Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Games & Gameplay >

Mechanics of Play

12:56 / 23.12.06

I don't own a Wii but it did get me thinking on this one. A better human/machine interface. You have a favourite game right? Games should come in all shapes and sizes, and let the player exercise their skills in hand/eye co-ordination. Whether they are Shmups, FPS, strats, puzzles or whatever, the player needs to interact with the source. Maybe the keybord and mouse are the zenith of I/O at the moment but I want to go beyond the customizable keyboards, trackballs and joysticks and come way out of left field and entertain the impossible for a while.

This is a thread for the addicted gamer to wish apon a star for the perfect interface between hirself and machine. The tacile bond that makes pixels move the moment you wish them to.

I'm not sure we should go as invasive as Matthew Nagle, I am thinking more along the lines of non surgical means of digital augmentation.

Basically are people happy with the keyboard/mouse/monitor we have now? Would you fell better playing the game when you have to move your neck a substantial degree to see each side of th screen? Do you really want a total immersive environment to frag in or would that be going too far?

ORA ORA ORA ORAAAA!!

13:52 / 23.12.06

I'm currently thinking that a combination of the wiimote and the eyetoy tech could let some pretty amazing things happen in terms of full-body control. If you had the remote's IR sensing camera, and IR points right next to an eyetoy style camera... well, you'd have distance and orientation to camera along with, potentially, tracking of the movement of your entire body, which would lead to... the future, I guess. Instead of big VR bodysuits for motion capture for use as control in games, just a camera and an invisible light.

You wouldn't even need to be tied to a tv. You could combine it with virtual reality goggles or what-have-you, track head movement with camera and automagically update. I think it'd be a lot simpler than all the VR things I remember from the brief mid-90's craze, with bulky sensor suits and so on.

(I'm sorry if this isn't very clear, I should be sleeping, not posting, at the moment)

14:22 / 23.12.06

I’ve been lucky enough to have a quick shot of my sister’s Wii. I was actually impressed by how immersive the technology felt as it is. Some of the games, especially the sport simulations, seemed to benefit from mimicking the real-life movements that would be required. While not strictly necessary, taking a full swing with a virtual baseball bat felt more natural, in the short term, than learning how to simulate the effect with less strenuous, more efficient movement; for casual gamers I suspect that will be enough, and a great deal of the fun will be in carrying out those “unnecessary” movements and seeing the effects replicated on screen. I think that, on the evidence so far, Nintendo have been quite clever in constructing a system where pivoting at the end of your golf swing is valueless in terms of the control interface, but where it instinctively complements the control system that is in place; and you never know, might contribute in reducing the increasing obesity of video-gaming youth.