To be honest, Kinect can track pretty quick punches, and Move should be able to track things incredibly well. The odd freak of nature that can punch as fast as Bruce Lee might have problems, but the other 99.999999% of the human population would be fine with Move, and even happy with Kinect. With Kinect Sports, I don't have any problems where it doesn't register my punches. I do try to throw them properly, so I have almost a full extension. I also don't want to overexert on shadow boxing and hurt myself. Loading up and hitting nothing is a nice way to get an injury. I'd be surprised if there were many people that could punch faster than Kinect could see, and even more surprised if they could punch faster than Move could see.
Fight Night Champion PS360
- Thread starter Scott_Arm
- Start date
At 30fps ? I doubt it. The interpretation and prediction may give the illusion that the system can track fast movement though.
Dr. Marks designed EyeToy to be 60Hz to track fast action games (like PS2's Kinetics). There is a reason he adds 120Hz to PS3's PSEye.
If you want to target 99.999999% of the population, it's most likely a casual game (like Pong or WiiSports).
It's not whether the systems can see you punch (of course they can ^_^), it's whether they can follow your abrupt change in movement adequately. e.g., In Sports Champions Volleyball, you can twist your hands at the last "minute" (^_^) to bounce the ball in a different direction after you see your opponents lept to block you.
… or find some way to score it after the fact. That Kung Fu game can retrieve your silhoutte from the recorded video. ^_^
Whatever. Keep shilling Move if it makes you happy. I've probably boxed 100 matches in Kinect Boxing, and it recognizes quick punches, including combinations very well, and it will recognize a hook from a straight from an uppercut, either to the head or body. So despite the fact that you're telling me it can't see fast movements, I know that it can, because it can recognize a quick straight punch, or a short fast hook. It might not be doing 1:1 motion tracking, although it does seem to be doing some tracking and not entirely canned animations for the punches. I'm sure that Move can track things better, being 60Hz, but Kinect works well enough to make a more sophisticated boxing trainer or sim. Kinect Sports boxing is pretty simple, but you can see the potential for much more.
I'm not sure what you mean by, if you what point you're making about my 99.99999% comment. You're saying a game that caters to that many people would be casual, but I wasn't making any comment about how many people would want to play it. I'm making the point that Kinect and Move are accurate enough that they will work for even the majority of the advanced participants.
Huh ? I thought you are talking about technical boxing ?
"What I really want is a boxing sim. I'm more into the sweet science, and representing the technical parts of the sport, then just playing a game which is a brutal slug-fest."
You can make any game, even a slow technical boxing game; but it would have a different feel. The focus will probably be different.
If you're not talking about a "higher" level boxing title, then heck, Wii, Move, Kinect, and arcade boxing will offer plenty of exercise and fun.
Not sure if Fight Night gamers love rigorous exercise though. ^_^
I am talking about technical boxing? What are you talking about?
Kinect is good enough to recognize my punch selection to head and body, including punch type and location. I think it would also be very capable of blocking to various positions, and you could have collision detection to recognize shots that land on the shoulders and arms, if you were slipping punches or bobbing and weaving. Kinect can see if my elbows are in to protect the sides of my body, and as long as the avatar is mimicking my movements, they could use collision detection between the two avatars to determine if the punch landed in a dangerous or hurting area, or whether it landed on a less vulnerable spot. Kinect can detect movement side to side as well as forward and back, so you could easily have all kinds of movements to create a difficult target. You just would be able to have full ring movement, because you have to stay within' view of the camera.
Move would work very well for all of the same things, and with the faster refresh rate, it would track arm movements much better. But if you think Kinect would somehow require an incredibly slow game, I think you're delusional. The pace of a good boxing game with Kinect would be very fast, much faster than most fit people could handle. Hell, I'm in decent shape, and doing a number of fights back to back in Kinect Sports is pretty tiring. Move might not be as good as seeing the position of your elbows or shoulders because it would have to interpret a 2D video feed. I think using 2D video to watch your feet would be good enough for movement, and you can obviously do head tracking. I'm not sure how well the head tracking works for leaning forward and back, but it might be a non-issue because they can guess that if you duck that your head will be forward, etc.
Anyway, this is becoming less of a thread about Fight Night Champions, which will hopefully be a great boxing sim, and more of a thread about motion gaming tech.
"What I really want is a boxing sim. I'm more into the sweet science, and representing the technical parts of the sport, then just playing a game which is a brutal slug-fest." ?
That's where Fight Night is going ?
Yeah, keeping quoting that. I don't understand what you're trying to prove. That's exactly what I want, and I think both Kinect and Move can deliver. You're punching and blocking the air, and there is no real physical interaction with another person, so it will always be limited, but I think there is potential for both platforms to offer a sim experience that rewards smart fighting and defense over flurries of fast punches.
I hope that they can build off of the physics engine from FNR4 and really perfect the Total Punch Control. I've heard (read?) that they're going to modify it, and you won't have to "roll the analog stick" anymore. If so, that makes me sad, since it was soooo fluid and satisfying. I think they're going for something like using the angle? I think that's a seriously bad move, considering it's difficult to accurately move the small analog stick to the right place 100% of the time. Hell, in FNR4 I don't do it right all of the time either, it's only because of my constant habit to swap sides for my punches that I'm able to get away with some of the inaccuracy.
