WiiMote Flick Motion Bad for Wii Games?

[samXcor3]

Same thing goes with the Golf on sports. If you hold the wiimote straight down in front of you, and flick it up, just as good as a full swing

True, but this comes down to somewhat suspending your disbelief. Sure flicking the wiimote will yield the same result, but so will swinging it like an actual golf club. So which would you prefer, to have more fun? Also, if you get into actually having to swing it precisely, and hitting it exactly the right force and stuff, you get into a difficulty issue. Not a lot of people want to actually be good at a sport in order to play it on a console. I do think what youre saying could be taken into account if a developer used different difficulty settings though.

But, the moral of the story is you get what you give. You wanna have fun, swing like a club. You wanna be boring, complain about a flicking motion.

 

[samXcor3]

wel, i enjoyed that video, would like to write some stuff like that for the people I work with (adults with learning disabilities).. no chance for me not that clever..

Anyway, i just wanted to say that I actually enjoy playing with the full swing .. take for example wii sports tennis, i like "stepping" into the shot, and using different spins.

Also having bought fifa 08 yesterday (great game) I noticed that it recoginises diffferent powered swings/flicks and is much more sensitive than say wii sports bowling.

Yeah a game like FIFA should do something liek this, i', glad they did. Wii Sports is really meant to be accessible to absolutely anyone, so I'm sure that's why the whole flicking issue is even there.

 

[llol_slim]

Yeah a game like FIFA should do something liek this, i', glad they did. Wii Sports is really meant to be accessible to absolutely anyone, so I'm sure that's why the whole flicking issue is even there.

yup, agreed, and as you improve with wii sports it becomes more accessible .. tennis and bowling in particular for me, the spins you can apply in both games makes it much more interesting and accessible to different skill levels.

Using the "proper" real life actions is, in my eyes, what makes the wii the wii.
Got to love it.

 

[austinAlan]

Okay, bare with me here. I'm really tired but this is a topic of major interest to me.

First off, I've been toying with the Wii Remote on my computer for some time now, and can tell you that they are amazing. Not by the fact that they offer a new innovative method of game play, but knowing exactly how sensitive that they are.

You may have noticed it when you rotate the Wii Remote and seen how detailed that it rotates the finger pointer on the screen, but that is only the beginning. It is also capable of detecting every degree of motion at this level of detail except when the Wii Remote is on a table and "spun". Spin it quickly it will pick it up however slowly it has not means of detection on it's direction, other than that it's much more capable than what is currently being implemented.

Due to the complexity of being able to decipher the motion data into usable results has been a bit mind boggling (but mostly time consuming) for some of our fine developers. Nintendo predicted this and helped push AiLive's LiveMove (see video), which is a development SDK designed to simplify motion based game development by allowing motion controls to be fitting into games with almost no programming. While this SDK makes game design simple for the Wii Remote, it also numbs it down to some degree, and render's developers lazy and unable and unwilling to invest the time to dissect the controls to truly exploit it's potential.

Note: Games like Wii Sports don't seem to use AiLive's LiveMove however almost all other 3rd party games I've seen seem to. The problem with Wii Sports and able to "flick" play is the simple fact it uses the very basics of the controls, just as the sports games use just the very basics of there game elements.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ffvSMWD2Mk


It doesn't NEED to be that complicated. You can take advantage of the Wii Remote without having to completely map the motion, and the same results can be achieved using simple data compilation. I've been able to gather simplistic direction, momentum/power, and even plans to calculate more accurate speed data from the Wii Remote, in hopes of developing a possible improved control Library to be used once WiiWare becomes more public and available to Indie/Hobbyist developers like myself.

Conclusion
So yes, you can blame pre-mature control libraries being used currently in games. I don't expect this to remain this way. As far as my own developmental work, most everything is still on the design level aside from bits of code to see what is possible and what isn't. The Wii Remote is amazing, but it's not perfect, however a few of the possible complications may be filtered out as you might of read, development for the Wii Remote is tricky but fully capable.

- Goodnight...

That's great. This is exactly what I was looking for: someone who was getting down to the details.

I viewed the SDK video training that you link and that video alone was what first worried me about the wiimote. That's what you would use to "tack on" wii controls to a port or just some quick release junk. I'm sure it can be used competently as well.

Question: Is the wiimote date TOO complex to use during a game with complex rendering and other processes like physics and AI? Is there going to be a new push to dedicated (or more sophisticated) input processing?

 

[KrisKhaos]

Question: Is the wiimote date TOO complex to use during a game with complex rendering and other processes like physics and AI? Is there going to be a new push to dedicated (or more sophisticated) input processing?

No, I don't think it is too complex, just it's too new and libraries are just pre-mature. A good example would be early mice, while the device itself hasn't changed much however it's controlling software has. Early mice was clunky and buggy, however they quickly evolved into a more practical and seamless peripheral. As Wii-Remote libraries evolve and improve, they will take less and less processor and memory to make use of them - as what happened with mice.

So think of the Wii Remote's motion accelerometers much like a mouse, except there are X, Y, and Z coordinates verses X and Y mouse mickeys. When the mouse is moved the data is put against the coordinates of the pointer, therefore the position is then adjusted based on the input given from the mouse. The Wii Remote data, however is much more complicated as it is not just updating a cursor position but attempting to mimic/detect specific motion. (Results vary depending on the game requirement.)

The Wii-Remote can also pull pitch, roll, and yaw however the yaw data is very clunky as I stated earlier. The current developmental problem seems to stem on how to convert this simple positioning data into a more usable form, as AiLive's LiveMove for example seems to plot motion then buffers it. Then when the motion is put against that buffer searching for that plotted pattern again. If it finds it, it returns that data. It doesn't appear to have a very wide array of tolerance calculation due to noticing that in the demo the demonstrator imputs the same motion several times in hopes of capturing variance. This tells me instead of using math to detect motion variation, they are just buffering it eating up more precious memory. Again clunky. To think this SDK is $2,500 by itself!

Just keep in mind it's still a learning process for all of us. I suggest searching it out and digging up more "nerd specs" if you are wanting more detail than I am giving. Site's like WiiLi.org are good nerd resources, and for you programmers there is tons of libraries being developed for the Wii Remote on the PC. I've been kinda dragging my feet on this simply because of lack of Wii SDK info and not looking to just use the Wii Remote as another PC toy.

E-mail reply from Nintendo's development site...

Thank you for your interest in WiiWare. More information about the
program will become available on WarioWorld.com soon.

We are unfortunately not be able to respond directly to all e-mails, but
we will try to aggregate the most common questions into an FAQ and post
it on WarioWorld.com along with the other information on the program.

Thank you very much,

The WiiWare Team at Nintendo of America

So I sit and wait...