the Sony boat if Microsoft goes under, which will give Sony an overwhelming share of the American market of developers, and where developers go, gamers go. Come 2012: Playstation 3 - 103 million consoles sold Revolution - 66 million consoles sold Xbox 360 - defunct What if Nintendo drops out of the conosle race? This doesn't seem likely, since Nintendo doesn't take much of a loss on consoles, and as long as they make money, they believe they always have a chance to succeed. History has not proven this to be valid, but as long as they believe they have a chance, they're going to keep trying. So it would take an abyssmal failure on the part of the Revolution for Nintendo to drop out of the home console race entirely. But then, isn't that exactly what Nintendo is looking at. The Revolution will be a powerful little console, but still noticeably inferior to a PS3 or 360. So Nintendo is banking on the experience they can provide. Better games, better way to play games, more variety, and years of history. There are two possibilities for failure here though. The Revolution just might not work as advertised. If that's the case, instant failure. The technology just might not be ready yet, and if it doesn't work, no one's going to buy it (see Virtual Boy). The other possibility is that people just might not "get it". It's a big shift, and people may miss the point. Nintendo will still manage to sell to those who do "get it", but in this scenario, those people are a minority. In this case, the market splits more evenly. Aside from Nintendo themselves, most of the developers who work with Nintendo already work with Sony, so all those developers go to the PS3. Sony pretty much shuts Microsoft out of Japan, so Microsoft has to make it up in the American & European markets (where, admittedly, it's strongest fanbases lie). Sony still manages to dominate, but Microsoft plays catchup admirably. Come 2012: Playstation 3 - 87 million Xbox 360 - 56 million Revolution - defunct What if Sony drops out of the console race? It could happen. Contrary to popular belief, Sony has not always taken a loss on consoles sold. Nintendo never has. Sony did not take a loss on PS1's sold, and they did not take too large a loss on PS2's sold, and eventually they got the production process down to the point where they were making a profit on it. However, the estimates on Bluray, the Cell chip and everything else Sony wants to cram into the PS3 appear to be soaring astronomically. It doesn't look like Sony is going to be able to sell the PS3 at all unless they sell it at a loss. The question is, how much of a loss, and how much of a loss can Sony afford? Only 2 of the different divisions in Sony Corp are actually making a profit right now, with the games division making the most. If the games division starts losing money too badly, the only thing that was propping Sony up disappears, the bottom drops out, and the entire Sony Corporation could disappear, not just the Playstation. With fierce competiton from the Xbox 360 that will have been out a year before the PS3 even hits, not to mention potentially devastating competition from Nintendo around launch (who stand the chance of duplicating their success with the DS), PS3 sales might not meet expectations, or even necessesity. With too few units out there to sell software, developers will abandon the PS3 in droves. This will mean a quick upsurge in 360 games as former PS3 projects are moved over to 360 development, but those same developers might look to the Revolution for future projects because of the lower development costs. Japan will likely fall to Nintendo, but the battle will be tough through Europe and the states. I expect neck & neck with Europe, with maybe a slight edge for 360 in the US. Come 2012: Revolution - 92 million Xbox 360 - 64 million PS3 - defunct So there you have it, the possibilities, and the conclusions, but wait, aren't we forgetting something? Oh yes, aren't there always 3 companies vying for the top position? So what will the 8th generation of gaming look like? Well, that kind of depends. The market for video games is very different from what it has been in prior years. If it's Nintendo that drops out of the race, chances are, you're only gonna have 2 companies going into the 8th generation, Sony & Microsoft. If Nintendo's 'cheap and fun' strategy doesn't work this time around, it will prove to developers that the onlyl way to make it in the home console arena is with expensive machines, big budget games, and large dev teams. You're unlikely to see another company go from scratch to try to jump into that market. If Microsoft drops out, you may end up with the same thing. Microsoft is the new kid on the block in gaming, and if they can't pull it off with billions of dollars in spare cash, that's going to scare off a lot of people who might otherwise plan on moving into the home gaming console business. "If even Microsoft can't compete with Nintendo and Sony, what hope do we have?" The only ones who'd even consider it would be the following: -Whoever it is who makes the Phantom Console. -Sega might try a comeback. They're making plenty of money as a software only company right now. With that capital to build on, and new management who can learn from their past mistakes, they stand a chance of doing it right. -Whoever now owns Atari (Infogrames, but they may not soon). As long as you can slap the Atari name on it, you can hit that nostalgia peak, and that might just give you a chance (as long as you can field the money to build the machine) On the other hand, if Sony drops out? Someone else will move in to fill the vacuum. Even if the Revolution sells 200 million consoles in 5 years on the market, totally blowing anything that has ever gone before out of the market, the Playstation mindshare won't disappear overnight, and it will simply be too tempting to jump in and try to take Sony's place. You're likely to see all sorts of players in taht scenario. But the most interesting scenario is, what if two of the companies drop out of the console race? The most likely thing, in this instance, is Nintendo reigns supreme. Let me explain why I come to that conclusion: Nintendo will not drop out of the console race as long as they continue to make money. The Revolution would have to be an abyssmal failure on the order of the Virtual Boy to affect Nintendo's profit margin. Therefore, Nintendo is the least likely to drop out of the console race. Now, neither Sony or Microsoft is likely to give up, even should they lose this generation, but there are limits to the amount of money Microsoft can afford to lose without affecting their other businesses, and Sony is in a tricky position. If the PS3 does well, they can keep it up, it's a moneymaker, but if anything goes wrong and sells drop too far below expectations, there's just no way Sony can justify it's continued existence. So, if this does happen, and Nintendo reigns supreme, will people just leave the market to Nintendo? No. Even if Nintendo manages to sell 230 million+ systems to a bare 20 million each of PS3 & 360, and those companies drop out of the gaming console race, there's just too much money to be made in videogames for anyone to ever let Nintendo have it all. If this scenario pans out, you're going to see everyone and their mother announcing their planned video game console. Most will throw some money into R&D then forget about it. But some will put their machines out there, and really provide competition for Nintendo. The Phantom Console will actually become a reality. It will release with only one game, Duke Nukem Forever, but will have plenty available within 4 or 5 months. Sega will try their hand at the console buisness again, mark my words. Maybe not 8th generation, but with their franchises, and making money hand over fist, they'll be ready to restart their rivarly with Nintendo by no later than the 9th generation of games (with a game released for both the Nintendo & Sega consoles that let fanboys of each console shoot fanboys of the other console in full VR arena's over a shared online network, it shall be named -- Snipe Hunt). Apple says they have no intention of getting into the gaming console arena now, but with the huge vacuum left by Microsoft and Sony, they'll change their minds pretty quickly. Plus there's no way Steve Jobs is going to let a chance go by to prove he can succeed in a market Bill Gates failed to dominate. The Apple iWIN gaming console will take the world by storm with it's sensible interface and ease of use. And those are just some of the companies that will likely go into the creation of game consoles in our future. Other companies to watch out for are: Google (with their Ggame console), IBM, Dell (after dropping their XPS line in favor of Alienware computers, they'll try to create either a Dell XPS console, or possibly an Alienware console, which might not be a bad idea), Capcom (cause seriously, who has more gaming experience), Time Warner or Comcast (with gaming consoles trying to take over the livingroom, traditionally cable's place, a cable company is bound to try to come in and take it back, unfortunately the console will be manufactured by Motorola), Blizzard (although it'll be a while for them, it takes them forever to get anything out, but once they do, they tend to dominate) and who ever ends up owning the Atari name next. Or maybe it'll be a new company we've never heard of, I don't know. Still, the chances of anything I've said in this entire entry happening are around the range of 11% +/- 5%. Current Mood: prophety (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006
