Not really, but they might be able to more accurately emulate the motion of shaking their gun to reload it.
Introducing Wii MotionPlus, Nintendo improves Wiimote
- Thread starter patsu
- Start date
Not really, but they might be able to more accurately emulate the motion of shaking their gun to reload it.
You're the second person I've seen make an ignorant anti-American comment on B3D outside of the RPSC forum in the last 24 hours or so.
First and foremost: there is no correlation between children playing violent video games, and shooting their classmates.
Second, school shootings are not a uniquely American phenomenon, read the news some time.
On-topic:
I'm all for improved motion sensing on the Wiimote. It will be interesting to see if Nintendo integrates this device into a future iteration of the Wiimote or if they continue to sell it as an add-on so as not to alienate their customer base.
Not sure more precision in motion sensing will change gameplay that much.
Will you be able for instance to do a tennis backhand stroke motion and the games will render that or will any quick-flick gesture be rendered onscreen as either a forehand or backhand depending on the context?
Or in a baseball game, if you wanted to wave the bat while waiting for the pitch, will that be rendered?
Or a golf game, where if you have a hitch in your swing, will that be displayed and the results onscreen rendered accordingly?
The Wii appeals to kids, many of whom do not have fully-developed coordination. Does it really matter to have more accurate motion tracking for them?
Will you be able for instance to do a tennis backhand stroke motion and the games will render that or will any quick-flick gesture be rendered onscreen as either a forehand or backhand depending on the context?
Or in a baseball game, if you wanted to wave the bat while waiting for the pitch, will that be rendered?
Or a golf game, where if you have a hitch in your swing, will that be displayed and the results onscreen rendered accordingly?
The Wii appeals to kids, many of whom do not have fully-developed coordination. Does it really matter to have more accurate motion tracking for them?
Good point, but I think some games obviously target an older demographic and might be more likely to use more accurate motion controls. We'll see how well it really works.
If they want to appeal to more than just kids or 'casuals' with weak coordination, they need to improve things. This isn't about improving things for the current audience, who are happy to buy Wii as is. It's about convincing people like me who were non-impressed with the Wii experience that it offers something wonderful that I want to be a part of, where my years of hardcore game training developing those killer cordination skillzorz actually means something!
I see this as Nintendo's required target, versus MS's target of extending into the casual space, and Sony's of getting their online act together. All are after these areas they are weak in, and IMO none are doing very well
I just don't think more accurate motion tracking will make the gamer who wants an exact 1:1 translation of motion to the screen happy.
It seems the current games have canned animations which are activated by the detection of motion.
If it was possible to incorporate completely idiosyncratic motions in games, then you'd have something. Like in Top Spin 3, it should be possible to have Federer do two-handed backhands if you used the motion controller that way.
Without that, this MotionPlus thing may be just a more accurate gesture-recognition or motion-detection device rather than a motion-translation or motion-input device.
It seems the current games have canned animations which are activated by the detection of motion.
If it was possible to incorporate completely idiosyncratic motions in games, then you'd have something. Like in Top Spin 3, it should be possible to have Federer do two-handed backhands if you used the motion controller that way.
Without that, this MotionPlus thing may be just a more accurate gesture-recognition or motion-detection device rather than a motion-translation or motion-input device.
That's hard to say give how they just demonstrated the 1:1 motion aspect with the Wii Sports Resort title. Definatley looks something beyond gesture based.
I think he meant that even if it can do 1:1, will developers actually use it that way?
I think some will (hopefully) and some won't. Hopefully the percentage leans to the former, when it makes the most sense.
Precision is always welcome, regardless of how it is used. Spatial or temporal (input lag, low fps, high ping) imprecision is always annoying, even when it isn't critical for gameplay. When precision is critical for gameplay, flawed control is no longer annoying, it's intolerable.
This is a great development, not only does it raise the bar and expectations for Nintendo, but it raises the bar for all similar physical input devices.
With sports games in general, there's been investment in motion capture. It seems the paradigm of canned, mocap animations being actuated by button presses or gestures isn't going to be displaced any time soon.
Wii's been out a couple of years. Is there any game which attempts to animate onscreen exactly what the user is doing with the wand?
Not intended to be a rhetorical question. I just recall there was hope that other golf games for instance would require more precision than the one in Wii Sports. But it sounded like that wasn't the case, that games like Tiger Woods also were based on gesture/motion-detection.
Wii's been out a couple of years. Is there any game which attempts to animate onscreen exactly what the user is doing with the wand?
Not intended to be a rhetorical question. I just recall there was hope that other golf games for instance would require more precision than the one in Wii Sports. But it sounded like that wasn't the case, that games like Tiger Woods also were based on gesture/motion-detection.
I'm not sure 1:1 is really what the consumer wants. My backhand in tennis pretty bad and inaccurate, and that's when using a real tennis racquet, so I can't imagine how I'd do swinging a small remote around. But that's okay, I'm not a tennis pro; the guy I'm controlling is, he's the one who has to hit the ball right.
If it's just tweaking sensitivity, though, then I'm all for it, naturally.
That probably is the crux of the matter for hardcores vs. casuals.
The latter doesn't notice or doesn't care if the motion is being represented accurately or if it's just replacing button-presses with any kind of motion to activate certain animations.
There are more casuals than hardcores and they're voting with their wallet. So Nintendo and Wii developers probably don't have an incentive to try to implement something truly revolutionary.
