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Alternative Game Controllers Swinging Swords and Punches As a geek I've played with the odd plastic sword or Nerf sword in my time. As a practitioner of various martial arts with a little kendo blended in I've swung a few real swords too, which is why I'm pretty excited by an emerging trend that's occurring right now. Two distinct companies, Hori Japan and Gametrak, have begun manufacturing martial arts weapons that plug in to the USB port on a Sony PlayStation 2. The Katana controller from Hori Japan is an official tie-in with the third installment of the Onimusha games, approximately 40" long and making use of weight sensors in the hilt, similar to baseball bat controllers. Because the sword is battery powered with a range of around 15', it allows players to make some fancy moves. Combined with Sony's EyeToy I could imagine both of these gadgets being used for practicing kata (standard sets of movements found in martial arts that mimic fighting with one or more opponents) and other large area fighting games. It is only a matter of time.
The same technology in the Katana controller would also work in a tennis racket, benefiting such games as Sega's Virtua Tennis. It might need to come with a warning to move all furniture out of the way so that an enthusiastic player doesn't injure themselves against the bookcase while diving for their opponent's high speed service. Swinging a tennis racket at high speed indoors probably isn't such a good idea around small pets either. Gametrak, a UK company exhibiting their wares at 2004's Game Developer Conference in San Jose, CA, has chosen a different solution to detecting movement and positions than the Hori Katana controller. Gametrak's controller features a weighted base that sits on the floor, and has two retractable strings attached to it, with sensors for the amount of string pulled out and the x/y angle. They demonstrated several controllers that connected to the strings, including a pair of gloves, similar to the fingerless type worn during weight lifting, a sword controller, and a golf club. The gloves allow the player to box with their virtual opponent in a first-person fighting game or swing a sword against an opponent. I'm not sure of the wisdom of first-person fighting games, other than first-person shooters and a few online role-playing games, first-person doesn't work too well when you have limited peripheral vision. I see this input hardware failing on so many levels unfortunately.
Similar input devices utilizing infrared that offer both hand gloves and foot gloves were demonstrated at this year's E3. Plastic swords and ping-pong paddles were also available as variations on a theme. The infrared versions exhibited slow response times with angles and positioning not entirely accurate, some of the blows, if executed too fast or in rapid succession would not be registered at all and a fast ping-pong serve could be completely ignored. Combining these technologies I can see an interactive martial arts training program, such as for Tai Chi or kendo, that showed on screen where to place your limbs, and then critiqued you on your form is a possibility. This would be quite useful for teaching kata without an instructor being constantly present. The major issue that any alternative controller faces, especially one that requires large body movements, is one of game play tuning. Rapidly stabbing at buttons to execute a flawless combo to beat an end boss is one thing, but the human body is just not fast enough to do the same thing whilst holding a large weapon. The games really would need balancing to the controller. Much of this is first-generation technology and will take several iterations, should any of the controllers survive, to become an enjoyable experience. Apart from the minor issues that these input peripherals face and the lackluster games demonstrating the technology the possibilities for game developers to explore new games un-tethered from the keyboard and mouse are dazzling. It's possible to create interesting, live-action role-playing games that allow the player to really swing their sword or fists and achieve an effective workout too. Use the Force. I've discussed the idea of a sword controller with a number of game playing geeks, and almost to a person they deny any interest in possessing the controller, the accompanying game, or even a Sony PlayStation 2 (or any other console for that matter in the case of PC-based gamers). The reasons are many but as always it comes down to a "killer app". In the small hours of the morning sitting at a coffee shop in Santa Monica, California, I was kicking around game ideas with some friends and colleagues and came up with a the "killer app" that made everybody's eyes light up. Should Lucas Arts ever put out a Star Wars game with a light saber controller that plugs in to the game console, I'm convinced that it would sell like hotcakes. The game and controller might even convince a few people to purchase a console just to play this one game. The Eyes Have It Francois-Yves Bertrand, a good friend of mine and ex-Activision cohort went to work for Sega in the early nineties, having designed a full-body optical motion tracking system using nothing more than a few cameras. Technically the system was brilliant but was never very popular commercially--I've only ever seen one in existence, a later model at the Sega GameWorks in Las Vegas, NV. With the increase in computing power, and low cost CMOS CCD cameras Sony has re-animated this dead technology, actively promoting their EyeToy, not just with a few lackluster curio games (remember the Nintendo robot for the NES and it's dearth of "entertainment" titles?) but with high quality, big-budget games such as snowboarding. With Sony bravely stepping in to the market a number of follow-the-leader companies are trailing along behind, bringing out identical peripherals for other consoles. I believe these other companies are really missing the point. To quote an old adage "It's the software, stupid!" Sony has got it right; they realize that the EyeToy is just a vehicle to support their games, not the other way around. The cheapness of Sony's EyeToy means that it's not unimaginable to think of games that require multiple cameras for full body motion tracking--currently the EyeToy only performs a simple 2D edge detection algorithm--or even multi-player elements. A multi-player game of Gauntlet using several EyeToys all focused on a group of people sounds appealing, a sort of multi-player cross between Twister and Gauntlet Dark Legacy. Multiple cameras also open up the idea of large play area games that map to a virtual space inside the computer. Auxiliary Programmable Screens It was only a couple of years ago at E3 that Massworks showed off their ID-75 LCD panel. This gadget, a solution looking for a problem, and strangely, marketed towards gamers, provided a 320x240 resolution, 4" diagonal, programmable, touch-screen LCD panel that plugged in to an available USB port. The LCD would display custom bitmaps and act like a programmable keyboard which evoked memories of a Bosch graphic workstation from the '80s. The Massworks ID-75 failed as a product for a number of reasons, not least of which was the nearly $300 price tag, which is a shame as it held a lot of potential for outside-of-the-box game designs. A programmable touch-screen hooked up to a computer or console provides opportunities for unique game play mechanics that a small, remote screen, exclusive to each player can be used for; two I can think of are hidden plays and fog of war. Both of these mechanics have been briefly explored previously by developers. Sega made an attempt with their Visual Memory Unit, a memory card containing a small LCD that plugged in to the regular memory card slot on a Dreamcast gamepad that allowed hidden plays during multiplayer sessions in NCAA Football. Other than this one game, the VMU was mostly used to display a logo for the game currently being played or showing "Paused" while the player went and made a sandwich. Nintendo's Miyamoto has explored the fog of war in the new multiplayer Pacman game for the Gamecube that lets human players control individual ghosts via Gameboy Advance slave units. Each ghost can see only a partial area of the entire playfield. This very same idea could be applied to face-to-face RTS and war games where the individual units or small groups are only able to see a small fraction of the world and must rely on information fed to them by a player at HQ to find out what's over the next ridge. Similarly HQ has only an abstract, incomplete view of the world that is fed by information from the player-controlled units in the field. This idea of individual screens used for hidden plays/fog-of-war could be explored in collaborative game play where several players must work together, with each having access to different information on their personal screens. Competing groups would see the results of their efforts, along with the results of their competitors. Collaborators would not be able to openly discuss their information and strategy without it becoming apparent to competitors. Putting It All Together With so many differing low-cost input controllers available to game developers it is only a matter of time before I can enjoy a full-body motion tracking, sword-swinging, VR goggle-wearing EverQuest game? Seriously, though, I hope this fun little stream of consciousness has provoked you to take a second look at some of the alternative controllers that are around, and consider how they might improve interaction with the games you are working on, or perhaps even design an entirely new game around one of them.
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