Feature: Improving Your Motion Control Games

Author: by Staff

Wii MotionPlus developer AiLive writes, in Gamasutra's latest feature, on how to improve the accuracy of motion control input in games for Wii, Move, and Kinect. The feature, written by four of AiLive's staff -- including Rob Kay (formerly of Harmonix) and company co-founder and former SCEE R&D member Ian Wright -- details techniques for separating different types of control input and also for making the game more comprehensible to your users, as below: "Any game that needs to recognize the kinds of moves players are performing faces the same requirement of segmenting continuous motion into discrete categories. The game needs to identify when a motion has begun and when it has completed. There are two primary ways to do this. Which is best ultimately depends on your game design. You can ask the player to segment their own motion. Normally this takes the form of holding down a button while the player performs a move. The advantage of this approach is ambiguity is entirely removed in the sense that the player is responsible for telling the game when they start and stop a move. The disadvantage is that pressing a button to signal intent complicates the control scheme and may seem artificial. The second approach is to get the game to segment the player's motion. In this approach the player simply concentrates on moving. A good approach, suitable for many games, is to tell the player when to perform a motion within a time window (e.g., "Ready, Go!") that naturally arises during gameplay and is communicated to the player. For example, Namco's We Cheer 2 takes this approach." The full feature, which goes into much greater depth -- and includes some of AiLive's predictions for the future of motion control -- is live now on Gamasutra.