2:14 am	Nintendo WiFi Connect, Revolution Style. Nintendo's philosophy about the internet is unique. They don't see it as a way to meet strangers and have massive games online. They see it as just another way to connect with family and friends, hence their use of friend codes with DS WiFi. However, the Revolution is a home console. Gaming from your living room is very different from gaming on the go, and so I expect Nintendo to take a different tact on this one. To come up with these ideas, I've had to take a lot of what I want there to be, mix it with the Nintendo philosophy, and the Gamespy method of doing things, and try to come up with something that will satisfy certain necessary criteria. So here's the way I think they should go. Basically, the only service has to be done very differently for the Revolution as it is for the DS. With the DS, the online system is cart based, each game implements it in it's own way. With the Revolution, in part because of the Virtual Console, the online service needs to be tied in directly with the Revolution Interface, so I'm going to talk more about the Nintendo Experience and the Nintendo Profile System. This idea all started when Nintendo announced they'd be including parental controls in the Revolution. There are a lot of ways to do this, but what better way than to build Profiles into the interface of the system itself? That way, a family can purchase a Revolution, let's say the Father does so. Father sets up his profile, and WiFi Connect sets up a unique id for this profile. In this profile, you include the genres of games you like, and what rating of games are allowed. Father's profile, of course, is wide open. Then Father sets up a profile for his son (or daughter). With the child's profile, you'll want to set it up so they can only play games rated E10+ or under. Because this is an innocent child, and you want to protect them, you can also lockout certain internet features, such as the ability to download games from the virtual console (although they can play downloaded games) or voice chat. Perhaps he sets up a profile for his wife that's also wide open, except she also can't download games (maybe Mother has a impulse shopping disorder). And finally, there is a default, Guest Profile, which limits to the lowest common denominator. E Rated games only, internet access available, but only with registered friends, no voice chat, no downloads, no movie playback. So how do you access your profile? Password. But not just any password. With a built-in microphone, it can have a voice print password. Alternately, you can just use the revmote. Record a series of movements, and that's your password. Quick, easy to enter, intuitive, and damn near impossible for anyone else to get (will need a reasonably easy reset feature to reset to factory standard). Each profile has it's on WiFi ID, and therefore it's own registered friends list (except the guest profile). This way, you can have an open profile who can play with anyone, and a limited profile (like your son's) who can only play with registered friends. How do they register friends? With friend codes! Of course, an open profile can actually search for friends online, but a closed profile has to register friends first, with friend codes. The difference here is, because the online system is part of the console infrastructure, friend codes will be persistent across games. The only reason they're not with the DS is because each game implements WiFi play independently, it's not a part of the infrastructure of the system. This is mostly due to the fact that WiFi Connect was added after the DS was released. But it's finished now, they've had time to tweak it, and still more to work on it. They can code it directly into the BIOS of the Rev. This will give us persistent friends lists, parental controls for games & the internet connection, online play (both competitive & cooperative) & Voice Chat. Things like record keeping, leaderboards and such can be done on a game by game basis. I've already covered what I think they should offer in Smash Bros Online. Leaderboards, stats on which characters are most played, spectator modes and whatnot, but again, that's on a game by game basis. Next comes the Virtual Console. First, we need the ability to search by System, Franchise, Name or Character. Find the game, pay for it and that game is added to your profile. Now, what's great about this. Because each profile is individual, you can stick a credit card number on your profile, and leave it there. Your son, or a friend gets on, they don't have access to a profile that even allows downloads, so even if they have your credit card number, they can't download anything. Once the game is registered to your profile, you download the game to the built in flash memory (or to a removable SD card even) and you can play the game. Once a game has been downloaded any profile on that system can play that game (assuming it's not rated too high for that profile). Even if the game gets accidentally deleted, because it's stored to your profile, you can log right back in and redownload it. Now we begin to stretch into things that are a tad less likely, but with reason. Nintendo feels that games are something you should play with friends. Once you download a game from the Virtual Console, you should be able to take it to a friends house and play it on his Revolution. Of course, the only way they can allows this is by DRMing the memory card you use, so that the game cannot be read by a pc. There's not really any way for them to prevent you from copying it to pc, but if it's something other than a standard ROM image, you won't be able to play it with current emulators, and that means new emulators will have to be developed that can decrypt and play the image. That ought to stifle all but the most dedicated pirates, which is really all you can ever hope to do. (Plus, most of the dedicated pirates already have the original ROM images and emulators to play them.) But you know what friends like to do? They like to let each other borrow games. The best way to do this is with timed copies. Let's say you download Super Mario Bros 2 to your SD Card. You go over a friend's house who's too young to ever have played it. He likes it, and wants to keep it for a while and play it. The Revolution Interface won't allow you to copy a game from one SD Card to another, but it will allow you to copy a game from an SD card to the internal Flash Memory of another Revolution. When it does, it deletes the original (but that doesn't matter since you can redownload it, because it's saved to your profile) and starts a timer. Different games can have different timers even, it can be added to the encrypted ROM image fairly easily. After 5 days or so, the game deletes itself, and your friend got to borrow it for a while and play it, and if they didn't get to finish it, may decide to go out and download it themself, just so they can complete it. Win/Win situation for Nintendo and their customers. Coupled with this is what a lot of people are talking about, letting you download retro games to an SD card, and use an adapter for the DS to play them on your DS. I'm totally for that, and think that, even it's not available this year, that Nintendo will eventually create such a thing. It's a good idea, and will sell a lot of DSes whenever sales start to slump (assuming such a thing ever happens). The final bit is something I think should be included, but it's really far out there in the realm of speculation. It centers around profiles. Because each individual person can have a different profile, each individual person will have a different friend code. I see Nintendo going this route for the following reasons. The DS is a portable, it's a one person system. When you're playing multiplayer, you expect everyone to have their own DS. A home console is different. Nintendo wants the whole family playing together. They expect to have three or more profiles in a household, one for everyone who uses the Rev. This is especially important in games like Super Smash Bros., which keeps track of all your battle stats, how many KOs you've gotten, how many falls you've taken, and how often you've leaped to your doom totally of your own volition. But what if I'm over a friend's house, and he wants to start a quick game of Smash Bros.? All your stats are back on your Rev memory card...but wait, no they're not. They're actually on you profile. As long as you know your profile ID (or friend code or whatever), and your password, there's no reason you can't load your profile on a friend's machine, and then when you whoop up on him, it'll increase your online kill count (because, of course, your kill count is the only proof you have that you are a gamer and not some kind of game playing poseur). With a global profile system, this is possible, but not something I really see Nintendo having the foresight to do. It's not something you can do with Xbox Live (partially because I don't believe Live offers multiple profiles on a single system), and will help them differentiate themselves. Maybe Gamespy will knock a bit of sense into them on this point. Anyway, that's the online feature set I'm looking at, anyone have anything else to add? Current Mood: geeky (Comment on this)
Saturday, March 18th, 2006
12:44 am	Why the Revolution Controller will fail. I am fairly optimistic about the Revmote, but it has a lot of potential hurdles ahead of it. The first and most obvious is, will it work? The simple truth is, if the Revmote fails to operate as advertised, then it is just that, a failure, and anything else discussed in this entry, and in fact in this entire journal, becomes moot. Therefore, we will operate under the assumption that the Revmote will work exactly as Nintendo has said it will (which, their controllers and systems always have), and discuss the numerous problems ahead of us. Problem 1: The Revmote will be too precise. Yeah, I know, a lot of you are thinking, "What, we want it to be precise. The more precise, the better!" Well, to a certain extent that's true, the more precise the hardware, the greater potential it offers. This problem is purely a software problem. If you're developing a First Person Shooter, feel free to totally ignore this part of the conversation. In FPS' you want the controller as precise as possible. Though I don't have a link, when IGN got a chance to play around with the controller at TGS (Tokyo Games Show), they said that the controller was so precise that they had to hold the controller with both hands to line up a shot in the Metroid Prime controller demo. You know, much like you hold a gun with two hands if you want any actual accuracy. This is a little encouragement that the controller will be precise enough for applications that need it. But what if you're building a simpler 3d platformer? Want your character to move right, turn the controller right. Move left, turn left. Jump or climb, tilt the controller up. Crouch or climb down, tilt the controller down. We're already in Mario 64 territory here, but I'm not quite up to doing game conversions, so let's get back to what the problem with this formula is. Yes, with a highly sensitive and precise controller, simply turning your wrist will move your character, but when you really get into a game, you're going to have a tendency to move your entire arm. This is a good thing, it makes the experience more interactive. The downside is, no one moves their arm along a plane. When you move your arm to the right, the chances of your keeping it perfectly level are slim at best. Most likely you'll be moving in a diagonal, up a