I am really excited to see body part specific stamina, but I hope it's actually something substantial. I don't want it to be an arbitrary number that I never see that doesn't really alter or change the outcome of a fight. What I hope, however, is that this is a good and working solution to people throwing out constant punches in bunches. The bad news for me is that I'll have to break my bad habits, rofl. For some reason I throw one sided uppercuts depending on the side I'm on. i.e. if I'm P1 then I usually have all 94% right uppers, 6% left...dunno why!
I am really excited to see body part specific stamina, but I hope it's actually something substantial. I don't want it to be an arbitrary number that I never see that doesn't really alter or change the outcome of a fight. What I hope, however, is that this is a good and working solution to people throwing out constant punches in bunches. The bad news for me is that I'll have to break my bad habits, rofl. For some reason I throw one sided uppercuts depending on the side I'm on. i.e. if I'm P1 then I usually have all 94% right uppers, 6% left...dunno why!
Well, I think they're going the right direction in a lot of ways. The one punch knockouts, makes defense and positioning a huge part of the game. Hopefully that means there is more physics involved behind each punch (how much extension is on the punch and how flush it lands and where). That was promised in Rd 4, but under delivered. The game should become more about pacing your energy, landing smart shots and not getting hit. Spammers will be taking great risks.
I'm not a fan of the one button blocking. I liked the skill involved in the positional blocking of the earlier games, but was ok with the high/low of the last one. One button tap for quick blocks, and holding to cover up seems a little too simple, but maybe that means the punches will have the realistic speed of the pros, so timing will be even more important. My wish was that they'd have passive and active blocking. What I mean by passive is throwing a punch with good technique has built in defense. You should cover your chin with your shoulder when throwing a jab, and your other arm should be close to your body to protect your ribs with your hand in front of your chin to catch or block your opponents jab in return. Those are not really an active defense, it's the type of defense your opponent would tend to strike. I thought that could easily be solved with realistic punches and collision detection. My solution for the hard punches would be to have the hard punches break your defensive form, leaving your vulnerable as you throw the harder shot. Your shoulder would drop and your other hand would drop or move away leaving a target for a counter. So you could throw hard shots with a modifier, but lose your passive defense. Active defense would be using the up/down block controls to intentionally cover up and weather combinations or recover from stuns etc.
The odd parry system of the previous games seems to be totally out the window, which was one of the most unrealistic aspects of the game. Glad to see that gone. Perhaps the biggest change is the new stamina system. You have body stamina, so your head and torso movement will diminish over the fight, meaning you need to be smart about how you move, rather than flailing around. Same goes for your feet. If you stay on your bike, you'll wear out. So you'll probably have to spend some time on the ropes if you get tired, trying to get a chance to slip out. Then the stamina per-arm, means you have to throw varieties of shots. If you're a jab spammer, part way through the fight your opponent will take over. You have to be versatile. Same goes for people loading up on hard shots with their power hand.
We'll see how the punching works. I'd like to see a vid with a better explanation. Hopefully cuts and damage mean more to the game.
I've refrained from discussing this here and taken Joshua Luna's comment on his ideal boxing game to the thread of The Fight: Lights Out, but I can't help but at least point out to you just this once that The Fight is too much of a boxing sim almost. 9 out of 10 things that anyone here has stated they'd want in a boxing game is in there. The Fight from the looks of things is going to fail commercially simply because it is too darn hardcore a boxing sim, and that's sad, but it's worse when people dismiss it and then describe basically the same game as an ideal game.
And there's not even much swearing in it either. I would like it to be ported to Kinect, so that people with Kinect can enjoy it as well, even if they're just a handful who can really appreciate it.
Note that I completely disagree with patsu about the technical details. I think both Move and Kinect can do welll enough for a game like this. Kinect should do full body tracking better than Move. Head-tracking in The Fight doesn't work well right now - it really needs you to stand against an even background, or it just won't work. Kinect should do better here. The same goes for foot-work, obviously - The Fight basically doesn't care how you move. That said, The Fight does manage to follow your upper body orientation very well - lean left right, forward backward, all that works simply by using the orientation of the controllers. And walking around in 3D space imho works flawlessly - no-one in the thread in Gaf now would want the analog stick back for this, as the current implementation is far more natural.
I'm sure they'll figure out a similar mechanic for Kinect - lean forward for a while to start moving in that direction, lean back or to the side for more than a fraction of a second to move in that direction. You don't need all that much running around in boxing, and you'll typically keep looking towards your opponent, which makes things much simpeler.
For Fight Night though they are in a more difficult position. They will not want to lose their existing button-based audience. Heck, they had a huge backlash already when they want to make the fighting more 'simmy' just using the analog sticks. But if they design an engine that can handle being controlled through motion controllers, then it shouldn't be too hard to then map a great variety of the moves you can do to analog stick/button combinations.
