Extra Punctuation: What Kinect Can Do

[lord.jeff]

You are right just adding motion controls to a game that wasn't built to have them rarely works, but I don't think it limits you as much as you seem to think, you could still make an adventure game or any other genre with it, if you know what your doing and that's just going to take time for developers to figure out.

 

[CardinalPiggles]

Hand signals are a pretty important part of those kind of missions, and would be far more realistic for giving those orders than saying them out loud. Ideally, you could hold a particular button to signal to the game that you were going to use hand signals (crouch, probably), then you could use gestures to direct your team members. This could be done one handed, so one hand stays on the controller/gun. That would be immersive as hell but I don't know if the Kinect has the sensitivity needed to reliably see individual fingers.

True, in real life hand signals play a big part in stealthy ops, I didn't that one through did I. But I still think it would be more immersive to just call out your orders, I will change my opinion to; A Battlefield style game then, instead of Rainbow Six style.

 

[Tokzic]

physical feedback that instantly confirms that the command has been made

See, I love this point because it makes me think of a theremin, the only musical instrument where you get no physical validation whatsoever that you are indeed playing the note you want to play instead of some microtone. You end up having to learn the exact hand positions instead, adding this dumb meta-level to your instrument that makes it a complete ***** to learn. There's a reason that there's only a few thereminists out there, gaming companies... it's because nobody wants to learn how to play something like that.

Wait. Wait. What if Microsoft paid out some dudes to make a Theremin Hero for Kinect? Someone needs to get on this.

 

[maxben]

Motion controls weren't fun when the Power Glove was released. Advancing the technology has proven that it was never meant to be fun. Can we all get over the gimmicky crap and stick to making mainstream titles better?

And "apropos." Way to use that Word of the Day Calander, Yahtzee. Have you ever spoken that word aloud in an appropriate sentence? If not, let's hope tomorrow's word is "pretentious."

My mom, who is currently 45, says it a lot. But maybe it has to do with it being more common with non-north american english. Yahtzee is a Brit and my mom learned english from a south african.
In fact, I'll bet that that's it considering that, as you said, apropos comes from French and British English has always pulled from French starting from the Norman invasion to the majesty of Louis and the success of Napoleon. Its why, if I remember this correctly, the "posh" accent was created. It sound more French, particularly the "r"s.

There's nothing I hate more than people freaking out at words over 2 syllables long. I take philosophy in university and the crap I have to read has maybe desensitized me to complex phrasing. Its very different from regular writing because you want to say things in the least amount of words, not with the most coherent words.

And in terms of "slang", then we get into a discussion of prescriptive and descriptive definitions for words. I don't think you can win arguing for prescriptive because then it fails to explain how words are used, implying that all slang is meaningless or only understood within a unique community. But Britain is not a community unique enough for that, and it could be understood by those outside of the community. The only reason to dislike slang in writing is twofold: ambiguity. Sometimes the meaning of the slang is too specific but would appear to have a more general application or just a different way of using it. This would make it difficult for people who aren't used to the slang. Two, you are an extremely prescriptive grammarian and so certain things should be avoided. However, consider that if you go to Webster dictionary, even they would support slang usage of terms both in the dictionary and in their special video series (where they taught me that ending a sentence with a preposition is not as wrong as people think it is because prescriptive grammar was mostly codified in the 18th and 19th centuries and was even then not near being descriptive of actual language use).

If I wrote an article about hipsters, would that be slang or a word? How does something go from slang to word? How do you even measure such a thing? I don't think you can but I'll be interested to see what you have to say on the topic since all I know is from Philosophy of Language and you seem to have more knowledge about general writing.

 

[RandV80]

That's what made me think about spellcasting, as mentioned at the end of the video. Picture a game, probably first-person or over-the-shoulder, where you're some kind of scrappy amateur sorcerer, mostly controlled with a normal controller. Perhaps a game with a back-to-the-wall sort of combat model like Resident Evil 4. When things are getting particularly hairy and your options are low, you can take one hand off the controller and attempt to trace a mystic symbol in the air in front of you, then shove your out-splayed palm forward. Maybe you'll do it right and fuck up everyone's day. Maybe you made a mistake and bring forth nothing but a disorienting shower of sparks, but it's just enough to give you the edge you need to escape. There's power in that idea because it's not getting in the way of anything else in the game. It'd be not unlike the magic spells from Symphony of the Night that you don't have to use at all and take rather expert button combinations to pull off.

The problem I have with Yahtzee's suggestion here is you don't actually need to buy a $100 add on or take your hand off the controller to do this, the wii-mote nunchuk and/or the Sony copycat can do this by default while still providing regular game controls. On the Wii for example technically for the Okami port they didn't actually need to implement a pause to do your brush strokes, it could have been all real time.

This is what always pisses me off on these things. Gamers look at the Wii-mote and see 'arm flailing motion controls' and start bitching about it. Yes that aspect is their for casual games and the 'hardcore' go running back to their dual analogue controllers, but what I see when I look at it is the possibility dual XYZ plus single XY (and there's no reason why you couldn't put another analogue stick on the left) control input.

Stick your hands on a PS3 controller. There are two basic control inputs you have, xy analogue control with two buttons on the left hand and in the right either another xy analogue control with 2 buttons or limited xy analogue with 6 buttons. With the PS Move on the other hand you have in the left hand XYZ motion with XY analogue with 2 buttons for input, and in the right xyz motion with 6 buttons. This is an extremely deep and complex control scheme, but no developers are going to bother taking the risk and investing major time to do something cool with it when their core audience are inherently hostile against the technology.