little, and to the right a lot. How much upward movement you put into it depends on how much the game excites you. So, where exactly does the difference lie between a movement to the right, and a movement up? Depending on the game and the developer, that will change. If the developer leaves the precision turned up to max, every little degree higher your controller moves up, will trigger a different movement of the on-screen character. While that appeals to me, and probably a lot of you out there, provides great ideas for a really complex involving platformer, we're in the minority. Most people are not that used to making the type of precise movements we've learned to deal with. While somehting like that is logical, it's also far too complex for the general market. So the first failing of the Revolution controller is you're going to run into a lot of games where the precision setting is all wrong. You'll have FPS where the precision is set too low to be worthwhile. Platformers where the precision is set so high it becomes more complex than a game of Dragon Poker (if you don't know, read the link, then go out and look for the books, they're great). Fighting Games, with their complex combo and special move systems will be particular sensitive to this issue. Problem 2: This is a simply a matter of cognitive dissonance. Though the controller is very precise, it does not work on the same principles as a light gun. It doesn't emit a laser directly at the screen, instead it simply reacts to your movements based on whatever is set as the home position. This means that when controlling an onscreen character, though that character reacts to how you move a controller, their movements don't exactly mimic the controller movements. And example, remember those few arcade games, where you were a little guy in a plane or whatnot, moving forward in a 3d world, and you had to dodge left, right, down or up to avoid shots, while pressing a button to shoot your own shots and take things down? I can't remember the name of a single one of them, but I've played them. I think that's a sufficient description. Let's say you have a large tv, with a large picture image. You don't want to have to drag your arm back and forth to get your character across the screen. It's far less tiring (and less straining to your musculature) if small wrist movements accomplish the movements, with enough leeway that you can make big movements without totally throwing yourself off. The problem is, if the character is not exactly where you're pointing on the screen, this will cause cognitive dissonance in the control. Take a nifty 3d wall jumping puzzle, with our favorite bounty hunter Samus Aran. Now, with this improved controller, you're not just bouncing off of walls on either sides, but walls in various directions, including ones which are conceptually located where the screen is (but transparent so you can still see Samus). Now, Samus moves at a fairly constant speed, and you can move your arm a lot faster than Samus can leap across empty air. This means that, while Samus follows the direction and force of your movements, she doesn't move as fast as you're likely moving your arm. So you're on the ground, you jump Samus to the right, towards the first wall, and how do you react next? Do you hold your arm there until Samus gets there, or do you return your arm to the rest position, knowing it won't affect Samus' jump because she can't just turn around in mid-air (okay, well, she can, as can Mario for that matter, but we'll assume they went for a more realistic physics model this time)? Either way works, but when Samus does hit the wall, and then has to make the jump forward, then a jump backwards, then to the right again, to the left, backward, to the right, forward, backward and to the left, and you're timing this not to make the jumps until Samus' hits the wall so she can bounce off, Samus' location is going to get farther and farther removed from where you're pointing the Revmote. For any gamer who can use an analog joystick, this isn't a problem. We're used to our control being relative. Wherever the character is, our controller works the same way. Unfortunately, that is counterintuitive to operation in the physical world. In the physical world, when we move something, we expect it to stay moved. When we stop, we expect it to stay stopped. Unless some other force acts on it. And if some other force acts on it, we expect to have to go back to our starting position to pick up where we left off. Let's say in the earlier example, you miss one and Samus falls. A gamer would know, because control is all relative, that you just jump your controller to the right again to start off, wherever the controller was when she fell. A non-gamer would, quite naturally, expect that they have to catch the controller up to Samus before they can start all over. A sensible assumption, and one which, utilizing standard controls, is totally wrong. So, which do you follow. The more logical relative control system used now that your hardcore gamers would have no trouble with? Or the more sensible absolute control everyone else would expect? My gut says to go with the logical way. With the controller no longer being a barrier, any person with a bit sense and a little patience can eventually figure it out. If you go the sensible way, it'll eventually just become a nuisance, and yoru hardcore gamers are going to be much bigger about complaining than your casual gamers. But again, this is just an issue that's going to come up. Problem 3: Another issue of cognitive dissonance here. This one can be demonstrated with the previous example of Samus and her wall jumping, but a better example has to do with the speculation of sword fighting games. Again, the motion sensing of the controller is not limited by the tv screen. Theorectically speaking, a game could have action going on outside the screen, which you could control without ever seeing (hey, there's another interesting game idea). So let's say you get into a sword fight, and you're using your Revmote as a sword, and you're swinging it wildly to destroy your enemies. And let's say your enemy blocks your attack with his sword. The problem stems from the fact that the in-game sword does not stop your arm from swinging. Now, personally, I can only see this as a good thing, as you'll be swinging wildly, get blocked, then not have enough time to recover to block your enemy's attack, which will teach you not to do that again. Anyone who's actually used a sword knows a more controlled swing is best, unless you've already made it past your opponent's defense. But this problem crops up in other ways. When doing Samus' wall jump, how do you know when to jump, do you jump when she first strikes the wall (when the controller first rumbles) or after she has a half second to push off against the wall (in every game so far it's option 2). With no limitation stopping you from moving the controller farther than it has to go to accomplish the task there are going to be a lot of game overs in gamers' futures. Now, as I've already said, I don't actually consider this a problem. I consider it "learning not to be an idiot". Most people will eventually get that they don't have to wave their arm all over the place, they just have to move it enough to accomplish their chosen action. However, there's still the matter of cognitive dissonance. Of course there'll be built-in rumble, but this is, overall, highly inefficient. The rumble used in standard controllers in a nice feature, but it hardly gives you any real information. The solution to this is true haptic feedback. Not just rumble, but with precision harmonics, mutiple motors and whatnot, you can make it so that the controller will seem to change texture, change weight, and in general, feel like it actually reacts to the game world. When you swing that sword, you won't actually feel the shock of contact, but a good enough simulation of it that your brain stops your hand subconsciously. Of course, this has it's downsides as well, the main ones being that it's fairly complex to pull off, requires some expensive parts, and will probably eat battery in much the way poor college students devour Ramen (ravenously). That's it, those are the main problems I forsee with the Revmote. It looks comfortable enough (although I'd hope for it to be slightly wider than the one we've seen for max comfort). Being tired out by it's use is hardly a factor. The games where you're swinging it around wildly will tire you out, but those will mostly be multiplayer games, played with friends, with frequent breaks to laugh, joke and eat in between. I expect most games will barely require more movement than using a mouse in a PC FPS requires. The only reason you'd get tired is if you're sitting up, focusing on the screen, and getting your whole body into the control, and if the game's captured your attention to that degree, chances are you won't realize how tired you are until after you're finished playing. Current Mood: geeky (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, March 17th, 2006
