Long time no see
Yeah yeah yeah, I haven't been updating i know. These days i get home and im too tired to do any serious thinking. I hadn't thought too much about new games but i did get a couple ideas. I really wanted to try my hand at thinking of an idea for Wii. I came up with two ideas.
First idea: NON GAME DUNDUDUN, Japanese cursive writing THE SOFTWARE!
I figured since the wii does motion in 3d space (even though i hear its still limited) The wii would be the best system to simulate drawing on paper. Using the controller to press on the paper and lift up the brush as you finish the stroke would seem fairly natural (comparitavely) on the wii. The major problems i forsee are the lack of feedback or point of reference. This could be solved with some guides from the rumble and speaker.
One solution could be rumble at different intensities depending on how hard you press on the paper. This, to me seems like a very obvious solution to the problem. The thing is, from what i hear , if you have the wiimote facing down (away from the censor) it can only detect rotation. Assuming this is true youre going to have to write in the air at the screen. I think this could be a little confusing even with the rumble. So assuming that the wiimote can be pointed down, rumble would make things feel really natural and i dont see anyone being confused with this. The only thing at this point is you(the game player) would probably have to set your own point of reference for the game, tell the game where the paper is in the 3d space.
So after that is done youve got 2 main modes of play and 1 little bonus mode, training mode where you learn the basics of japanese caligraphy, a word look up, for you crazy japanophiles that want to learn how to write SPERM in kanji or something. This mode would display stroke order and a few examples of different styles the word is written in. The game would come with a built in stroke analyzer that would show you where you might need to press harder on the brush or maybe something needs to jut out a little further or something. How it would do this, i dunno perhaps just compare it to a standard style version of the character. You could turn this off and on in the word look up mode.
The 3rd mode would be a name look up mode. You silly gaijin can now create your own name in kanji! Complete with character meanings and all that junk. This would work by having the user enter in their name using japanese syllables (with a full blown tutorial on how to pronounce and properly turn your name into japanese). The game would then show characters for each syllable and you can pick which ones you think are nice and at the end it will display your full name with an aproximated meaning. If you dont like it you can go back to any syllable and edit which kanji you picked or even try a different pronounciation. So if you ever wanted to get that lower back tattoo of your boyfriends name you can now find a good set of kanji to stain on your skin without fear of it meaning "cum deposit" or something equally demeaning.
I guess for a 4th mode there could be an actual game where you have to accurately draw kanji in some sort of wacky setting. I dunno, thats not really the main focus of this software.
Idea 2: Little bird
This idea came from me wanting to think of a new game using a similar level progression to katamari damacy. The basic design is "Deliver this item from one place to another in the fastest amount of time possible". To accomplish this in a fun way I decided instead of the real world "fly high less distance blah blah blah" i should kind of bend reality with this one. So if you decide to fly high, you dont go any slower but it's not going to get you anywhere faster. In order to get from A to B in a speedy manner youre going to have to take risks. In the beginning of the game, flying low and swerving between cars is going to boost your speed. As your speed boosts, the spaces between things become farther and farther apart and distance between two places becomes closer. Sort of like hyperspace theory from star trek (haha). So say for instance you fly through a traffic jam, youre going really fast, you see a crack between two buildings that are really close. If you were flying at normal speed this crack would be very difficult to navigate due to how small it is (yes hitting things take damage and slow you down) and on top of that it could very well be a fairly long crack. If you were going at a slightly faster pace the little space becomes a bigger and easier to navigate space and the space between each exit becomes smaller. You get another speed boost and you see a mouse hole, except the mousehole is now the size of a small car and so on and so on. The game would start with you getting mild speed bursts in an old town (the happy prince by oscar wilde being the theme for this level) and as you break down speed barriers you travel into new, larger areas, and you start flying into crazier places. Say in the first stage youre just flying through cracks and stuff, in the last stage youre flying through peoples ears, inbetween molecules anything you can think of. You could start the game on planet earth and end the game 3000 light years away.
Each "level" will have some sort of npc you do work for. The first stage, an adaptation of the happy prince would have you doing errands for a gold statue blah blah blah read the book. One level will have you doing errands for two old people who have been stranded on an island all their life. One level will have you doing errands for a leader with less than amiable desires. There wont be an extraneous long cutscenes filling you in on every detail of the story, but the player will know the consequence of his actions. There will be no "im not going to deliver this! hes evil" moments. You are just the messenger, you are not the hero. At the end of the game after youve done all the story stuff, there will be fun side games like Time Attack and maybe some sort of "design your own route" thing that could extend the gameplay a little. If theres an online component it would just be high score (time attack) rankings.
Actually, writing this has gotten me a little interested in game pacing again, how can I keep a player interested from the beginning to the end by expanding the gameplay? Is the katamary damacy method the most ideal way to keep the game interesting? I will have to think this over a little more. Hopefully the 2 or 3 of you that read this blog are still reading, again i apologize for neglecting you. :(
First idea: NON GAME DUNDUDUN, Japanese cursive writing THE SOFTWARE!
