>laughs< yeah, well.. while we''re at it... lets go make ourselves a holodeck

But I think we''ve all reched the conclusion... realistic force feedback and full mobility of control.

Oh joy

Like i said... holodeck anyone?

Mind you, I wouldn''t even begin to know where to start on a tracking proj using webcams... >thinks< could be an interesting side project (Honours Year, here I come)

But you said that the handle of the lightsaber would be unbalanced?

Why NOT use the whole sword? there''s nothing to stop some sort of motion tracking for that too?

And if you wanted to get EXTRA nify, put a computer controlled movable weight at inside teh blade... and using some nifty physics/torque engine... you use it to create some sort of force feedback... slide to the top... and slide to the bottom.. etc...

But what do you do when you get cross''d swords? There''s nothing to push against?

Again, holodeck anyone?

Mark

>laughs< yeah, well.. while we''re at it... lets go make ourselves a holodeck

But I think we''ve all reched the conclusion... realistic force feedback and full mobility of control.

Oh joy

Like i said... holodeck anyone?

Mind you, I wouldn''t even begin to know where to start on a tracking proj using webcams... >thinks< could be an interesting side project (Honours Year, here I come)

But you said that the handle of the lightsaber would be unbalanced?

Why NOT use the whole sword? there''s nothing to stop some sort of motion tracking for that too?

And if you wanted to get EXTRA nify, put a computer controlled movable weight at inside teh blade... and using some nifty physics/torque engine... you use it to create some sort of force feedback... slide to the top... and slide to the bottom.. etc...

But what do you do when you get cross''d swords? There''s nothing to push against?

Again, holodeck anyone?

Mark

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www.emanatemultimedia.com
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Actually.. I just came to very interesting idea..

In reality, there are 2 different sort of players here...

1) The "us" type (i.e, myself, Daedalus etc) who, in reality only want to test the bodily skills they already possess, in another area. Or even extend the ones that they do.

2) The people who don''t possess such skills, but like to have access to them at the mere press of a button. (i.e. the majority). For them, the appeal of having a full bodily motion fighting system for their PC may not actually appeal. The user knows they can''t fight, hell they may not even want to learn. Therefore, why should they SHOW that they can''t fight, when playing a game? when they can go to another game, press "back, down, forward, A, B, A" and all of a sudden their executing a low kneekick, followed by a nose, throat, sternum roll punch, without learning all the skills neccessary to perform a combination like that.

The big question is.. what audience are you going for?

Mark

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www.emanatemultimedia.com
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A holodeck would solve everyones problems

-Chris Bennett of Dwarfsoft - Site:"The Philosophers' Stone of Programming Alchemy" - IOL
The future of RPGs - Thanks to all the goblins over in our little Game Design Corner niche
          

I wouldn''t worry so much on realism. Watch a few movies, go to a martial arts class. Base what you do off realism... yet... exagerating it can create really awesome looking moves and choreography that would look fantastic. Look at the matrix... all the moves are real... yet... with camera angles, and exagerations... such as the speed and precision exemplified... it looks great. I''ve done Taekwondo, and Shotokan karate, and a little Brazilian Jujitsu... all this over the course of 4 years and I can tell you.. in a real fighting situation every move thrown isn''t perfect. Yet movies thrive on that perfection and that "makes" a great fight. Everyone previous to writing is correct about how to impliment such a system. I don''t see how it can be done... to have such an array for moves that it seems you want, and be able to use a keyboard and 10 fingers... All i can say is good luck...

Neurotic: A holodeck would be cool. ;-)

I've seen something similar to the webcam tracking described on a Discovery Channel/TLC documentary about debunking UFO sightings. They talked about how photographic forensic labs use objects of known size in the scene to create a general idea of scale in the 2d image. The same idea would be used here with more accuracy because the system would be more controlled (multiple cameras).

The sword and the body suit would both be painted black. Ultra bright (probably neon colored) stripes could be painted onto the sword blade at even intervals. If the sword blade is pointed away from the camera, then the stripes at the tip of the sword would be assumed to be smaller than the ones near the hit. The reverse could be expected if the sword were pointed toward the camera. The same idea could be used on the arms and legs of the body suit to allow for correct character animation. It'd be a dirt cheap motion capture system.