1:45 am	The real point of the Revolution Controller. Many people, when discussing the pros and cons fo the Revmote, are, I think, missing the whole point of the controller. Most of the complaints are along the line of, "How can I play "game X" with almost no buttons?" Others complain that the controller is too simplistic or will cause stress, strain or exhaustion. I think I've already covered the "too simplistic" argument. The other arguments require a look at why Nintendo went with the controller they did. The entire point of the Revolution controller is to be transparent. That's it, that's the entire point right there. It's not supposed to be easier, more robust, more effective, whatever they say. The entire point is for control to be so transparent that anyone, from a 4 yr old girl to an 97 yr old man, can pick it up, and immediately start playing without ever reading a manual, or even knowing what game they're playing. It all comes down to behaviours. Anyone who has been playing games as long as I have started with a joystick, and maybe a button. They've used trackballs, paddles and other bizarre items that often only worked with one game. When the NES was released, they then switched almost seamlessly to the gamepad, and were joined by millions of other people, many who hadn't played games before. Then more buttons were introduced. Shoulder buttons were added. Triggers came about. Analog joystics along with the control pad. Then 2 analog joystics, and 4 shoulder buttons. Even more buttons on the facepad. And us, we gamers, adapted as our controllers did, without missing a beat. What this means is, most people who consider themselves gamers have had an average of about 10 years to acclimatize themselves to the controller. These are not the people for whom the Revmote was made. That being said, if you can go from playing an FPS on the pc, to playing a platformer on the PS2, why do you suddenly feel you're going to have any difficulty adapting to a new, and different control style? And as I've already discussed, you're not losing any control options with this framework, you're gaining. On the other hand, look at everyone who isn't a gamer. Here's what I want you to do, go find one of these objects in your house: a remote control, a hammer, a screwdriver. Anyone of them will do. Hold it in your hand, grasp it, caress it even. Now, lift it up, move it right, move it left, tilt it up, twist it, turn it to the right. See how easy that was. This is the reason. Using a gamepad is an abnormal learned behaviour. It is not something that is natural to the shape and construction of your hand, or your muscular system. It is a learned behaviour, and one that less than 10% of the population ever learns. Pressing buttons is a natural instinctive behaviour. Even before they can speak well, even before they start crawling sometimes, infants press buttons. I know this, I've had little boys and girls in the house. Once they figure out that something happens when you press a button, you have to watch them constantly to stop them from doing it. Picking things up with your hands, moving them around, twisting or tilting your wrist are all natural instinctive behaviours. Again, these are not things you learn. These are things we've all been doing from birth. So what it comes down to is that 10% of the population has approximately 10 years of experience using a standard controller. 100% of the population has a lifetime of experience (which varies according to how long they've lived) using the Revolution controller. Everything that the controller calls for (except the use of the trigger button beneath it, that is a natural learned behaviour, it is not instinctive, but it is necessary to life that 99% of all humans learn it) is instinctive. It's not something you have to learn, there's no trial and error to it, because you've been doing it for years. Suddenly, you go from the complexity of a game being partly learning the controller, and partly in the game itself, to the entire complexity of the game being dependent only on the design of the game. No longer will new players have to search and figure out where there buttons are. There are only two, one is underneath your thumb, the other is underneath your forefinger. The game can be as complex as you want to make it now, because the controller, for all intents and purposes, is invisible. It is no longer a factor in how the game is played, because if you tell someone to move the controller to the right, they don't have to figure out you mean move the left analog stick to the right, they just move their hand to the right, something anyone on earth can do without even thinking about it. You say press the A button, they don't have to look down, there's only one A button, and it's bleeding obvious. Once you know where it is, you're not gonna forget, no matter how many times you switch games. And that, right there, is the whole point. The use of the controller is totally obvious. It's not something you have to learn to use. I believe the conversation went something like this. "Okay, we need a better way to make money." "Well, we need people to buy our games." "So how do we do this." "Well, with our current controller, only 10% of the population of the earth knows how to use it." "Ummm...that's not good, that means only 600 million people can buy our games." "Well, I have this new controller, you pick it up and move it around. 99% of the people on earth can do that." "We want 100%!" "We estimate 1% of all people on earth lack hands, arms, or are paralyzed." "Oh...do you have a controller they can use?" "Not yet sir, we're still working on games controlled with the mind, it'll be 10 years before that's done." "Right, 99% it is. We'll go with that one." For those of you who are slow, 5.94 billion is 9.9 times 600 million. While they probably won't manage to sell quite that many Revolutions, that automatically presents them with a larger potential market than Sony or Microsoft will be able to manage, simply because 90% of the population has to learn to use their controller first. Without a drive to learn that, they'll never buy or use a game console. And for those of you with me, here in the 10%, that are still moaning that the Revolution controller will be a problem. Have you ever used, well, anything. I mean, a phone, a shovel, an axe, a sword, a pencil or pen, a hammer, chisel maybe, even a remote control? Have you ever picked something up, thrown something, or just turned it around to get a good look at it? If you can do that, you can use the revolution controller. If you can't....how have you been playing video games up to this point? Oh, and look forward to the Nintendo Thoughtroller in 2016. Current Mood: impassioned (1 Comment |Comment on this)
1:23 am	Why a separate sensor bar? This one will be short, as I've only just recently considered it. Why, precisely, is there a separte sensor bar for the Revmotes? Why is it not simply included as part of the console? I can only think of 3 reasons. Maybe you have better ones. Reason 1: Form Factor. Basically, either Nintendo determined that the form factor of the Revolution wasn't broad enough to place the sensors in the sensor bar far enough apart, or they realized that the console might be placed inside an entertainment center, far below the tv, and possibly off to the side, and therefor might cause issues with sensing controller movement. This is the most likely reason, but could have been solved by altering the design of the console, if by doing nothing other than adding an antenna of some sort. Reason 2: Signal Transformation. I'm fairly certain it has been mentioned that the Revmote will use bluetooth for communication. There are advantages & disadvantages to this. Bluetooth is a low power, short range communication. It uses a smaller range of channels to communicate, but because it's communications are very short range, this is less of an issue. Also, low power means longer battery life, and we know how fond of that Nintendo is. However, while it is fairly resistant to wireless interference, bluetooth is not the most robust of wireless communications. It's entirely possible the sensor bar receives bluetooth communication from the controller, then sends a different type of wireless signal (or possibly it will be wired) to the console itself. By separating that out of the console proper, you free up extra processor cycles for the main processor. Which brings us to... Reason 3: Independent Calculation. It's been rumored on various occasions that the Revolution will have a PPU (Physics Processing Unit) in addition to it's CPU (Central Processing Unit). Check out the previous entry for a little bit of why that would be a reasonable assumption. I'm going to take it a step farther. Why tax your CPU with figuring out all the transformations for the movement & rotation of anywhere from one to four Revmotes, when you already have a sensor bar that is collecting the data for you. A small, 100+ MHz (that's 1 million calculations per second guys) processor in the base of the sensor bar itself, could gather all that information, calculate distance, velocity, acceleration, angular momentum, whatever it feels like, and hand that all readymade over to the Revolution, without wasting a single processor cycle on your CPU or GPU, which will be handling in-game physics, graphics & sound (as well as loading and unloading to RAM). Stick a small RAMstick in the sensor (or even a DIP chip, you probably don't need more than 64MB for controller data) and it can store controller data for a time, mimicing turbo controller functions without creating RSI's. And all without any loss to the main system. There are, of course, technical considerations to take into account with this, as you don't want the sensor bar to become a bottleneck, but I'm fairly certain engineers far more accomplished than myself could work it out easily. Current Mood: geeky (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Wednesday, March 15th, 2006
1:34 am	Revolutionary physics. The physics and engineering of the Revmote are interesting to consider. The first thing to worry about, is exactly how the motion/tilt sensing works. We already know that the Revolution uses a Sensor Bar, with a sensor at either end. Using these 2 sensors and (a) transceiver(s) in the Revmote, the Revolution will triangulate the position of the controller. However, there are several things to wonder about exactly how this is done. Starting first with the transceivers. There are several ways Nintendo can implement this. One transceiver in the front, with another in the back, so that seems to be the most commonly anticipated method. With this method, the exact location of the front of the controller and the back of the controller are known, so it doesn't even have to use gyros/accelerometers to sense pitch or yaw (would still be needed to sense roll). An alternate, and slightly more complex method, would be to have 4 sensors (front, back, left side & right side) or to just have 8 sensors, one for each of the 8 points on the controller (front top right, front top left, front bottom right, front bottom left, back top right, back top left, back bottom right, back bottom left). With that last setup, no gyros/accelerometers are needed at all, but that's a lot of traffic going back and forth between the console and the controller, and with 4 controllers, that's 32 separate signals firing off at once. A far simpler method would be to use a single transceiver in the center of the unit. Accelerometers & gyros are used within the controller to detect tilt independently of the sensor bar, which information is trasnmitted by the transceiver to the console. The sensor bar then just senses the location of the controller, and with the dimensions (length, width, height) of the controller known, all other calculations can be done by the processor. The idea that the controller can sense three dimensional movement is a major draw, but there are a lot of things this ability means for the future of game control. First of all is calibration. Because the sensor bar is a separate device from the console itself, the location of the controller