An interesting combination that I could see is where Fight Night gets a higher level management system, where you can be both manager and boxer, someone online or a friend can be your manager or your boxer, and you can be a motion controller boxer or a use buttons boxer, or your boxer could just be AI.
This sounds really awesome. It's the kind of thing that I've wanted even games like Tekken to have, to add depth to the gameplay.
The explanation for changing the total punch control system made a lot of sense. They said it was good in theory, but not good for your thumb. The system favoured movement away from your hand, so they found that people tended to throw way more left handed punches because the movement was more natural for your right hand. This new system, with easier flicks should make it easier since the movement is less complex for your right thumb. It'll be interesting to see how it plays out. I'm assuming straight left would be a left hook, where straight up and slightly to the left would be a jab, and straight down and slightly left would be a left uppercut. Then you have a variety of granularity in between, hopefully a lot. Then say, if you miss the angle you want by a few degrees, that just means your punch is a few degrees off from where you wanted it to be, meaning it is slightly high or low. It might actually work out pretty well. There is some built-in human error in the punches, which might be a good thing, but the punch will never be too far off from what you wanted. That's just my guess anyway.
Go play Boxing on Kinect. It picks up punches fine. I have been boxing as a hobby for a few years now (wish I started much younger!) and everything I do in terms of shadowboxing translates fine in Kinect but clearly the game is not built with Boxing in mind. Again, I'm not talking about some theoretical bullshit. I'm saying that is done in shadowboxing can translate wonderfully to Kinect.
Kinect can pick up all your punches, head movement and foot work, as evident from multiple Kinect games. Someone puts it all together with a focus on Boxing and you have yourself a great Boxing Sim as Scott as pointed out.
While I don't doubt that either of these new motion platforms can make an entertaining Boxing game, I do doubt that any of them are capable of making a boxing sim, or anything that is going to allow us to replicate the experiences of boxing better than a standard controller. It has nothing to do with the technology in either of them, or more specifically, their latency, rather, their lack of total control of the movement of said boxer on screen.
The boxing games are rather limited in what you can do anyway. I've played FNR3/4 and never did I feel I was doing something with the controller that was very realistic. I was always limited by the game interpetration of the buttons I was using on the controller. Combine that with algorythm based stamina and counter punching and get further away from the feeling.
A motion tech that allows my shadowboxing to be translated well to my avatar is miles ahead of anything I've played so far. Everything from body movement, feints, stamina, counter punching, range, reach, hand speed can be done better with well designed motion control game.
Again, a boxing sim desgined around shadow boxing will simply be much more realistic than hitting buttons.
Eh to each their own. Movement is 50% of boxing, and there's simply no way to really do that well. Standing still and shadow boxing =/= sim. Just saying.
I quoted that because I thought you wanted to talk about the more sophisticated needs of a boxing sim. Gaming is always limited, so the game designer will probably choose to focus on an area. Pugilists practise alone sometimes, I don't see it as a problem.
Of course it picks up punching fine. But boxing is more than punching right ?
I will try boxing on Kinect to see how it is like right now.
EDIT:
Arwin said:
Yes, that's my understanding. The initial tracking seems to be dumbed down ?
Yes, it will be able to track your overall movement well; but in the context of a technical sim, the user will need to adjust to the slight lag. I have read people complaining about Lights Out's quarter second lag. Kinect will likely fare worse. A Kinect boxing sim would have a different feel.
Eurogamer reported on it in August:
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/no-move-or-kinect-for-fight-night-champion
According to the IGN preview, it looks like Champion mode is the storyline, but there is a standard legacy mode with many improvements, where you create a fighter, train and fight, like in the older titles.
Champion mode starts with a bare knuckled brawl.
Where you train affects which stats you can improve. Different gyms in different cities are better at training for different stat increases. Each punch type has it's own rating from 1-20. So you can specialize in a few punches to get that signature shot.
The preview mentions that graphics have been ramped up significantly. Hopefully it's still a stable 60fps game, but the screenshots do look incredibly good. The models like incredibly detailed, and the cuts look very realistic. We'll see how they look when they haven't been supersampled to hell, but if it looks better than Round 4, I think it'll look great. Looks like they've added a nice motion blur effect. Some good pics showing that off, assuming it's not pure bullshot or replay mode only. Fight Night is a game where they could easily go for 60fps while playing, and all of the highlights are 30fps. Wouldn't be a bad choice, really.
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/113/1134132p1.html
Champion mode starts with a bare knuckled brawl.
Where you train affects which stats you can improve. Different gyms in different cities are better at training for different stat increases. Each punch type has it's own rating from 1-20. So you can specialize in a few punches to get that signature shot.
The preview mentions that graphics have been ramped up significantly. Hopefully it's still a stable 60fps game, but the screenshots do look incredibly good. The models like incredibly detailed, and the cuts look very realistic. We'll see how they look when they haven't been supersampled to hell, but if it looks better than Round 4, I think it'll look great. Looks like they've added a nice motion blur effect. Some good pics showing that off, assuming it's not pure bullshot or replay mode only. Fight Night is a game where they could easily go for 60fps while playing, and all of the highlights are 30fps. Wouldn't be a bad choice, really.
http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/113/1134132p1.html
