Author Neal Stephenson opens Kickstarter for swordfighting game
Author Neal Stephenson has teamed up with an indie developer to make a one-to-one, motion-controlled dueling game.
Science and historical fiction author Neal Stephenson is throwing his weight behind a Kickstarter game, which focuses on realistic sword-fights through the use of a specialized motion controller. The game is titled "Clang," and it's aiming for a goal of $500,000 by July 9. It's being developed by the indie developer Subutai Corporation.
According to the Kickstarter page, Clang will be a PC arena game, and will start by focusing on one-on-one duels with two-handed longswords. It will use a commercial third-party controller "initially," but the game relies on low latency to imitate the precise sword movements.
The game is also planning to expand its own story and the sword-fighting styles through mods. A toolkit will be made available for fans to create their own "Martial Arts System Embodiments," to imitate other styles of fighting. The story of the game will also in with stories published by 47 North, Amazon's science-fiction publishing house.
The Kickstarter is up to more than $163,000 as of time of writing, so it's off to a good start with 28 days left to go.
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replySteve Watts posted a new article, Author Neal Stephenson opens Kickstarter for swordfighting game.
Author Neal Stephenson has teamed up with an indie developer to make a one-to-one, motion-controlled dueling game.-
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These things, they take time!
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Sword fighting games using motion controllers can never work because there's no other sword to hit. Your sword should stop when you hit an opponent's sword, but instead you can just keep moving and there's no feeling of contact. Without anything to hit you're just waiving a wand around in open space, which gives no feeling of immersion.
The other issue is how you move around. In a real sword fight you wouldn't just stand still waving your sword around. if you're attacking your opponent aggressively they'll probably be backing off, in which case you'd have to advance to continue attacking and you'd find yourself hitting your television.
Motion control sword fighting games are a nice idea, but in reality they simply don't work particularly well and there's no realistic way to overcome the two main issues.-
The device they're temporarily using hits back against you. They're using the Novint Falcon, which is fully capable of stopping your movement.
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feedback could be given over any medium, like, say, vibration - it could vibrate hard when you hit to signal you should stop, and if you continue your swing the in-game sword stays still and the controller pulses to tell you your arms are stunned or whatever. Manuvering it back the game sword's position can be indicated with hotter/colder style vibration speed variation. After a few times it will all be muscle memory and the player will be trained to follow the game simulation rather than vice versa, without too much cognitive dissonance. Add layers to that via audio, visuals and a reward mechanic for getting it perfect, and should be enough.
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Can we say.... BUSHIDO BLADE 3 !!!!! Comeon SquareEnix... just fund them already :)
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the first thing I thought was Bushido Blade too! :)
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