Topic: AILive

[MaryJane]

What does this mean for us gamers?

Now the Wii, already acclaimed as being the easiest system to develop for this generation, just became even easier to delevop for!

One thing I can see is this leading to more games, less developer frustration, perhaps leading to an overall fresher experience, now of course these effects won't be seen for at least 6 months after launch (maybe longer, but that just means more time put into the game which isn't a bad thing).

This also means that Independent developers who's know how may not be as extensive as EA's or Ubisoft's (i believe they were the first two third-party devs to get their kits) will find it easier to bring their ideas to life giving us games that surpass the imagination of the stagnation of larger companies!

Hopefully the Wii will bring us games like the sundance festival (and others) bring us movies.  

[UltimatePartyBear]

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Originally posted by: MaryJane
Now the Wii, already acclaimed as being the easiest system to develop for this generation, just became even easier to delevop for!

I think so, too.  "Easy development" always seemed to refer to the graphics and logic, but the controller was still something new.  It's capable of 3D input, but most developers are used to working with 2D input.  Anything that simplifies their work can only be a good thing, and it's cheap enough for any game studio to afford, too.  That's a good sign that Nintendo is serious about making things easier for third parties.

[trip1eX]

Well it could mean it saves time for developers and thus developers can make an even better game with the same budget.

Or it could mean that developers can now save money and time and put out crap even quicker than before.  That's the cynical point of view.

IT should benefit those that try and make great games in the first place.  And those that buy those games.

[thejeek]

Having read the documentation, I'm not sure I like the way it doesn't recognise a movement until it's complete - this is gonna result in some serious lag.

[KnowsNothing]

Yeah, kind of annoying, but can't you just make the movements smaller?  I haven't read the documentation, but I don't see why you can't make just make the gestures smaller.  What I mean is, instead of reading all the data of, say, a sword swing and THEN animating it, have it recognize a 5 inch swing and animate it while recording the next gesture, and so on and so forth.  It's hard to explain >_>  Just tell the Wii that a small gesture is a complete movement, and then have it animate just that part.  So maybe a full verticle sword swing is really five smaller gestures all strung together, instead of one big gesture.

[Kairon]

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Originally posted by: KnowsNothing
Yeah, kind of annoying, but can't you just make the movements smaller?  I haven't read the documentation, but I don't see why you can't make just make the gestures smaller.  What I mean is, instead of reading all the data of, say, a sword swing and THEN animating it, have it recognize a 5 inch swing and animate it while recording the next gesture, and so on and so forth.  It's hard to explain >_>  Just tell the Wii that a small gesture is a complete movement, and then have it animate just that part.  So maybe a full verticle sword swing is really five smaller gestures all strung together, instead of one big gesture.

... GENIUS!

~Carmine M. Red
Kairon@aol.com

[Ceric]

"$2,500 per seat"  I don't think that's cheap myself.  Isn't the Wii development kit suppose to be around that much?

I just finished the White Paper.  Sounds interesting.  I wonder how you actually interface with it programmatically.

[Spak-Spang]

Quote
Originally posted by: thejeek
Having read the documentation, I'm not sure I like the way it doesn't recognise a movement until it's complete - this is gonna result in some serious lag.

Not neccessarily.  Remember, that it is just recognizing and learning the motion.  From there the design team can program it to respond any time during that motion.

Also, the Design team can take short motions for a larger motion and coordinate them, so that the Wii recognizes an action early by "predicting" what the final movement would be.

I think there are lots of options here, and that delay should not really be a problem with a smart designer.

[thejeek]

There's always gonna be some delay though - you need to have made enough of a gesture to distinguish it from other gestures that start the same way before it's recognised. Still perhaps it needn't be annoying.

What might work is to have the character start making some generic movement in the direction of the gesture as soon as the remote moves to give a feeling of immediacy, then complete the movement correctly as soon as the gesture is recognised.  

[MaryJane]

the reports of lag before developers had their hands on this equipment has been minimal since the post E3 versions of games have been tested. so I can't see how this would make it any worse. i think it would make it better, since the developers can physically see the lag themselves, and improve upon it, instead of having to re-write the motion code to configure it better.

edit: this is also an interesting thought.

