Fighting With Your Fingers — A Canceled Indie Game Concept For Natal 45
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...'"
"2 Finger Heroes" (Score:5, Funny)
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Important (Score:3, Insightful)
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>>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.
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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)
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All the same, I'm going to guess that the real problem was that the expected return on investment was too low for the amount of development time it was taking. The localization problem was
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Fun-failure.
I'm not seeing the problem (Score:5, Insightful)
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that's the obvious solution to you? imagine all the other possibilities! you could expand the colloquial expressions in american sign language. you could hasten the child language developmental process. i mean, the list goes on and on man. all you can think about is some crass and immature "art" of lowbrow insults?
Sure. I'm just puzzled why you think otherwise. Sure we could help millions of deaf and mute kids. Or we could help billions of kids learn new obscene gestures. It's so clear to me that the latter is the better, more enlightened choice. Just think of how much more fulfilling the lives of our children will be, knowing the once obscure Tibetan gesture for "You're a donkey dong licker".
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Just think of how much more fulfilling the lives of our children will be, knowing the once obscure Tibetan gesture for "You're a donkey dong licker".
That one is international. Curl you finger up, making a loose fist with punching side pointed straight up. Now place in front of your lips.
Yeah.. I know that you just did it..
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Yeah.. I know that you just did it..
Can't prove it. >:(
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Unfortunately Microsoft might have issues about allowing it on their platform.
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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)
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.
Re:Did this game see any dev time? (Score:4, Insightful)
This. They posted some "concept screenshots"? This is what the hype-first build-later development model of Natal (and many things these days, but definitely Natal) gets you.
I mean, concept screenshots. Geez. Don't dignify this crap with the term 'cancelled'.
One potential problem... (Score:1)
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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]
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One-Finger Heroes (Score:2)
My one-finger hero is surely George Carlin.
Seriously? (Score:2)
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.
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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.
Are you sure? (Score:1)
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The real reason for cancellation (Score:2, Funny)
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
Interesting idea (Score:1)
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)
what can be understood as the victory sign in France...
France has a sign for victory?!
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I can see the problem (Score:2)