Topic: FIRST REV SCREENSHOT SCANS!!!!!

[IceCold]

Heh - I love Alexa







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[zakkiel]

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You're assuming there's a zero point to be reset when there isn't one.

Not in the sense of some magical prefered orientation, no. But if you point straight at the screen, the cursor on the screen should be centered. The two have to correlate to make the control system work. You can call pointing straight at the screen the controller zero, and having the cursor in the middle of the screen game zero, if you want. When the two don't match, you have issues. And when the screen, rather than the cursor, moves with the remote, the two won't match.

[Dirk Temporo]

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Originally posted by: IceCold
Heh - I love Alexa

Holy crap.

[jasonditz]

What I'm picturing is if you aim to the left, the cursor moves immediately, and if you leave it pointing to the left for a set amount of time (which might be different depending on how far left of center you're pointing), it starts to drift your view in that direction. If you're trying to aim at a particular stationary target that's on the left, you will have to drift the controller progressively to the right as the screen drifts to keep the controller on the target. Eventually, the target will be in the center, and so will the cursor.  

[Smash_Brother]

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Originally posted by: jasonditz
What I'm picturing is if you aim to the left, the cursor moves immediately, and if you leave it pointing to the left for a set amount of time (which might be different depending on how far left of center you're pointing), it starts to drift your view in that direction. If you're trying to aim at a particular stationary target that's on the left, you will have to drift the controller progressively to the right as the screen drifts to keep the controller on the target. Eventually, the target will be in the center, and so will the cursor.

This is what I envisioned myself.

If the Revmote is pointed somewhere ON screen, the screen wouldn't move. If it's pointed off screen, the screen will spin until you move the Revmote back onto the screen.

Remember that he said it would take 1 second to spin completely around. I'm assuming there is a setting which you can use to adjust the sensitivity at which the screen moves, but 1 second for a full 360° is pretty damn fast.

I doubt there's a lag time when you touch the edge of the screen or go past it. If someone is shooting you from the left and you have to wait for the screen to move to the left even after you aim the Rev controller off the screen to the left, then a huge part of the game dynamic will be ruined.

There's a cursor on the screen so you can see where you're shooting at all times (though, I would like an expert mode to disable it) and I'd bet that this is what will serve as your means of moving the camera.

In any case, moving the camera sounds very similar to moving a gun around, which is indeed the purpose of the game. I'm sure they'll have it figured out before they ship the game.

[MaryJane]

the feedback would be awesome and worth any drawback (except battery life) imo. by drawback i mean $$$.

the pointing shifting centering, one of those things we gotta wait and see... or email game informer about it.  

[zakkiel]

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the feedback would be awesome and worth any drawback (except battery life) imo. by drawback i mean $$$.

Unfortunately, it isn't physically possible, if by feedback you mean having your remote rebound in your hand when your character's sword hits walls and that sort of thing. Good rumble should be enough, though.

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If the Revmote is pointed somewhere ON screen, the screen wouldn't move. If it's pointed off screen, the screen will spin until you move the Revmote back onto the screen.

That's my belief also.

[wandering]

To shift gears a bit here: are we setting ourselves up for dissapointment with these screens? Someone pointed out that the heavy backlighting featured on all the characters is probably fake. Mentally taking that a way, the graphics already look a lot worse. In fact, what are we left with? Jagged character models. No more than 3 people on screen at once. Small environments. Are we really ready to say Revolution games will look as good as 360 ones at this point?

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Originally posted by: JasonDitz
What I'm picturing is if you aim to the left, the cursor moves immediately, and if you leave it pointing to the left for a set amount of time (which might be different depending on how far left of center you're pointing), it starts to drift your view in that direction. If you're trying to aim at a particular stationary target that's on the left, you will have to drift the controller progressively to the right as the screen drifts to keep the controller on the target. Eventually, the target will be in the center, and so will the cursor.

Interesting idea, although I'm not sure I would enjoy constantly moving the revmote just to stay on-target.

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Originally posted by: Bill Aurion
Word from credible sources say April 20th is when 3rd party NDAs end...

Good news...but, is Nintendo setting themselves up for not being featured heavily in the mainstream media? 'nmotion-control games revealed for first time at E3' could make headlines. 'Pictures of 3rd party rev games now hitting magazines' won't. 'Motion control games, already revealed earlier, but now playable' might not.

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Originally posted by: IanSane
Those two features sound very much like assigning gestures for actions. Is there really any need for this sort of stuff? It just looks like using the remote just because it's there. It's not emersive to trace an X or nod with the controller. That's the sort of stuff I don't want to see that much because it's just g!mmicky and lame.