is relative to the location of the sensor bar, not the tv. This means calibration is going to be necessary. My posit is that the home button 'recenters' the controller. Meaning, when you press the home button, whatever position the controller is in becomes point 0 (x=0, y=0, z=0). This is a good thing for several reasons. The first being, you may not be flush with your tv. Maybe you're sitting on the floor, below the level of the tv. Maybe your tv is catacorner to your sitting position. Maybe you're not holding the Revmote totally flat, as a comfortable holding position for a remote control is actually slightly tilted up around the x-axis. What's more, because the location of the controller is relative to the sensor bar, not the tv, or the image on the tv, should you move the Revmote out of range of the image on screen, it doesn't stop sensing movement. What this means is, when you reach the limit of the image on the tv screen, the console doesn't stop detecting your movement. In an RTS (Real Time Strategy) game, this can be used to scroll across the map (in much the way we use a mouse). In an FPS (first person shooter) this can be used to turn around. With recalibration on the fly, let's say you get uncomfortable, want to change position, or just get so into a game you move sit up and move closer to the screen. Hitting the home button recenters the Revmote's current position to the center of the screen (or wherever the home position for that game is, because the location is relative to the sensor bar, not the tv, it doesn't have to center on the screen at all, that's a whole other range of games to explore, I'll think about it and type something up on it later) and you can resume playing with almost no delay. Speaking of FPS, the best way to turn in an FPS would not be to move the controller to the side (totally unnecessary), but to tilt the controller right or left. As you tilt it right, you face farther and farther right, and if it tilt's beyond the range of the picture on screen, your character begins to turn around. But let's take it a step further. Functionally, because the console is constantly detecting the location and angle of the controller, the controller acts as an analog stick. Just think about it, you're at your home position, tilt the controller 10 degrees to the right, and your character begins to tiptoe slowly to the right. Tilt it more, 20 degrees, and your character begins to walk. Tilt 30 degrees, you've got a brisk walk, 40 degrees is a jog, 50 degrees is running, and 60 degrees is sprinting. A lot better than swinging your arm to the left or right just to move a character around. Now, a few equations. Distance = a - b (where a = a location in realspace, and b = a totally different location in realspace). Linear Velocity = Distance/Time Acceleration = Velocity/Time Force = Mass * Acceleration When moving the controller, the starting location of the controller is known, as is the ending location. All computers/consoles/electronic devices, have an internal clock at this point, so Time is also known. This means the Revolution will know where the controller is, what direction it's moving in, how fast it's moving, and it's acceleration. Mass is another thing entirely. The mass of the controller is one thing, it's constant. But, from a game standpoint, the only mass that matters is the mass of the in game objects. Imagine, if you will, a tech demo. In this tech demo, you have a glass wall. You also have balls of various mass and elasticity. The object of this demo is to throw the balls against the wall in front of you, and bounce them into the goal behind you. You pick up the first ball, grip your revmote tight, and push it toward the tv as fast as you can. This is the lightest, most elastic of the balls. It hits the glass wall, flattens, then zooms back and hits you in the face before you even have a chance to react. Which teaches you not to do that again. You pick up the second ball, grip your revmote again, but push it forward slowly. Unfortunately, this ball is really, really heavy. Because you pushed it so slowly, you have almost no acceleration, and it drops to the ground almost immediately. Sooo, let's try again. Next, the third ball. You decide to push the revmote forward faster this time, about halfway between the previous two tries, but don't push it as far out. This is a heavier ball, but you pushed it forward a shorter distance, meaning less Force, so it peters out a little before it hits the wall. Okay, you're getting frustrated, you pick up the next ball, heavist of all and only mildly elastic. You know it needs a serious push, so you go all out again, and it flies alright, hits the wall, and breaks through the glass. These are just the kind of things you can do with simple physics calculations and objects of varying mass. Current Mood: geeky (5 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, March 9th, 2006
7:43 am	Deconstructing the Revolution Free Hand Controller Figuratively speaking. Later I will go into the meaning and function of the Revolution Controller (more fondly known as the Revmote), but this particular entry is for all the people who for some reason seem to think that the Revmote is going to have less control options than a standard controller. It doesn't. In fact, depending on how you calculate it, it either has exactly the same number, or it has more. We'll start with the "standard" controller, and the options it gives you for control. We'll be using the PS2 Dual Shock 2 controller as our reference, since it has the greatest number of control options currently available. First it has 2 analog sticks, with 4 control options each (up, down, left, right) for a total of 8 (this is ignoring diagonals for reasons I will explain later). 8 Next it has a control pad adding 4 more options. 12 Four face buttons (square, cross, circle, triangle). 16 Four shoulder buttons (L1, L2, R1, R2). 20 Start & Select buttons. 22 And the oft forgotten analog buttons (L3, R3). 24 That's right, 24 separate and whole control options. But let's look at how many you can realistically access at the same time. You cannot use the left analog control and the control pad at the same time, so togheter that's 4 options. However, if you are using the left analog control, you can use the left analog button (L3), so that's 5 options. 5 You cannot use the right analog control the four face buttons at the same time either. Most games use the face buttons, giving you only 4 options, but we will go with the optimal, right analog control for 4 options, plus the right analog button, making it 5. 10 Let's assume, just for the sake of argument, that access to all 4 shoulder buttons is equal, that if you needed to, you could press all 4, or any 3, with little to no difficulty (not true for most people, but some people are just that dextrous, so it has to be considered). 14 Finally we'll say, just for the sake of argument, that if you need to make a mad dash for the start/select buttons, assuming they have some valid game function (which they never do), you can do so without a noticeably adverse affect on your game play. 16 That means the "standard" controller stands with Possible control options: 24 and Actual control options: 16. Now let's look at the Revmote, and let's not forget the nunchuk attachment. The Revmote itself gives you 6 control options to start with. To do this wll take some basic understanding of math, but I assure you, it's 6. It detects movement along the x, y and z axes, both positive and negative. That means you have backwards, forwards, up, down, left & right. 6 What's more, the Revmote detects rotation, which means you have 6 more command options. You get pitch, yaw and roll, again both positive and negative values. Essentially it means you can rotate it around the x axis, around the y axis or around the z axis. 12 Next, on the actual controller you have 1 face button A, and one trigger button B, for 2 extra options. 14 Next you have Start, Select & Home buttons, adding 3 more. 17 Not to mention the control pad on the Revmote, giving you 4 more options. 21 Totally ignoring the lower A & B buttons as they are functionally the same as the A face button and B trigger button (and also are not really used in normal play), you get 21 control options with the Revmote alone (vs 24 with a standard controller). But wait! The Revmote has an analog attachment, to provide extra control! On that analog attachment you have an analog thumbstick (already noted above as being 4). 25 And what's more, you then add L1 & L2 shoulder buttons. 27 That gives you 27 possible control options with the Revmote + Nunchuk. However, let's look at actual control options, as utilizing all of those simultaneously is really a bit of a stretch. So, on the Revmote, you have your 6 controller movement options. 6 Your 6 rotational options. 12 Your A & B buttons 14 Since we gave Start & Select the benefit of being worthwhile on the Dual Shock, we'll have to do the same for the Revmote. 16 The Home button will probably be a funtion button to reposition the controller (much the way you pick a mouse up, and move it, to reposition it if you still need to move farther in the same direction). And the control pad is, essentially, non reachable for most games, so we won't count it, leaving us at 16 for the Revmote alone. Now, let's add the Nunchuk, and you'll see that all 6 of it's options (the analog thumbstick and L1 & L2 buttons) are still viable. 