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Neal Stephenson heads company developing sword fighting middleware.

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Steve Schulze polycounter lvl 18
I think what we might have here is the most interesting Kickstarter game project to spawn post Double-Fine Adventure.

Neal Stephenson, (that's the author of the likes of Snow Crash, Cryptonomincon and perhaps most importantly, REAMDE for the less literately inclined), is heading up a studio who are developing a middleware solution for realistic sword fighting in video games using a wiimote style peripheral. Another day, another guy trying to get in on Kickstarter gold rush, right? Well, apparently not.

It's evident from the video on the Kickstarter site that Stephenson and his studio Subutai aren't just pissing about with some pie in the sky idea, but that they've been developing the concept for some time, they have people who know what they're doing and most importantly, they've clearly put some thought into the business side of things - what they need to do and how they're going to get there.

There's also a brief cameo from a certain portly game developer/publisher CEO that lends a little more credence to the project.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang

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  • Xoliul
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    Xoliul polycounter lvl 14
    The fact that it requires a special peripheral makes me really doubt how useful this will be.
    Agreed, without it it wouldn't work, but for how boring and flawed the Wii was, I just can't care about this...
  • Adam L. Gray
    Immediately made me think of this:

    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41UyXgofO3o"]Die by the Sword - Arena 1 - YouTube[/ame]

    That is one of the most horrible things to have struck mankind, evar!

    Could be good anyway, but I'm not feeling too hyped about it at the moment, perhaps when I were younger I would've been :3
  • SHEPEIRO
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    SHEPEIRO polycounter lvl 17
    if you watch the second video...im not sure but he seams to be saying that they are going to avoid making aa third party hardware to begin with and use an over the shelf system...Wii (U) ? then later when the system is proven bring out hardware

    anyone remeber this...was cool
    [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_cZsCLNCSc"]Bushido Blade Gameplay HQ - YouTube[/ame]
  • ambershee
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    ambershee polycounter lvl 17
    It sounds a bit randomly specific. It's generally not that complex to handle something like this anyway (outside of the engine-side material); I'm not sure you really need middleware for it?
  • Steve Schulze
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    Steve Schulze polycounter lvl 18
    Perhaps middle ware isn't the right term. What they're working towards is a peripheral that can be used to accurately simulate sword combat and then releasing the software that drives it as open source, thereby presumably extending the shelf life beyond the likes of other peripheral driven games like Donkey Konga or even the more successful Guitar Hero/Rock Band games.

    It'll be interesting to see exactly what they do to make it better than what's already on the market. One thing that might put it ahead would be having some kind of haptic feedback when the blade collides with an in game object, though achieving that would be tricky. I saw another design for an arcade machine typed setup that featured an entire exo-skeleton that would lock its joints on collisions. Looked pretty awkward though and I'm not sure there'd be any way to feasibly downsize it to something that one would want to use in ones living room.

    One thing I've wondered about in the past is using gyroscopes. I'd imagine with some clever design you could simulate the heft of a blade with a couple of well placed gyroscopes on a wiimote sized peripheral, and then by altering the speed at which they spin or running counter to each other or something you could perhaps simulate that blade colliding with something.

    Anyway, whatever comes of it, it's a pretty interesting project and I think I'll put a few bucks down just so I can keep an eye on what they're up to.
  • Paradan
    2 gyroscopes that weigh less then 2 pounds are gonna generate enough force to stop a full grown man?
  • rebb
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    rebb polycounter lvl 17
    I like the bit that conveniently starts around the 03:03 mark ;)
  • arshlevon
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    arshlevon polycounter lvl 18
    I think he would get more funding if the API and SDKs were one of the rewards.
  • Joseph Silverman
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    Joseph Silverman polycounter lvl 17
    ambershee wrote: »
    It sounds a bit randomly specific. It's generally not that complex to handle something like this anyway (outside of the engine-side material); I'm not sure you really need middleware for it?

    Ive never played a videogame with whatsoever realistic melee combat in terms of tactics and physics. it's definitely a complex problem, i just wonder if they can pull it off!
  • Hristo Rusanov
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    Hristo Rusanov polycounter lvl 7
    Ohhh god i almost died of laughter when i saw Gabe Newell smithing a crowbar. : DDD
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