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my thoughts on the lag issue:

if you have a digital camera or any sort of device that captures an image and displays it on a screen there is lag. Even though it may seem like perfect motion capture that isn't all together possible. i was doing this the other day just for kicks and giggles with my digital camera, it is one of the higher up models (not SLR) and is the quickest digital camera i have ever used and yet while I couldn't visually decipher the lag, i could feel it in the sense that the exact moment my finger moved was not the exact moment the camera relayed the visual. my point is no matter how good the technology is there is processing time. That processing time could be mere nanoseconds but the human brain works faster than that. there is not integrating a CPU and GPU along with the sensor bar, controller accelerometers, and the many other components of the system itself. your brain tells your arm to move left and it happens, then the Wii has to interpret your movement, express it in a way for the computer to understand, and then display that motion on screen. to us who are used to the instantaneous responses our body makes that lag will always be noticeable, i moved my hand and then a split second later the arm on the T.V moved. there is no way to make it completely simultaneous barring a direct feed to your brain. no matter how fast a processor is the best technology is found within the human body at least when it comes to our perception of our surroundings. therefore, in this digital age when even our subtlest movements can be displayed in a digital format there will always be a delay.

i could be wrong of course but here is more evidence: an object traveling at 60MPH can also be said to be traveling 88ft per second. an object traveling at 100MPH can also be said to be traveling at 149.6ft per second. the distance from the pitchers mound to home plate in a MLB field is 60 feet and 6 inches or 60.5 feet. Which means that a ball traveling at 100MPH reaches home plate in .4 Seconds and yet the human body is able to react in that time and either move out of the way of such a pitch or swing and connect a baseball bat in that time. that is pretty amazing if you ask me.

the conclusion of all this is that our body functions work instantaneously and because the Wii-mote is supposed to be an extension of our arms we expect the same result which cannot be possible for the reasons I mention in the first paragraph. That delay can be shortened to a humanly inconceivable amount of time, but not at the moment as far as I know. That lag time is also directly correlated to the game developers knowledge and ability and the limitations of the hardware, so it should get better with time even if the hardware limitations don't.

the lag in a button press is the moment between our fingers moving from there stationary position to depressing the button, I believe that same lag exist with the Wii-mote except without the button press the lag is now between our movement and its digestion by the Wii system.

this is all my thoughts and not really based on anything except my general knowledge, and could very well be total BS. but as far as i can tell it's the logical explanation.

whoever wrote that must be really smart

[UltimatePartyBear]

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Originally posted by: Ceric
"$2,500 per seat"  I don't think that's cheap myself.  Isn't the Wii development kit suppose to be around that much?

You're not a business with a multimillion dollar budget, which even most small dev studios have.  Even for the tiniest of independent developers, that's not out of reach, and most dedicated hobbyists could save up for one.  Specialized business software often sells for far higher than that.

[Galford]

Well it's good to see Nintendo trying to make the Wii easier to program.

However, the Gamecube was supposedly the easiest to program last generation and
that didn't translate into great 3rd party support.  

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

[couchmonkey]

Quote
Originally posted by: Galford
Well it's good to see Nintendo trying to make the Wii easier to program.

However, the Gamecube was supposedly the easiest to program last generation and
that didn't translate into great 3rd party support.  

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Ah ha!  I've thought this myself before, but I've come to realize there are some differences between Wii and GameCube.

GameCube:

The thing with GameCube is that although it was easier to develop for, the games were still in the same basic scope as Xbox and Playstation 2 games.  Research on software development (which does not translate directly to game development, but it's similar) suggests that better tools and programming languages can't improve development times on a major scale.  In other words, sure GameCube is easier to program for, but that doesn't mean developers could cut their budget in half or anything.  It would cut costs by a small margin.  Furthermore, there's always going to be a learning curve no matter how easy development is.  By the time GameCube development began, developers were already far along the "difficult" PS2 learning curve.

Wii:

Wii's ease of development comes from more than just simpler programming.  It also comes from lower graphics requirements, the unique controller allowing new concepts to take precedence over presentation and content and online distribution making self-publishing a possibility.  Games like Cooking Mama, Wii Sports, Wario Ware and Big Brain Academy are setting the standard for lower-budget games.

None of this means the hobbyist at home is going to be able to make a game...but if you can get a decent business together you also won't have to bow to the wills of huge publishers just to get into the console scene.  Games like Shantae 2 may not die on the vine if developers can afford to self-publish them.  I hope Nintendo makes publishing via the Virtual console cheap and easy.

Even then there's no gaurantee that all of this will equal more games for us, but I think there's a lot more potential than there was on GameCube.

Edited: shorter...still way too long, but shorter.

[Galford]

I guess we will have to wait and see.  
The hardest things thing about programming the Wii seems to be the controller.
This software is suppose to help with that, good.

Publishers seem to be happy about the fact they can reuse XBox assets for Wii.
That will either keep costs the same as this generation at least.
I guess there is a little light at the end of this tunnel.