22 So, the grand total, when everything is said and done is: Dual Shock Total: 24 Dual Shock Actual: 16 Revmote Total: 21 Revmote Actual: 16 Revmote + Nunchuk Total: 27 Revmote + Nunchuk Actual: 22 Meaning that, giving the Dual Shock the benefit of the doubt in every possible instance (cause how many games seriously use the R3 & L3 buttons as buttons in their own right, or choose right analog control over face button control...and how many games ever expect you to have to be able to discreetly press any four of the shoulder buttons, or any combination thereof with any kind of accuracy?), the Revmote still beats or ties it in nearly every single instance. So what is the conclusion here? With the Revmote, you're not losing control options. At the absolute worst, you will have exactly the same number of options for control as you have now. If all else fails, you can simply map each command from another game one for one to a movement or rotation on the revmote, with the most frequently used commands for the face and trigger buttons. Because movement and rotation can be done simultaneously, it doesn't even matter if you have to be able to press some buttons simultaneously, that possiblity is there. Also, since I did not include diagonals, any commands that are not assigned to movement in the exact opposite direction, could also be done simultaneously (for instance, you can move the controller back and to the left, or even up, back & to the left if 3 buttons need to be pressed simultaneously). Conclusion: Revmote wins Now, the reason I took out diagonals is because, aside from adding complexity to the argument, when you add diagonals, the Revmote utterly trounces "standard" control. Let me show you why. With the Dual Shock, the analog thumbsticks have 8 control options each (up, up/left, left, down/left, down, down/right, right, up/right), changing the Dual Shock control numbers from 24 & 16 to 32 & 24. The Revmote, unfortunately, is not so simple when you add diagonals, being a fiendishly more complex mechanism. When you add diagonals, you add an additional 20 control options. Changing the Revmote numbers to 41, 36, 51 & 46 respectively (remembering that the nunchuk, now that we're counting diagonals adds 8 for analog thumbstick and 2 for shoulder buttons). Just in case you're not seeing it, here are all the possible diagonals: 1 x+, y+, z=0 2 x+, y-, z=0 3 x-, y+, z=0 4 x-, y-, z=0 5 x+, y=0, z+ 6 x+, y=0, z- 7 x-, y=0, z+ 8 x-, y=0, z- 9 x=0, y+, z+ 10 x=0, y+, z- 11 x=0, y-, z+ 12 x=0, y-, z- 13 x+, y+, z+ 14 x+, y+, z- 15 x+, y-, z+ 16 x+, y-, z- 17 x-, y+, z+ 18 x-, y+, z- 19 x-, y-, z+ 20 x-, y-, z- So let's go over our numbers again, with diagonals, that's*: Dual Shock Total: 32 Dual Shock Actual: 24 Revmote Total: 41 Revmote Actual: 36 Revmote + Nunchuk Total: 51 Revmote + Nunchuk Actual: 46 Meaning the Revmote alone absolutely trounces anything a "standard" controller can do. Significantly trounces no less. Of course, this again very nearly eliminates the possibility of using combinations on the Revmote, except for combinations that are made of a button press and a movement of the Revmote (like holding down A, then moving in any one of the 26 possible directions, but I think we've shamed controllers as we know them enough for one aside). ----------------------------------- *Note: This still only gives you 6 control options as far as rotation is concerned. No matter where you move the Revmote to, you can still only rotate it around the 3 given axes. I suppose, if you really, really want to get complicated, you can, calculate further rotation of a controller that's already rotated as different from the rotation if the controller is in it's default state (that state being perfectly level to the floor and pointed at the tv) but that requires trigonometric calculations I just don't feel like going into. Current Mood: ranty (Comment on this)
Sunday, March 5th, 2006
3:01 pm	Super Smash Bros Control I have given this a lot of thought. The Revolution Free Hand Controller (henceforth known as the Revmote) has a lot of potential. But a lot of people are misconstruing it's purpose. The idea behind the revmote is to make game control transparent. It simplifies learning to control a game by making the controls something that most people are already familiar with, such as moving your arm. No worries, I'll go more into that later, for now, sticking with Super Smash Bros. I've thought about the possible controls for Smash Bros. Revolution, and finally came to the decision that the control system is already so simple there is no practical way to improve control with the Revmote. All that forcing it to utitilize the motion sensing will do is make it more complex. If we have learned nothing from the DS, it's that not every feature has to be used on every game. Super Smash Bros. exists to spotlight online play (and boy will it), not to revolutionalize controls. So, my preferred control method for Super Smash Bros. Revolution is as follows: Revmote and Analog Nunchuk. A button remains as your normal attack. B trigger remains as your special attack. L1 is your guard button. L2 is your throw button (what Z used to be). For those of you who used C-Stick smash, the control pad right below the A button is your auto-smash. No jump button, so if you were used to it, get over it, now you jump using the Analog stick, which controls movement. All mechanics are the same, and for the new mechanic, L1 + B will be your stance change. That will prevent you from accidentally attacking during stance change, and provide a modicum of protection (of course, the stance change could be an attack in itself). And that's it, simple, efficient, fun. No more to say on this subject. EDIT: It has been brought to my attention that there is a small alteration that would probably work better. Instead of using the control pad to replace the c-stick smashes, swing the Revmote for autosmashes in any direction. This frees up the control pad for the following actions: Left/Right - Stance change. You start in your normal stance, press left to change back a stance, right to change forward a stance. With only 3 stances, it's much more efficent then cycling through them, since you can quickly change to whichever stance you desire. Up - Taunt. No, really, we enjoyed taunting our friends before. You can't take it away from us now. Down - Actually, we're pretty much out of commands at this point, so it doesn't have to do anything. Just thought I'd mention it. EDIT 2: Also, two of those buttons needs to be swapped. L1 should be your throw button (the frontmost L trigger). L2 should be your guard/dodge button (the rearmost L trigger). Since throws are used more often than guards (so I've found), I think that might work better. Others might disagree with me, but that's the way I play. Current Mood: geeky (4 Comments |Comment on this)
1:56 pm	Super Smash Bros. Online I have a lot to talk about how Revolution Online should work, and it's closely tied into some features of the Revolution Interface & Virtual Console. I'm not going to go into all of it, and some of the stuff I say later will have bearing on how Super Smash Bros. Online works, but right now, let's look at key features the online service for Super Smash Bros. should have. A more structured matching service. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy Mario Kart DS online, but sometimes I'm looking for a one on one matchup with talented stranger (well, not me, but I assume other people are). Automatically starting a match if you can't find enough people to fill a position is fine, but you should be able to decide beforehand how many people you actually want to go up against. You also need to be able to set rules going into a match. After all, some people prefer stock matches, others prefer timed matches. Sometimes you feel like a coin battle or other esoteric thing, and you should be able to experience any and all of those online. The second thing is battles with up to 8 players. While not at all feasible on the local level, even with system link and two tvs, 8 player battles online are not only feasible, but fun waiting to happen. It might be a bit much for some people, and may require a few special, dedicated 8 player stages (some stages are already too small for 4 players), but it would be a great addition. It would add an extra level of strategy (or at least an extra level of insanity) to the game. Coupled with voice chat, smack talk & friends list, this is a great way for friends spread across the country to spend some quality time together. The next feature is one that may or may not be difficult to pull off, but would be quite handy. Online play for multiple people from the same location. Let's say my friend comes to visit, and we decide to play Super Smash Bros. Two player matches get a little tired after a while. Each of us clearly has the advantage in different stage/character selection scenarios. We need more peopel to add a little randomness to things and even it out, so let's go online. Now it's the two of us, and perhaps two strangers, in a massive melee, every man for himself battle. There is no good reason me and three friends shouldn't be able to go online for an 8 person melee all from the same system if I have four controllers here. Finally, something unique to Super Smash Bros., it should have built in tournament functionality. Melee had a tournament option, but it involved passing controllers around and just a bunch of silliness. There just wasn't much use to it. But online, the ability to set up tournaments hardcoded into the game and the servers, would be pretty nice. A few things they should offer, however. First of all, they should offer more than just 8 slots. The max number of player slots should be 64 at least, with 256 as a max number being my preference. The tournament orgnaizer should be able to set up rules as to item controls, bout type (stock or time or coin), add a time limit even to stock matches so they don't go on forever, banned characters, banned stages (or even force everyone to fight on the same stage), and whether you get to choose a character/stage, or whether they're selected randomly (now that would be an intersting tournament, all character selections done randomly, with a different character for each match). As well as character persistance (meaning you choose one character at the start of the tournament, and you play that character throughout the tournament). Another thing they should have, as far as tournaments are concerned, is different matching structures. Single elimination tournaments are simple to conduct, but a double elimination or swiss style tournament is preferable. Sometimes you just have bad luck, a muscle spasm, or end up on a stage you just aren't equipped to handle. It's nice to have a chance to make your way back up to the top, and swiss style tournaments are perfect for that, since everyone gets to play in every match, and at the end, the final 8 duke it out in single elimination style. Also, all fights should be conducted simultaneously, with a spectator option in case you finsih your fight early (assuming stock battles, on timed battles, all fights would take the same amount of time). Also, people who aren't fighting in a tournament, or even a standard multiplayer melee, should be able to spectate on the bout, just to see what kind of techniques other people use (plus I think Super Smash Bros. real-time online bouts would make an awesome screen saver for my pc). Current Mood: geeky (1 Comment |Comment on this)