 

[SnakeoilSage]

My mom, who is currently 45, says it a lot. But maybe it has to do with it being more common with non-north american english. Yahtzee is a Brit and my mom learned english from a south african.
In fact, I'll bet that that's it considering that, as you said, apropos comes from French and British English has always pulled from French starting from the Norman invasion to the majesty of Louis and the success of Napoleon. Its why, if I remember this correctly, the "posh" accent was created. It sound more French, particularly the "r"s.

There's nothing I hate more than people freaking out at words over 2 syllables long. I take philosophy in university and the crap I have to read has maybe desensitized me to complex phrasing. Its very different from regular writing because you want to say things in the least amount of words, not with the most coherent words.

And in terms of "slang", then we get into a discussion of prescriptive and descriptive definitions for words. I don't think you can win arguing for prescriptive because then it fails to explain how words are used, implying that all slang is meaningless or only understood within a unique community. But Britain is not a community unique enough for that, and it could be understood by those outside of the community. The only reason to dislike slang in writing is twofold: ambiguity. Sometimes the meaning of the slang is too specific but would appear to have a more general application or just a different way of using it. This would make it difficult for people who aren't used to the slang. Two, you are an extremely prescriptive grammarian and so certain things should be avoided. However, consider that if you go to Webster dictionary, even they would support slang usage of terms both in the dictionary and in their special video series (where they taught me that ending a sentence with a preposition is not as wrong as people think it is because prescriptive grammar was mostly codified in the 18th and 19th centuries and was even then not near being descriptive of actual language use).

If I wrote an article about hipsters, would that be slang or a word? How does something go from slang to word? How do you even measure such a thing? I don't think you can but I'll be interested to see what you have to say on the topic since all I know is from Philosophy of Language and you seem to have more knowledge about general writing.

Well in answer to your original post, yes, this was a bit of trolling. No point in denying it. I was in an already smug yet pissy mood and a word like "apropos" just riles everything I know about professional writing. Giving it's a term more common outside of North America, I probably should have cut it some slack.

I call it slang because "apropos of nothing" means "on the subject of nothing," which really doesn't translate into "without reason," which is what the term "apropos of nothing" replaces. I can only assume that because the phrase itsef doesn't make sense in the context of its use, people decided it would be a good way to colorfully express what came to be its current meaning, which is essentially the definition of slang.

As for my writing style, when I'm not lurking on forums for things to fly off the handle about I'm a fiction writer and I've been very fortunate to get advice from a wide range of published professionals (God bless the Internet). I learned that when you're telling a story you never use fancy words when simple words will do. Adverbs, for example, are things to avoid as much as possible.

So when Yahtzee says "apropos of nothing" when he could have said "without reason" it sets off a red flag for me. In my experience people who go out of their way to dig up exotic words and phrases think they're being very clever when in fact they're being pretentious. It turns their prose purple, to use an even older turn of phrase.

 

[Snooder]

The problem I have with Yahtzee's suggestion here is you don't actually need to buy a $100 add on or take your hand off the controller to do this, the wii-mote nunchuk and/or the Sony copycat can do this by default while still providing regular game controls. On the Wii for example technically for the Okami port they didn't actually need to implement a pause to do your brush strokes, it could have been all real time.

Sony tried that with the six-axis and it failed. Miserably. Partly because of the inaccuracy of the current systems, and partly because having to move your hand physical from one control medium to a wildly different one is uncomfortable.

The main problem with inaccuracy isn't even really a technical one, it's an AI issue. See, it doesn't matter if the tech can accurately map your hand's location, it has to be able to interpret what that data means. Which is difficult because people are people, so (a) they cannot do it exactly perfect every time, and (b) different people will move in different ways. So you need a AI that's about to decide when a movement is "close enough" to the real thing to be viable while filtering out noise motions or motions that look like the real motion, but aren't quite it. Try out this example, lift your hand up to your chest, with your palm facing inward, then turn your palm facing forward and push your hand out about an inch. That's the motion for "stop". Now do it again, but faster, and it becomes a wave-off. However, sometimes the wave-off will be slow and the stop motion will be fast. Let's say if your lazily brushing someone off, or trying to tell them to stop in a hurry. The meaning of those small, minute signals depends largely on context and interpretation in a way that machine intelligence just isn't up to yet.

Which means it's a gimmick. And like Yahtzee says, a $129 gimmick for inaccurate controls just isn't something that people will put up with in a serious game.

 

[Frostbite3789]

That is why I think the voice command in Mass Effect 3 is a feature that might work with Kinect. You don't need to take your fingers out of the controller, and having to shout commands is more natural and immersive than a button combination (which, in turn, takes you out of the action).

The only problem is that this has been done before. End War did it this generation. SOCOM did it last generation. And those had the mic in your face. I don't see how putting it across the room will make it better.

Also I should've mentioned, it didn't work well in either of those cases.

 

[zephae]

I was thinking that Kinect would be good for a Naruto game where you have to make the hand seals to do the spells. It actually would work well for them by getting players even more invested in the series itself.

 

[masterbazza]

DAMN YOU YAHTZEE!
after that bit about fox news
i now have to play final fantasy

 

[Sandytimeman]

this is probably the first time, that I've actually laughed out loud from an extra punctuation. The ball bearing in a cereal bowl line just cracked me up.

 

[Eric Staples]

The way I see it, the Kinect has the ability to replace one analog stick and one button. This allows it to play games with about as much depth as an Atari 2600 game.