[Ceric]

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Originally posted by: PartyBear

Quote
Originally posted by: Ceric
"$2,500 per seat"  I don't think that's cheap myself.  Isn't the Wii development kit suppose to be around that much?

You're not a business with a multimillion dollar budget, which even most small dev studios have.  Even for the tiniest of independent developers, that's not out of reach, and most dedicated hobbyists could save up for one.  Specialized business software often sells for far higher than that.

But as I mentioned isn't the Wii development kit suppose to be that much?  You just doubled your development cost.  Yeah there is a lot of money that go around in a company.  Lets just say that you only buy the AILive stuff once and not on a per project basis, which I'm sure those seats are only for one project.  So you have one development box that can do it for all your games.  That be cheap but if its per project and you need the software to compile the project.  That could get expensive.
I hate to burst your bubble but most of the Small businesses I know don't have Multimillion dollar budgets, a fairly successful software integrator is one of them.

Though compared to some other software yeah it's cheap.  As a component piece of software no I don't think so.

[GoldenPhoenix]

Well if the software greatly reduces the programming curve for games, then I wouldn't be surprised if the money that was paid out for it would be made up, maybe within their first game!

[UltimatePartyBear]

Quote
Originally posted by: Ceric
But as I mentioned isn't the Wii development kit suppose to be that much?  You just doubled your development cost.

You don't have to get this tool.  Also, $2500 out of a typical game's development budget is negligible, even compared to the cost of paid lunches for the employees so they can stay chained to their desks.  That's only about 5% of the salary of an inexperienced game developer (based on the most recent survey I could find).  It could well cost more for a developer to create its own solution in-house.

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Yeah there is a lot of money that go around in a company.  Lets just say that you only buy the AILive stuff once and not on a per project basis, which I'm sure those seats are only for one project.  So you have one development box that can do it for all your games.  That be cheap but if its per project and you need the software to compile the project.

The wording of the press release strongly suggests this is a one-time purchase.  You generally don't see the term "seat" used when the license is only for one project.  A seat is usually for things like development environments, project management systems, and other miscellaneous backend stuff.  The kinds of things that are licensed per project are typically graphics engines, audio engines, and other framework type stuff that the game is built up from.  Think of it like raw materials versus tools.

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I hate to burst your bubble but most of the Small businesses I know don't have Multimillion dollar budgets, a fairly successful software integrator is one of them.

I said small development studios, not small businesses.  Most of the small business owners I know hire people at $6 to $8 an hour, have less than 15 employees, and serve only the local area.  Programmers are considerably more expensive than that.  I'd consider a studio with 20 developers pretty small, and their salaries, judging by the above linked survey, would already be a million dollars.  Add in the rest of the employees, benefits, social security, rent, and myriad other costs, and you'll break two million in no time.  My company has maybe 80 employees at a high estimate, and I know the budget is in the eight digit range.  We charge our customers way more than $2500 a seat, too.

[MaryJane]

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And when it comes to accuracy and user-interaction, LiveMove may be the program that enables true immersion. Image a game that allows total user calibration, asking you to perform moves one initially booting up to ensure that your actions (and only your actions) are used for on-screen actions. There wouldn't be a need to learn what can and can't be done with the controller, rather you could step on the pitchers mound, grab your baseball, and tell the Wii controller how you personally throw a fast-ball, change-up, screwball, slider, and curveball. Imagine a boxing game that allows for character creation, letting you select moves and input them how you'd actually do them. Who cares if your right hook doesn't look like Ali's right hook. The Wii-mote would know and recognize your style, ensuring for accurate motion recognition that otherwise wouldn't be available. Multiple users per system? Just select which profile you use, and rather than saving your control scheme, it would save a log of your gestures instead.

IGN has a new article with a very very good explanation of how AILive Motion works and will benefit us the gamer, and developers as well, it is a very good read.

[Darkheart]

http://www.gametrailers.com/?p=rev

Scroll down and watch how the demonstration of how easy AILive is!  At the end the little demo game they made actually could be viewed as what indy developers might be able to do on the VC in the future.


~Sean~

[couchmonkey]

Another article about Live Move - it's an interview with one of the top guys at the company.  Apparently the tool can be liscenced to anyone (a collaboration with Sony may even be possible, but the guy really waffled on that one, I bet there's a limited-time exclusivity agreement).

Also, for anyone thinking this is just for rinky-dink developers without enough advanced programmers - Nintendo itself has used it to develop games.  Apparently the program applies the concepts of Artificial Intelligence to "learn" the various motions the developer inputs.