1:01 pm	Super Smash Bros. Environment Environment is very important to every game. In Super Smash Bros. it comes down to four things, Music, Stages, Modes & Authentic Sound Effects. Authentic Sound Effects are never a problem. If you've ever done Mario's Coin Punch (Up + B) you know the game includes sound effects are there for heavy nostalgia. Stages are a section where I personally feel Super Smash Bros. has been lacking, but for one reason only. I feel it is only right that every character have their own stage. I mean, if they had the clout to make it into the game, they really should have the chance at home field advantage. It might be a bit of a stretch to put in a different stage for every single character. However, every franchise should at least have one or two stages to call home. Even with the added Mario franchise characters, no more actual Mario stages are needed (as far as fighting stages are concerned). But I do feel Roy and Marth should have their own stage. Pitt, if he make it in, needs a stage, and an Animal Crossing stage for Tom Nook seems strangely appropriate. Stages and environment provide the game with variety, and that's something that makes this game the fun it is. Speaking of variety, Music is also really, really important. The classic theme song remixes are great to listen to, and provide narrative to the action. This is one case where I'm just going to say more is better. More remixes of classic game music, even if they just rotate the theme music for a stage, so when you play a stage multiple times, you don't always get the same music, would be stellar. That's right, literally stellar. So that just leaves us with the discussion of Modes. Classic Arena Mode is fine the way it is, no changes to that. Adventure Mode should be expanded with more, and different stages from Melee. I mean, I enjoyed the stages in Melee, I just don't want to do them anymore. And how to include more stages, perhaps two for every franchise in the game, without making it interminably long? Set it up with a sort of pathing element. Let's say the first stage is a Mario stage, and it ends not with a flag & castle, but with Warp Pipes. Which pipe you choose decides what path you go on. Later you're on a Fox stage, you defeat it, and it puts you in an Arwing, depending on how well you did, you fly to a different planet, meaning a different path based on skill. You only really need two branching points in this game, and you get about the same number of stages in Melee's Adventure Mode, even with three times as many stages. Finally, I enjoyed All-Star Mode. It's a good place to go for a challenge in the early stages of learning to play the game. Except, I think, with more characters, they should ramp up the difficulty, not just the length. And by ramp up the difficulty, I mean not just go up to you vs 3, but to you vs 4, you vs 5, you vs 6, and finally you vs 7. That's right, 8 character matches of mayhem, but not for normal play, only in special situations, and I think this qualifies. It keeps All-Star mode from getting ridiculously long. Event Match was annoying, took me a while to get to the skill level where I could beat it, and that's why I think it should remain, but with whole new events, of course. A challenge for the hard core players, but nothing too vital to beat. Practice Mode should stay around, with even more puzzle modes added. The target test, multiman melee and even the home run contest are all good, but there should be additional modes added to help train more advanced mechanics. This mode should have several options to teach and practice not just how to beat the game, but how to master it, because, this game will be going online, and some of us will wish to focus and improve our skills before we go out into the world to test them out. For vs Mode, I have nothing to add. Everything that's there now is as it should be. I suppose more Special Melees might make it in, but I'm not particularly entranced by such a thing, so I'd be more than willing to let the whole section slide. Others might feel differently. But the real vs action will happen online, and that's where I'll be going next. EDIT: One extra thing that came up in discussing Environment. Character Costumes. It's nice that characters can change the color of their costume, but they should be able to change their actual clothes as well, especially characters that wear different clothes in some of their games. Current Mood: geeky (Comment on this)
Saturday, March 4th, 2006
2:31 pm	Super Smash Bros. Mechanics Mechanics First, let us go over the mechanics that exist in the game currently. Though Super Smash Bros. is very simple to learn, it is a fairly complex game. I'm going to grab some of this from the Super Smash Bros. Melee Wikibook. Basic Attack - Done with the A button and the Control Stick, these are your standard, quick attacks, in any direction. Smash Attacks - Done by 'Smashing' the Control Stick and pressing the A button, these are slower, but often your strongest, most devastating, attacks. (Can also be done with the C-Stick) Charge Smash - New to Melee, the ability to hold a smash by performing it, but instead of tapping the A button, you press it and hold it down. In this way you can hold a smash for better timing, and also, it increases in strength while it is held. Special Attacks - Done with the B button and the Control Stick, these are the attacks that truly make each character unique. The four attacks (B, Down + B, Up + B and Forward/Back +B) are unique for each character (barring the occasional clone character). Shield - Done with the L or R button, it shields you from damage. Unfortunately, the shield is only temporary, gets weaker over time, and if it gets too weak, you're stunned. Nonetheless, an effective manuever. Dodge - Done with the L or R button and the control stick, allows the character to dodge an attack. Better than using a shield as you can initiate your next attack immediately. Air Dodge - While in midair, done with the L or R button. Dodges attacks in midair, but you lose control of your character until you touch ground again. Grab - Done with the Z button, or the L/R button + A button, you can grab and hold another character. Once you have them, you can either beat upon them for a bit, or toss them aside, you know, for fun. Picking up Items - Done with the A button, if you are standing over an item, you will pick it up instead of attacking. Press A again to use the item. Throwing Items - Done with either Z button or the L/R button + A button, throws an item you are holding, preferably at an enemy. With prejudice. Item Catching - Done with the Z button, you can catch an item thrown at you. L Canceling - Done with the L (or R button actually) you can cancel some attacks before you complete them, to more quickly move into other attacks. Taunting - Just for fun. They should not, under any circumstances, ever remove the ability to taunt you opponents from the game. Jump - Just press up on the control stick, or press the X or Y button, and your character will jump. Double Jump - Every character can jump again in midair. Two jumps are better than one. Triple Jump/Recovery - For most characters, their Up + B special attack acts like a 3rd jump (again, not true for all characters, Yoshi being the most notable exception). Called a triple jump because most of these attacks also cause your character to move upwards, and can be used to get extra air. These special attacks serve a dual purpose as powerful and clever attacks, and as ways to recover from almost certain death. Unfortunately, like an air dodge, after they are completed, you are temporarily vulnerable until you touch ground once again. And, except for some really, really advanced techniques, and some actions that are very specific to the moveset of particular characters, those are the mechanics of Super Smash Bros. So what mechanics can we add to this? Well, my personal favorite would be the addition of stances. I think that one thing right there would obviate the need for clone characters (see the first Super Smash Bros. entry).. I will use Link as example. Let's say you have one button dedicated to changing a character's stance. But these are not just different fighting stances so much as they are different movesets entirely. Your basic, starting stance with Link is the current Melee version of Adult Link. He has all of current Adult Link moves, and uses the Master Sword & Mirror Shield. Your second stance would be Adult Link, but with a Kokiri Sword (or other lesser sword) and a lesser shield of some sort. Now you are using the same character, but his move set is like that of the current Young Link. He's weaker, but faster. And perhaps instead of arrows uses Deku Nuts, and his main A attacks are a trifle different. Your third stance would be perhaps Adult Link with Biggoron Sword and no shield. Now he's slower, but with much more power. All his A attacks are different, and instead of weapons for his B attacks (the arrow, boomerang & bomb) he uses the magic of the 3 goddesses, Din's Fire, Farore's Wind & Naryu's Love (although not quite in the way Zelda uses them, obviously). And that mechanic can be repeated across every single character, easily. Each stance not only changes the moveset for the character's basic and special moves, but changes their speed, attack, defense and everything. And since they can be changed on the fly, that will automatically increase the challenge rating and potential (but not necessary) complexity of battles. And really, that is the only mechanic I can think to add. Super Smash Bros. Melee is a very tight and well designed game. I'm certain there are brighter people than me out there who can think of other interesting, fun, or exciting possible mechanics. Don't hesistate to respond and suggest just such a thing. Current Mood: geeky (1 Comment |Comment on this)