I figured since the wii does motion in 3d space (even though i hear its still limited) The wii would be the best system to simulate drawing on paper. Using the controller to press on the paper and lift up the brush as you finish the stroke would seem fairly natural (comparitavely) on the wii. The major problems i forsee are the lack of feedback or point of reference. This could be solved with some guides from the rumble and speaker.
One solution could be rumble at different intensities depending on how hard you press on the paper. This, to me seems like a very obvious solution to the problem. The thing is, from what i hear , if you have the wiimote facing down (away from the censor) it can only detect rotation. Assuming this is true youre going to have to write in the air at the screen. I think this could be a little confusing even with the rumble. So assuming that the wiimote can be pointed down, rumble would make things feel really natural and i dont see anyone being confused with this. The only thing at this point is you(the game player) would probably have to set your own point of reference for the game, tell the game where the paper is in the 3d space.
So after that is done youve got 2 main modes of play and 1 little bonus mode, training mode where you learn the basics of japanese caligraphy, a word look up, for you crazy japanophiles that want to learn how to write SPERM in kanji or something. This mode would display stroke order and a few examples of different styles the word is written in. The game would come with a built in stroke analyzer that would show you where you might need to press harder on the brush or maybe something needs to jut out a little further or something. How it would do this, i dunno perhaps just compare it to a standard style version of the character. You could turn this off and on in the word look up mode.
The 3rd mode would be a name look up mode. You silly gaijin can now create your own name in kanji! Complete with character meanings and all that junk. This would work by having the user enter in their name using japanese syllables (with a full blown tutorial on how to pronounce and properly turn your name into japanese). The game would then show characters for each syllable and you can pick which ones you think are nice and at the end it will display your full name with an aproximated meaning. If you dont like it you can go back to any syllable and edit which kanji you picked or even try a different pronounciation. So if you ever wanted to get that lower back tattoo of your boyfriends name you can now find a good set of kanji to stain on your skin without fear of it meaning "cum deposit" or something equally demeaning.
I guess for a 4th mode there could be an actual game where you have to accurately draw kanji in some sort of wacky setting. I dunno, thats not really the main focus of this software.
Idea 2: Little bird
This idea came from me wanting to think of a new game using a similar level progression to katamari damacy. The basic design is "Deliver this item from one place to another in the fastest amount of time possible". To accomplish this in a fun way I decided instead of the real world "fly high less distance blah blah blah" i should kind of bend reality with this one. So if you decide to fly high, you dont go any slower but it's not going to get you anywhere faster. In order to get from A to B in a speedy manner youre going to have to take risks. In the beginning of the game, flying low and swerving between cars is going to boost your speed. As your speed boosts, the spaces between things become farther and farther apart and distance between two places becomes closer. Sort of like hyperspace theory from star trek (haha). So say for instance you fly through a traffic jam, youre going really fast, you see a crack between two buildings that are really close. If you were flying at normal speed this crack would be very difficult to navigate due to how small it is (yes hitting things take damage and slow you down) and on top of that it could very well be a fairly long crack. If you were going at a slightly faster pace the little space becomes a bigger and easier to navigate space and the space between each exit becomes smaller. You get another speed boost and you see a mouse hole, except the mousehole is now the size of a small car and so on and so on. The game would start with you getting mild speed bursts in an old town (the happy prince by oscar wilde being the theme for this level) and as you break down speed barriers you travel into new, larger areas, and you start flying into crazier places. Say in the first stage youre just flying through cracks and stuff, in the last stage youre flying through peoples ears, inbetween molecules anything you can think of. You could start the game on planet earth and end the game 3000 light years away.
Each "level" will have some sort of npc you do work for. The first stage, an adaptation of the happy prince would have you doing errands for a gold statue blah blah blah read the book. One level will have you doing errands for two old people who have been stranded on an island all their life. One level will have you doing errands for a leader with less than amiable desires. There wont be an extraneous long cutscenes filling you in on every detail of the story, but the player will know the consequence of his actions. There will be no "im not going to deliver this! hes evil" moments. You are just the messenger, you are not the hero. At the end of the game after youve done all the story stuff, there will be fun side games like Time Attack and maybe some sort of "design your own route" thing that could extend the gameplay a little. If theres an online component it would just be high score (time attack) rankings.
Actually, writing this has gotten me a little interested in game pacing again, how can I keep a player interested from the beginning to the end by expanding the gameplay? Is the katamary damacy method the most ideal way to keep the game interesting? I will have to think this over a little more. Hopefully the 2 or 3 of you that read this blog are still reading, again i apologize for neglecting you. :(
posted by Justin Epperson @ 10:37 AM
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