I don't agree. What's wrong with using the revmote to nod, when the revmote will already control where your character looks anyway? Isn't that more immersive than 'push a for yes, b for no', especially when a and b serve other functions in the game? As for the 'draw x for special move'... ever used the mouse gestures in Opera? They work really well.
 

[Artimus]

Wandering, I don't think anyone in their right mind could say Rev games would look as good as 360/PS3 games. We know very well they wont. The issue is just whether or not they look good.

And the GI article says these shots are from a shooting gallery, which explains the characters being the same.

[wandering]

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And the GI article says these shots are from a shooting gallery, which explains the characters being the same.

My impression was the shooting gallery they played was actually different from the shots used in the magazine, though I could be wrong.

[UltimatePartyBear]

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My impression was the shooting gallery they played was actually different from the shots used in the magazine, though I could be wrong.

Yeah, the GI description of the shooting range doesn't sound like what's in the pictures.

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You can call pointing straight at the screen the controller zero, and having the cursor in the middle of the screen game zero, if you want.

You're assuming there's a zero point to be reset when there isn't one.  Pointing at the center of the screen is pointing at the center of the screen.  The screen and controller will have a 1:1 relationship.  Even after the game recenters the view, it will still know where the center of the screen is relative to the controller.  The cursor represents where you're pointing.  You move the cursor by pointing at things, not by moving the controller in the direction you want it to go, so it won't matter if it gets momentarily off center while you're locked on to a target or something.

Edit:  After reading some of the replies on Slashdot, I feel like I should point out that I don't believe the controller is simply a pointing device, but that it's being treated as one for the shooting portion of this game.

Edit 2: corrected mistype.

[MaryJane]

I"m wondering if they won't just assign a button to recenter the screen which would be much better, much like how in "normal" games there is a button to recenter the camera behind a camera in 3rd person perspective game. you could rest the controller somewhere and it the view won't move until you move it somewhere on screen again, couple that with the delay of the camera when moving the controller and i think it would work fairly well.

as for the whole feedback thing, again, i really didn't think it was possible to do what i described, but what smash brother described in an earlier post would be the best way to go. and hopefully is what they do.  

[jasonditz]

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Originally posted by: zakkiel

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the feedback would be awesome and worth any drawback (except battery life) imo. by drawback i mean $$$.

Unfortunately, it isn't physically possible, if by feedback you mean having your remote rebound in your hand when your character's sword hits walls and that sort of thing. Good rumble should be enough, though..

It is physically possible so long as you conserve momentum. The obvious, albeit impractical solution would be to put some very small but powerful jet engines in various places on the controller so that it can exert a varying force in a given direction.

I'm thinking an improvement on the rumble might be unbalancing the controller in your hand. Here's a quick sample. Pick up a 2-liter bottle of pop that's about 1/2 to 2/3 full. Swing it around a little bit. Notice that you can feel some (albeit little) force when the liquid sloshes around? You could do a more controlled version of that inside the controller and probably simulate to some extent a force in a given direction. It would probably be a real power leech, and unfortunately, it's probably not going to be possible to "stop" your hand during a sword strike unless you make the controller ponderously heavy.

[Artimus]

I'm sure whatever system they're using works very very well.

[zakkiel]

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he obvious, albeit impractical solution would be to put some very small but powerful jet engines in various places on the controller so that it can exert a varying force in a given direction.

True, but irrelevant. Whatever elese the remote may have, a jet propulsion system is wildly unlikely. There are other ways around it - putting a large electric charge on the controller and having gaint chargeable plates all around the room - but they are even more impractical.

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Pick up a 2-liter bottle of pop that's about 1/2 to 2/3 full. Swing it around a little bit. Notice that you can feel some (albeit little) force when the liquid sloshes around? You could do a more controlled version of that inside the controller and probably simulate to some extent a force in a given direction.

The short answer is no. The force in a given direction would be shortly followed by a force in the opposite direction. The more powerful the initial force, the sooner the opposite force occurs. Even if you set up a massively heavy controller, enough so you could feel a good initial fore and still take several seconds for the opposite force to happen, you would wind up with random opposing forces popping up in the middle of battle, and so as a feedback system the whole thing would be useless.

[Knoxxville]

I think that Game Informer nailing this exclusive had something to do with a certain Mr. Berghammer being on board....what say you?

