ProjectProposal-BillyGrissom
From CS 160 Fall 2008
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Target User Group
The target user group for this idea is chiefly martial artists and those who play combative sports such as kendo and fencing. In addition to this, this game can also prove to appeal to anyone simply looking to improve their hand-eye coordination.
Problem Description
One of the key aspects of any sort of dueling sport is reaction time. In sports such as Kendo and Fencing good reaction time is often one of the keys to victory. Excellent blocking skills, for example, require a lot of time to be spent training against an opponent’s attacks. Unfortunately, not everyone has the luxury of having someone to train with whenever they want to.
Problem Context and Forces
There are many of programs and games out there that argue that they help increase hand-eye coordination and improve reaction time. This is true, but many of these wouldn’t help a person all that much come the real situation. For example, many “sword wielding” games on the internet simply rely on basic mouse movements or keystrokes on the keyboard. This might be great for improving typing skills or hand-eye coordination, but there is much more potential here…especially for those interested in real combative training. Sure these games help increase reaction time, but this is far from the person actually standing up and wielding a sword. In order for training to be incredibly effective, a person needs to actually get into the game and become a part of it both physically and mentally. The person needs to move their body and feel like they’re actually a part of the experience in order to get the most out of it. This is what this project intends to do.
Solution Sketch
People need to step away from the keyboard and mouse environment and enter the physical realm. Using the wii-mote, the player will be able to mimic sword movements and practice their defensive tactics against a virtual A.I. opponent. Granted, there have been many attempts to make games like this on the Wii, but many of these have failed. I don’t think this is entirely impossible…you just have to be willing to think outside of the box.
My idea is to have a play stand stationary some distance from their computer. They’ll hold a wii-mote and use it to control the “sword” in the game. The GUI would work in that the player would see his opponent and a bar on the left. The bar would represent the flow of battle. If the marker goes to green then the player wins. If red, then it goes to the enemy. The bar moves up and down depending on successful hits and blocks. Game is over if the bar goes red. Also, the upper right will have a BLOCKED/NUMBER OF ATTACKS counter. In the left will be an indicator showing the level of difficulty.
As many know, the Wii gathers its data from the controller via Bluetooth and the IR receiver. There are many ways to get a Wiimote to work on a PC as a mouse. Thus, you can tweak the many mouse functions at your disposal and customize them for Wii specific movements.
In addition to this, the IR receiver doesn’t have to be directly in front of the player. Why not above them? This way it’s like as if the player’s movements map directly to the mouse’s movements in an X Y graph. That is, assuming the player holds the remote upwards. Of course, this can be achieved simply by creating a holder for the remote. For example, you could create a sword holder that ensures the remote holds upward. This not only improves the functionality but also increases the realism for the player.
With this setup the sword mimics the mouse’s movements. You can now manipulate the mouse’s movements to better suit the sword controller. For example if you move the sword remote left and right then the mouse moves left and right. Slicing backwards or forward with the sword makes the mouse move down and up. The code can be manipulated to work with the remote.
In addition to this you can add some creativity to the interface. You can add extra weapons for players to wield and maybe even make different holders. You can also build upon this and allow the player to attack instead of only solely defend. Most of the UI programming would be around interfacing the player’s movements to mimic the proper movements in the game. There would also be various in-game menus that would need to be set up as well. I could see all this being done in Flash, C, or maybe even XNA. The benefit of flash though is that you could access the game via a website and play it on your Wii. All in all, I think it’d be an interesting idea to look into. Yes, there is wii-motion-plus on the way, but I think this might be a cheap alternative for those not willing to dish out the extra cash for another limited addon.