2:06 pm	Super Smash Bros. characters pt 2 Teh biggest speculation/hope/consideration in the next iteration of Super Smash Bros. is the inclusion of non-Nintendo franchise characters. I can see both advantages and disadvantages to this. The advantages are obviuos. Yes, it's fun beating Pikachu up with Princess Zelda. But wouldn't it be great if we could finally see who would win in a fight, Sonic or Mario? So you see, obvious advantages, but let's take a look at the disadvantages. The first disadvantage: Where would it end? I mean, seriously, let's just look at the companies that have sufficient mascot style characters to make a contribution: Sega, Capcom, Konami, Namco, Square-Enix, Marvel, DC, LucasArts, so on and so forth. Yes, I know, X-Men in Super Smash Bros. seems unlikely, but these are not ideas I came up with. This is speculation all over the internet. Even if we limit it to video game icons, LucasArts, even without the Star Wars franchise, has plenty of gaming only characters to over up. I mean, be honest, if you had the option of playing the Purple Tentacle (from DoTT obviously) in Super Smash Bros., you'd do it. I know I would. With new franchises being created every few months the roster could get pretty unmanageable. Jak & Daxter, Spyro, even Rygar has seen a sequel. And they're working very hard to make Kratos from God of War iconic. I'd certainly be all for seeing characters from Ico & Shadow of the Colussus in the game. And I think the Prince of the Cosmos deserves his place, too. (Plus I'd just really, really like the ability to roll people up into my life during Smash matches.) Okay, so craziness is one issue. "Lookit! The craziness!" The next issue is one of balance. First of all, let me just say, balance is not always what it's cracked up to be. Though Melee was a technically superior game, I still prefer the first Super Smash Bros. to Melee for one simple reason. Melee was too overly balanced. They worked really hard to make the characters more evenly balanced, and it ended up nearly ruining some of the characters (especially Kirby, who went from being the undisputed strongest character in the game, to a character who was good, but not really any better than any other). This has it's good points and it's bad points. The more balanced version means all the characters are even, so more technical skill is involved in a win, but it is altogether less fun. It even takes some of the challenge out of the game. When one character is clearly better than every other, it gives you incentive to learn to use other characters at a higher level to compensate, because even in the extremely unbalanced first iteration of the game, no matter how inferior the character, if you had the skill, you could still best anyone. That was a long, long aside going into many of my personal issues, but is not the issue of balance I was speaking of. The issue of balance I was speaking of is character count balance. To whit, we're looking at somewhere in the range of 20-30 Nintendo charactes. Is it fair to invite another company in, and give them less representation? So, I came up with a particular way of how this should be done. First limit the companies you partner with to those which are closest to Nintendo in philosophy and character popularity. I'd say, probably, limit it to four companies, Nintendo, Sega, Capcom & Konami. All have plenty of iconic characters. Select 25 characters from each company, for a total of 100. Call the game Super Smash Bros. Worlds Championship. At the start of the game, not all characters for each company are unlocked, and what's more, characters can only fight within their own world (Sega characters against Sega characters, Nintendo characters against Nintendo characters, and so on). As you beat more of the game, unlock more stages and characters, and generally unlock more of the game, you gain the ability for characters to battle on any stage, against any character. There, you have equal representation, the seeds of a story, solid competition fodder between the companies, as well as within the companies, and while 100 characters is a lot to have different movesets for, it's not at the level of insanity that some people are advocating (I mean seriously, Darth Vader?). That's it for this, I believe I promised speculation on Mechanics next, yes? Current Mood: geeky (2 Comments |Comment on this)
7:39 am	Super Smash Bros. So where does the speculation begin? Oh now you're just being ridiculous. You know where it begins. Where it always begins. Super Smash Bros. Revolution. This entry will be split into several sections, each covering a particular facet of the upcoming game, speculation and hopes. The sections will be: Characters, Mechanics, Environment, Online and Control. Characters This is a vital topic when discussing Super Smash Bros. While it is true that Super Smash Bros. is such a great game because of it's design, it would be dishonest to say that the franchise characters are not an important part of the draw. Everyone has their favorite characters based on their strength, their moves, or just really, really liking the character. And, of course, some have played the games and have holdouts on favor characters from the first game, even though they were significantly changed in the second. However, before I go into the speculating on new characters for this game, there are a few things that, I think, are requirements for this upcoming game in this area. Clone characters. Nobody likes them. No, really, nobody does. There's almost no reason to play them. Except in the case of Marth & Roy and Link & Young Link, but even then, one can be seen as clearly superior, and so, they are unnecessary. So, the first thing to do is to get rid of all the clone characters, in the following ways. Luigi stays, because he is no longer really a clone of Mario. Similar, but built differently enough to be a worthwhile character. Dr. Mario goes. Just goes. Ganondorf stays, but for the sake of all that is holy, this is an evil wizard/thief/prince who has tormented every person with the temerity to be named Link or Zelda for EONS. EONS. If anyone deserves their own unique moveset it's Ganondorf. He should not be a cheap, less effective copy of anyone, much less Captain Falcon (a valuable character in his own right). Pichu is right out. Let us never speak of this again. Falco should go. He can stay if they give him his own moveset, but keep him faster like he is. Maybe give him a Mario/Luigi style relation ship to Fox, so that he has a similar feel, but is still an acceptably different character. Get rid or Roy, keep Marth. My reasons for this, Roy is actually stronger, but is slower. However, the difference on each access is small enough not to be worthwhile. So we keep Marth because he's slightly better balanced, and frankly, he has a better costume and better color choices. Bye bye Young Link. We still love you dearly, but your speed does not in any way make up for you massively decreased strength. We've outgrown you, so move along. Go summon the wind or something, we're busy fighting for glory. All other characters are fine as they are. For the record that gives us, Mario, Luigi, Bowser, Peach, Yoshi, Donkey Kong, Captain Falcon, (new and improved) Ganondorf, Fox, Falco (possibly if he's new and improved), Ness, Ice Climbers, Kirby, Samus, Zelda, Link (adult only), Pikachu, Jigglypuff, Mewtwo, Mr. Game & Watch and Marth. All these characters should stay. No point in backtracking, let's move forward. Now, for ideas for new characters, let's look at anyone who has potential. Starting with the Mario World we've got the following characters who deserve a chance for some payback. Wario, Waluigi and Daisy. All valid characters, as long as Nintendo doesn't make them just 'Dark Clones' of their respective nemeses (well, as much as Daisy is Peach's nemesis). And no Baby Mario or Baby Luigi. We've already discussed this when talking about Young Link. Following in this vein, there are some other Mario villains that require another look. I know Birdo & Mouser are from Mario 2, which was not actually a Mario game in Japan, but they're recognized as part of Mario Lore now, and they have distinctive moves (Birdo with her/his eggs, and Mouser the bomb throwing fool). And what about one of the Hammer Brothers, with their ubiquitous hammers. Certainly, these are not characters to easily plan out a full moveset for, but they are a beginning. A new Pokemon or two is a must. Pikachu and Jigglypuff were joined by Mewtwo in Melee. Not a fan of pokemon myself, but the variety of attacks pokemon have lend themselves well to this game. No in-depth look here, just that simple thought. Everyone in Zelda who's worthwhile is already there. No, seriously. Link, Zelda & Ganondorf. Don't even think Tingle, just don't. A Zora like Ruto, and maybe a Goron like Darunia. Actually, thinking about it, two of the other sages, Impa and Saria would make pretty good characters, too. So maybe the Zelda Lore isn't tapped out. And since Twilight Princess is coming, maybe a character or two from that will be worthwhile also. The only other Zelda character I can think of that might be workable is Vaati from the GBA/4 Swords games. Star Fox's Lore isn't quite tapped out yet. Although I don't think Slippy should make an appearance, except in his ship. And I think Peppy may be a little old to fight. That only leaves Krystal, who is a great character to have in the game, on two conditions. No more cloning, if she's a Fox clone, just leve her out. She uses the staff. With that magical staff from Star Fox Adventures (which she gives to you), you've got the beginnings of a good moveset right there. Kirby has a few friends who could join him. Specifically MetaKnight & King Dedede. I hesistate to invite others of the Family Kong in, but Diddy and Dixie should be different enough to merit a try. F-Zero has a long, long list of drivers who could make it in. I won't go into it, but I think they can manage to squeeze one more in, possibly Mr. EAD. As far as Metroid characters go. Metroid Prime Hunters is coming out soon, with a slew of new Bounty Hunters joining Samus. After a few rounds of standard FPS action, I see no reason they wouldn't try to get some of their dignity back with some good, old fashioned Smash action. As far as new properties go, the best idea I've heard in a long time involves beating the everliving crap out of Tom Nook from Animal Crossing. He deserves it. And plus, he'd be a great additon to Super Smash Bros., along with new items from his shop to add to the happy gay fun. Captain Olimar, or possibly one of the Pikmin from Pikmin is a good idea. And seriously. They added Ice Climbers. I'm sorry, it's time to add Pitt from Kid Icarus. I don't know why Nintendo hates Pitt so much, but I think he's earned his place here. He deserves a beating as much a anyone. Hmmm...this is pretty long. Looks like I'll have to move the next bit of speculation, on non-Nintendo characters, to a later entry. Later though. Current Mood: geeky (Comment on this)
6:42 am	Welcome to my page of speculation. Welcome to New Generations! A speculation page focused on the upcoming Nintendo Revolution primarily, and the future of video gaming in general. Certainly I'm a bit late to the party, what with the PS3 & Revolution coming out this year, but I figure, we're being kept in the dark so much that I still have time. Once I run out of ideas to speculate about, I will be deleting this journal and everything associated with it, but, well, things being as they are, that might never happen, or I might forget, so enjoy it for now. Current Mood: new (3 Comments |Comment on this)