As for the balance, you are right. For the sake of balance, the blade could be added to the sword. The VR glasses could be used to replace the plastic pole with a blade of light. It would also allow the system to be used for both lightsaber style games as well as more realistic midieval swordplay kind of games.

The force feedback thing you described is a lot like what I meant in my post. Kinda of like an N64 rumble pack on steroids. ;-) As for crossing swords, it'd have to be like kicking for the head during martial arts sparring. You never make contact, but the player would be expected to hold his/her sword in place when he/she feels the force feedback device register contact. It's not perfect, but its a whole lot closer to the real thing han any other game input device I've ever seen.

The only way I could even begin to think of realistic collision would be to put a metal core in the sword and use electromagnets placed around the ring to stop the sword when needed. Of course magnets strong enought to do that would probably use a years worth of residential electricity in less than an hour and would almost defintely give anyone actually useing the setup brain tumors. ;-)

All said and done, the setup (sans electromagnets) might not be good enough for the average user because it require some discipline in order to not push your blade throught your opponent's blade. On the other hand, someone who was actually interested in seriously studying a martial arts weapon style (this technique could probably be used for other types of weapons besides just swords) could use this to spar with people all over the world and virtually always have a sparring partner whenever they want a match.

AP: My original goal for using realistic martial arts moves in a game was for use in MMORPGs like Asheron's Call or Everquest. In games like this the player doesn't actually control combat like in a console fighting game (Mortal Combat, Killer Instinct, etc.). The idea is that you tell your character to attack monster x and the game does the melee combat for you (unless you want to do something special like cast a spell). Right now, AC and EQ just have the character do unrealistic, repetative hacking motions to represent attacks. The lack of variation makes combat extremely boaring after a while. Thats the way I figure to get all that "movie style" combat action into a video game without requiring my players to grow another hand. ;-) When it comes to actual fighting games, short of using some sort of full motion capture, I have to agree that complex martial arts moves become hard to implement with the limited control system we have today.

-Daedalus

Edited by - Daedalus on October 31, 2000 2:06:47 AM

Edited by - Daedalus on October 31, 2000 2:08:02 AM

My experience isn''t from a formal martial arts school. It''s what I picked up from Uncle Sam at Fort Benning Home for Wayward Boys (Also known as the United States Army Infantry Training Center). The focus was primarily to kill the opponent as quick as possible. For example, instead of holding a knife with the point out, we were told to hold it so that the blade went back along your arm. It allowed for a variety of slashing attacks as well as being able to use your fist. Those of you with formal martial arts training probably know much more effective ways, but that was fine for us. We were only going to fight hand to hand if things went REALLY bad.

As interesting as that was, most of my training was with rifles, handguns, rocket launchers, and anti-tank missiles. One thing I would like to see in a game that uses firearms is instead of a dot where all the bullets will end up is a circle (size depending upon skill) of where your bullets will hit. It seems much more realistic to me rather than the "able to neuter small rodents at 1000m" default skill level most of these games use.

First off.. only the games in arcarde use martial arts. I think we can all agree that the basics of that are pretty easy to get. True.. a game with realistic combos would be pretty fly.. it''d still be in the same realm as all the other fighter games. Even a game of Ninjas.. one of this clan, one of that.. etc, each with realistic fighting styles and stances.. would still be the same genre, just with different things in it. Although. it would be nice to be able to change stances of your character to move in and do different combos.. but it''d just be a lot more to remember when it comes to button pushing

Now.. As Landfish said.. RPGs have the biggest lack of realistic combat. Final Fantasy. You stand there, you look, you fight. Turnbased entirely. Yet, you do some whopping damage numbers. I mean, heck.. some characters hit three times what their own health is.. and this is possible how? If you relate your power (muscles) to your own ability to taqke hits (also mainly associated with muscles) then they should be roughly proportionate to eachother, right? I mean, go back to the side-scrolling fighters of the arcade. You have X health max, you deal Y damage. Y is ALWAYS less than 1/4 X per hit. MK 3 shows this well with the percentages of damage you did on combos. You never hit for more than 75% in a single combo.. it was impossible to take someone down without them having a chance.