[Smash_Brother]

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Originally posted by: jasonditz
I'm thinking an improvement on the rumble might be unbalancing the controller in your hand. Here's a quick sample. Pick up a 2-liter bottle of pop that's about 1/2 to 2/3 full. Swing it around a little bit. Notice that you can feel some (albeit little) force when the liquid sloshes around? You could do a more controlled version of that inside the controller and probably simulate to some extent a force in a given direction. It would probably be a real power leech, and unfortunately, it's probably not going to be possible to "stop" your hand during a sword strike unless you make the controller ponderously heavy.

It would definitely be impossible to force the player's hand to a full stop, but ideally, the controller would simply "bump" in the direction the force would be coming from in game and the player would learn to move accordingly by feeling these bumps to know when they've struck an unyielding object.

It's definitely possible. A rumble unit is just a rapid oscillation of a small weight inside the controller. Imagine the same weight, a perfect sphere, sitting in the middle of a small spherical plastic chamber with springs on all sides touching the sphere and going to the wall of the chamber. On command, one of the springs compresses while the spring on the other side of the weight uncoils, the result would be that the weight was rapidly shifted from center to one of the edges, resulting in a singular direction force feedback, before quickly resetting to zero (with all springs at medium point). This might actually result in pushing the controller in the opposite direction that the weight moves, but this would still work to the ends which it would be used for.

That's just a rough idea and I'm sure there are flaws with it, but something of the sort would definitely be possible. I've seen devices which are designed to jerk in a direction on command (devices with far less battery oomph than the Revmote will have). I don't see why the controller wouldn't be able to do so and still offer 4-8 hours of play time.

[jasonditz]

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Originally posted by: zakkiel

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he obvious, albeit impractical solution would be to put some very small but powerful jet engines in various places on the controller so that it can exert a varying force in a given direction.

True, but irrelevant. Whatever elese the remote may have, a jet propulsion system is wildly unlikely. There are other ways around it - putting a large electric charge on the controller and having gaint chargeable plates all around the room - but they are even more impractical.

I'm not saying it's practical, just that it's physically possible. Maybe given another 50-60 years of technology something like that might be feasible in a consumer electronic. The even more obvious solution of course is attaching the revmote to a big heavy base with a robotic arm that resists you. But then you lose the portability.

There's another big problem with force feedback though, and that's injuries. A wide variety of people are going to be playing this game with a wide variety of levels of physical strength. I'm a grown man of much larger than average height/weight, so if I put my hip into a strong swing, the force needed to stop it would be significant. If you used that same level of force and someone's 6 year old nephew is swinging the controller, there's a decent chance you're going to break his wrist.

While we're on the subject of bad solutions to this problem... how about we attach electrodes to the arm of the player and when we want to stop his swing, we just quickly shock him enough to paralyze his arm for a second.

[MaryJane]

I don't think anyone was talking about actually stopping the controller in mid-air feasibly, more just giving the player a sense that they hit something, and maybe a stronger feedback for hitting something unbreakable, although it would be awesome if the controller could do that.

As for the strength thing and paralyzing people, if the controller could actually do that, certainly it'd also be able to measure a person strength and react accordingly.

[Zach]

Smash Bro, that sounds like a cool system, but it suffers from the same problem that the analogy with the water bottle did.  There would be force pushing in each direction.  Say the ball moved to the right, when the springs go into action they press on the controller to go left, correct.  But then, when the ball stops, the controller pushes to the right.  Then, the springs push the controller right again to recenter the ball, and when the ball stops in the center, it pushes left again.

All of that pretty much makes the ball system into a glorified rumble pack.

It all comes down to the third law of motion, Every action has an equal but opposite reaction.  

For force feedback, the controller would have to push on something outside of itself, it could do this using powerful fans (or jet engines as someone suggested) to push on the air around you.

[jasonditz]

Indeed, momentum must be conserved. But that's not necessarily a bad thing. Look at what happens every time Link hits a wall or something with his sword, he recoils like that too.  

[Requiem]

"There's a cursor on the screen so you can see where you're shooting at all times (though, I would like an expert mode to disable it) and I'd bet that this is what will serve as your means of moving the camera."

If there's a cursor, I will be severely dissapointed (unless I can turn it off).

[MaryJane]

bah i didnt even see that quote, that will be rather disappointing if there's a pointer, hopefully they'll have an option to turn it off, cuz although i'd stil buy this game, i'd be  severely disappointed.

[Artimus]

The crosshair is in the screenshots...

[Smash_Brother]

I think that, if the initial motion of the ball was quick, you'd have a decent amount of force, but the act of returning it to "home" position would be much more gradual and thus wouldn't induce a force on the Revmote.

Truth be told, I think it's doable but I think that my idea is the wrong way of doing it.