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Neal Stephenson wants to revolutionize sword fighting video games

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Re: Neal Stephenson wants to revolutionize sword fighting video games

#15

Post by yummyfajitas »

antipax wrote: post #6

Biggest problem with these games (I've found, anyway) is that your sword controller cannot magically stop in mid air when your virtual sword hits another sword or a wall or whatever. It really ruins the immersion.

It will also have to drastically downplay the importance of footwork. In a real swordfight, where to put your feet is nearly as important as where to put the sword.

Re: Neal Stephenson wants to revolutionize sword fighting video games

#16

Post by amelim »

I'm surprised there was no mention of the Mount and Blade[1] series, which took a serious look at this sort of combat through the use of contextual mouse movements for parries and attacks. I wonder if he's unaware of the franchise, or just didn't feel the need to mention it.

I'm also not convinced that today's odometry based controllers will give you high enough fidelity to model swords convincingly. Any sort of wiimote or kinect based sword/lightsaber game has always seemed very waggle centric without any deliberate movement. Also, I'm not really thrilled about the thought of having to buy plastic swords to swing in my room.

[1]:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=psLA87SgZcw

Re: Neal Stephenson wants to revolutionize sword fighting video games

#17

Post by acgourley »

antipax wrote: post #6

Biggest problem with these games (I've found, anyway) is that your sword controller cannot magically stop in mid air when your virtual sword hits another sword or a wall or whatever. It really ruins the immersion.

Yep, that and the controller has no weight. To make a realistic game you would then need to make the character have a max swing agility (slow than the player) and also give the character a stamina bar. Anyway that's not to say you can't have fun sword fighting motion games. It just means you can't approximate reality 1:1 in all dimensions.

But you can still approximate reality if you just accept the control dimension will be abstract! Consider that Sim City uses an abstract interface to simulate city planning. Surely thats not the interface real city planners use (meetings, proposals) but it's still approximating a reality of city planning much more closely than other games.

Re: Neal Stephenson wants to revolutionize sword fighting video games

#19

Post by acgourley »

amelim wrote: post #16

I'm surprised there was no mention of the Mount and Blade[1] series, which took a serious look at this sort of combat through the use of contextual mouse movements for parries and attacks. I wonder if he's unaware of the franchise, or just didn't feel the need to mention it. I'm also not convinced that today's odometry based controllers will give you high enough fidelity to model swords convincingly. Any sort of wiim…

Have you tried using 2 PS3 move controllers in the gladiator mode in Sports Champions? It's not great but it's not bad either.
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