Now.. back to RPGs. When you hit something, you cannot hit harder than you can sustain to be hit. Otherwise you could kill yourself in a single blow, a few times over. It''s unrealistic. Magically, it''s possible.. but not by the self alone.

Now, till this point, we''ve been talking about karate styles. How about weapons and armor? Has anyone had much experience with that? No? good. Time to relate a funny story. This year, while up in New York, I went to I-Con, one of the biggest SF/RP conventions there is, held on long island. This is the second year i''ve been. Well, After most of everything was done, we meandered out to the lawn, to watch some medieval combat exibitions. About 20 minutes later, along came a few stormtroopers, in full armor. They watched for a while.. and it was kinda odd seeing stormtroopers watch medieval combat.. LOL. Well, one of the stormtroopers wants to fight. So they let him in the ring, throw some fake swords at his feet and let him choose one. Now, mind you.. a storm trooper, once fallen.. is screwed. This guy couldn''t bend halfway over to get a sword. So he kept trying to tell the guy to give him that big one.. hehe. Finally he got the dude to hand it to him, after he realized that he couldn''t bend over. Well, they clear out.. and him and the other dude go to it. This big stormtrooper walks around, lumbering around more like, trying to hit this guy, who''s just prancing around him! The guy kinda dances around for a few minutes, while the stormtrooper attempts to catch up to him, and finally the guy moves in, and whacks the stormtrooper a good one upside the helmet! LOL! you could imagine the trooper''s surprise. He was a good sport though, and fell as though he were dead.. after the guy whacked him a few more times. LOL!

In all.. big powerful armor really didn''t help him a bit. He was so encumbered and slow that he couldn''t even manage to bend over and get his weapon off the ground without falling to it. LOL.

Well.. i''ve got to cut this short, but that''ll give you something to think about in regards to medieval combat

J
Never buy armor you can''t bend over in, how else would people kiss your butt!?

Niphty: There is a big difference between some fake plastic armor someone created for looks and a real set of, properly designed and balanced, medieval platemail. The best place to get information on real armor is by watching the documentaries about it on the Discovery Channel or TLC. I was watching one once where a guy was literally doing roles in a, realistically replicated, full suit of platemail.

While, towards the end of the medieval period, there were some suits of armor made strickly for show (layered with gold/silver, covered in cumbersome flurishes) these suits were only used at public events. Real platemail, that was designed for combat, had well made joint areas that gave the combatant almost full mobility. They were also custom balanced for the individual owner so that the weight of the armor was spread evenly around him. While, admittedly, plate armor decreases dexterity and agility somewhet, it wasn''t as bad as popular RPG mythology would have you believe.

As for damage done in martial arts, I have to disagree with you there too. When it comes to realism, there are an exteremly large number of "real world" martials arts moves that, when properly executed, result in instant death. In fact, its the primary goal of some martial arts like Iado. Martial Arts almost always try to focus on knowing exactly where on your opponents body you are stiking so you can do the most damage, thats the difference between a martial art and simply bashing someone as hard as you can. I think the point thought is that that kind of realism isn''t what most people are looking for in RPG combat damage or game combat damage in general (with the exception of the Bushido Blade series for Playstation). Combat becomes much more interesting if it is a hotly contested battle where the opponents are evenly matched and the fight drags on for a bit.

We have to differentiate in this thread between realism in combat damage and realism in combat animation. Im a big proponent of the latter, but not of the former. Like I said before, one of the biggest reasons fight scenes in martial arts movies look so cool is that they adhere to the latter while stretching the former (sometimes to an extreme).

-Daedalus

I practiced Shotokan Karate for 3 semesters at school. While we hard a limited set of punches and kicks all with strict form, whenever we sparred, all form went out the window.

If you wanted to have a realistic fighting system, have only a few buttons, but have your game decide exactly what move to execute. A lot of it could be decided on distance or how the fighters weight is distributed.
I wouldn''t punch a guy who is 1 inch away, I''d elbow or knee him.
2 feet away would be a punch or a kick.
Touching would lend itself to a throw.
If I was moving forward I would kick with my back leg, but moving back or standing still would be a kick from the front leg.
Its all a matter of context.

You''d also have to be able to move freely around the ring, not just some fight plane like most games have. Maybe its just me, but I like to circle around an opponent and get them from behind.