Clearly no-one's expecting or wanting true 1:1 input>output. Otherwise those Jedi games would suddenly suck, because no-one is a trained Jedi with Jedi's reflexes. What's wanted by some is a closer correlation between their actions and the actions of the game. In the tennis example, instead of just moving the wiimote and the player character performing either a forehand or backhand based on ball/player position, the next step up would be for the player to decide forehand or backhand and time it, with the game taking the player's choice and applying it to a virtual tennis player who has a formidable stroke and can hit straight. Likewise sword fighting, you want a slash to be a slash, a thrust to be a thrust. The sword doesn't necessarily have to go exactly where the player is swinging as that may well be very off, but at the same time you don't want it doing chops when you're trying to parry. And in boxing, you want the hand to hit high or low based on whether you're hitting straight or downwards, instead of being fairly random as you swing your arms around because the actual system for controlling the hands is so unintuitive.
You're creating a problem where there is none. 1:1 tracking doesn't mean the information is processed 1:1.
Take for instance your tennis example: You could simplify add another layer to the difficulty. Usually, hard difficulty means better AI, harder swings and faster reaction with regard to the computer opponent. You could also increase the accuracy of processing of the tracking, i.e. wrong wrist movement could result in a bad swing. However, at easy difficulty the processing offers leniency with regard to correct movements. Or you could simply implement a slider and let gamers decide how accurate they themselves want their movements to be (though that might cause problems in online match-ups).
So tracking movements accurately doesn't mean players have to be pros at all, i.e. you don't have to Nadal or Federer to play a tennis game. Motion Control is all about immersion, not about allowing only people with Jedi reflexes to play games.
EDIT: lol Shifty was faster
Speak for yourself.
I think we've touched on this before, the focus in computer games of features vs. skill when compared to real life activities, partly due to gamers having the attention span of gnats, but also because of lack of intuitive and transferable mechanics.
(Changing expectations is also a factor. Being able to go away and fetch a cup of coffee in the middle of a fight as I could do in WoW is worlds apart from the complete focus demanded by the arcade games that introduced visual computer gaming. Personally, I vastly prefer games that suck me in, to games that waste my time in activities that require little to no attention.)
And this is a very interesting mechanic to both adjust for skill and to build it, to be contrasted with "bad guys do more damage and magic health packs are less common" which is the industry standard, and not too applicable to anything but combat games.StefanS said:
PS. Quality of control issues crop up intermittently at B3D in the form of frame rates vs visual minutiae - where the B3D community is extreme in its favour of anisotropic filtering vs. good control. That's OK, but it is hardly a universal preference. There are other places where input lag, LCD response times, mouse and keyboard polling rates, and of course, server response times, get far FAR more attention than here. This site is overwhelmingly focused on graphics technology. Not game play.
Check the thread. That's exactly what one or two posters want.
Check the thread. At least two people have specifically said they want 1:1. It apparently isn't that clear, and I'm not creating any problem, either. I agree with Shifty, though, and you're both really arguing my point. I'm all for greater sensitivity, but that may not be sufficient to make gamers happy with Wii releases. (Not that Nintendo cares.)
I'd want true 1:1 input myself, but obviously it's up to game designers to make sure the game is still easy to play, and if that is done by adding 'assists' then that's fine of course! It's like a car-sim, where you can get some really realistic stuff going at the highest difficulty level, but you can make cars pretty easy to drive by putting all the available assists on.
For bowling, it would be perfect to have 1:1 motion input though, for instance. This would allow you to revert to similar strategies as real life - for instance gently rolling the ball if you're a kid. and has the advantage that a wii-mote isn't nearly as heavy as a real bowling ball. For darts, too, I'd like 1:1 mapping.
In fact, if there will be games using 1:1 mapping successfully, this would be when I start considering the Wii for purchase. The lack of precision so far kept me from enjoying the system. I will certainly be tempted now to get a Wii-mote for PC experimentation at the very least.
For bowling, it would be perfect to have 1:1 motion input though, for instance. This would allow you to revert to similar strategies as real life - for instance gently rolling the ball if you're a kid.
and has the advantage that a wii-mote isn't nearly as heavy as a real bowling ball. For darts, too, I'd like 1:1 mapping. In fact, if there will be games using 1:1 mapping successfully, this would be when I start considering the Wii for purchase. The lack of precision so far kept me from enjoying the system. I will certainly be tempted now to get a Wii-mote for PC experimentation at the very least.
They say they want 1:1, but would they actually like it if they had it? The odds are that it would look and feel very unnatural in a whole host of situations.
Not just forehand or backhand but top spin or back spin, drops, volleys, etc.
The Top Spin 3 game lets you use 3 different buttons for 3 different kinds of swings/strokes. Maybe it will require more skill/dexterity/motor skills than most gamers have but it would be interesting if they gave you the option of executing all these different kinds of shots with subtle differences in motion.
Or in a baseball game, there are separate buttons for power vs. contact swings. If that can be done through motion, the former would be executed by generating greater bat speed or acceleration.
You might also have an uppercut motion, to try to get under the pitch and try to lift it.
More important is that you would have to swing low for low pitches, extend for outside pitches, etc.
In other words, you would replace a combination of buttons and left/right stick inputs with a motion which incorporates all these parameters.
But again, maybe the demographics of the Wii doesn't lend itself to games requiring or offering this kind of precision.