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Input Devices Microsoft Games Idle

Fighting With Your Fingers — A Canceled Indie Game Concept For Natal 45

Posted by Soulskill from the at-least-they're-thinking dept.
ChiefMonkeyGrinder writes "Though Microsoft's Project Natal won't be released until later this year, indie studio Arkedo has already revealed a canceled project for the peripheral. Called 2 Finger Heroes, it was to be a beat 'em up where your fingers do the fighting. 'Characters would be controlled by moving your fingers, while special moves could be done by incorporating your whole hand. The environment could even be affected by moving your arms folded at your chest.' On why it was canceled, one of the developers said, 'One of the design flaws of this, apart from the fact that it demanded some very precise pattern recognition from the Natal system, is that it would have been HELL to localize. Yup, what can be understood as the victory sign in France could be a terrible insult in the UK, for instance. And we are not even talking about Italian. Oh, the possibilities...'"
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Fighting With Your Fingers — A Canceled Indie Game Concept For Natal More

Fighting With Your Fingers — A Canceled Indie Game Concept For Natal

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  • "2 Finger Heroes" (Score:5, Funny)

    by ickleberry ( 864871 ) <web@pineapple.vg> on Saturday January 23, 2010 @12:07AM (#30867200) Homepage
    No wonder it was canceled, it sounds way too much like the title of a movie I could only download from The Pirate Bay after logging in.
    • it would be good training for geeks. imagine the chick magnet factor if you are city champion in 2 finger game

  • Important (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Darkness404 ( 1287218 ) on Saturday January 23, 2010 @12:16AM (#30867234)
    Are localizations for downloadable games -really- that important? Usually people who download games from a different region generally know what to expect in the game. I can see localization being an issue for high-budget games, but for low budget indie games, its more or less just another expense. How many of us have played J-RPGs that have been "localized" and made terrible either by censorship or by forcing us to listen to sub-par English voice actors?

    • >>How many of us have played J-RPGs that have been "localized" and made terrible either by censorship or by forcing us to listen to sub-par English voice actors?

      On the positive side, my friends think that texting "..." is now an acceptable form of communication.

      But yeah, it sounds like a pretty weak excuse to me.

    • How many of us have played J-RPGs that have been "localized" and made terrible either by censorship or by forcing us to listen to sub-par English voice actors?

      Ugh...seriously.."localization" to some companies means..remove half the story, all the jokes, then let the local high school re-voice it. (seriously...WHERE do you find such terrible voice actors, i can't even hire ones that bad myself)

      Thank GOD NIS America leaves the JA voice track in the games... (which by extension means Gust's games also)

  • I'm not seeing the problem (Score:5, Insightful)

    by khallow ( 566160 ) on Saturday January 23, 2010 @12:24AM (#30867258)
    The solution here is pretty obvious. Collect all of the most offensive and rudest gestures known to man and make them the only way to play the game. Not only will it sell the game just by itself, you'll advance the art of obscene gesturing immeasurably, giving it a global sophistication and sensibility the field desperately needs.
    • I think this is a great idea.

      Unfortunately Microsoft might have issues about allowing it on their platform.
    • Ah, but then the ESRB and PEGI would need to update their game rating systems. They only have stuff like bad language.

      On the other hand, I can already think of a very descriptive new icon for PEGI.

  • Did this game see any dev time? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Not trying to troll here, but from the article and the dev's forum post it doesn't seem that this game actually got any development time. If a game only gets 12 days of concept work put into it, and no actual game code or art assets, is it really news if it gets "cancelled?" By that definition, any game studio brainstorming ideas for a new game "cancels" multiple projects before settling on one they like.

  • Isn't Natal's resolution ~4cm? At that resolution, I doubt the system can pick up individual finger movements.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by S3D ( 745318 )
      It seems it's more like 1cm. Here are Prime Sense sensor (which reportedly licensed by Microsoft [venturebeat.com]) specs:
      Field of View (Horizontal, Vertical, Diagonal) 58 H, 40 V, 70 D
      Depth image size VGA (640x480)
      Spatial x/y resolution (@ 2m distance from sensor) 3mm
      Depth z resolution (@ 2m distance from sensor) 1cm
      Maximum image throughput (frame rate) 60fps
      Operation range 0.8m - 3.5m
      Color image size UXGA (1600x1200)
      And here is tech description [wordpress.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by S3D ( 745318 )
      And here is another thought - 1-4cm it's a depth resolution(at 2-3m). For most of finger gestures you need X-Y resolution, which is more fine(5mm at 2m).

  • My one-finger hero is surely George Carlin.

  • Of all the technical challenges of this, they were all that worried about localizing this?

    Sounds like an off the cuff remark that has no basis in reality. They had an idea, their project got cancelled. Don't you think you could provide some instructions for what gestures to recognize and people would learn them like 'moves' in a game?

    Totally useless summary, information, article, and conclusion. Shouldn't have clicked on any of this.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Aladrin ( 926209 )

      Perhaps that is the excuse that management gave them instead of 'You people are hopeless programmers and there's no way this project will make it, so we're cancelling it.'

      We'll probably never know.

  • The French have a sign for victory? I was not aware of this.

  • The real reason for cancellation (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Devs: Okay we have this game concept for Natal where you wiggle your fingers around and control the game. Natal claims its that precise so there will be no problem right?

    MS: Hahah we say a lot of crazy shit don't we? Now about this game, would it change the mechanics much if instead of wiggling fingers players had to stand in clear view of the camera and wave their arms in exaggerated flailing motions?

    Devs: Erm it might

    MS: Well maybe the player could sit on the couch and make retarded steering wheel motions

  • The excuse about not finishing it because of globalization seems a bit contrived. It could be easily solved by selecting to play as "the frenchman" or "the italian", and give the players gestures depending on which character they played. Or simply just choose culture-agnostic gestures.

    However, it seems like a cool idea to implement a simple thing like a real-time stone, paper, scissors, where you can pretty much attack and defend at any time. Seems like a game likely to boost reaction time and ESP skills.

  • What?! (Score:2, Funny)

    by Burpmaster ( 598437 )

    what can be understood as the victory sign in France...

    France has a sign for victory?!

  • In P2P action, too many players would have resorted to this move [ussschenec...st1185.org] a last resort.

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