Neal Stephenson heads company developing sword fighting middleware.
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
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
Replies
Agreed, without it it wouldn't work, but for how boring and flawed the Wii was, I just can't care about this...
[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
anyone remeber this...was cool
[ame="
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.
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!