Kinect Hacked To Play Max Payne, Left 4 Dead 2 30
TechieAlizay points out a post at Geekword.net about a man who hacked Microsoft's Kinect to play Max Payne.
"This hack was possible due to FAAST (a toolkit for Kinect), OpenNi/Nite and GlovePIE. Here's how the hacker describes the different control gestures: 'As you can see, the leaning left and right stuff is all there – and moving your body forward and back moves you back and forward. The reload and interact gestures are becoming pretty standard for me now, and pain killers are popped with an upward motion of the left hand. What makes this special though is the leg movements that activate bullet time. The result is bullet time diving for real! When this game hit just after the Matrix film came out, it caused a big stir – with Kinect augmentation it gets even better. The one thing that needs fixing is weapon select; this will be handled by the +/- buttons on the mote in future, I think.'"
Another video shows Kinect controlling Left 4 Dead 2. In addition to future PC support, Microsoft is reportedly working on an official SDK. Yet another recent hack of note allows a human to control a humanoid robot with an impressive level of accuracy. Just be careful if you play the Kinect boxing game; somebody might call the police.
Max Payne (Score:1)
I imagine Max Payne might cause an inordinate amount of broken ribs with all that jumping around. L4D2 could be fun, though.
Kinect hacking (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
I'll save you your sanity- there is. Right now it's limited to simple fondling, but they're not done yet. (Well, sort of- MS has already stated that it won't be available through any official means, so unless the devs are cool with it being released to the homebrew market, they're SOL.)
Re: (Score:2)
Still looks uncomfortable, still stupid (Score:2)
You need the right tools for the right job and it's no different with gaming. Keyboard&mouse for first person shooters, arcade sticks for fighters (or so I'm told; not a fan of the genre), and controllers for platformers.
I have seen only one game that the kinect best fits and that's the dancing one from the commercial. I'd never play it but it fits. An exercise game would work, too. Everything else just looks like extremely awkward and inappropriately shoehorned in (see 3rd party Nintendo DS and Wii
Re: (Score:2)
I agree. Those videos made playing look just as much fun as falling on a rusty nail.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The trouble is that either the movement is realistic (table tennis) but limited to games where you always return to the same spot (fitness type games) or it's unrealistic movement because you have to stay in view of the camera (no combat roll, good luck turning your character around while viewing TV still). I don't think that it was hard. I just think that it's not the best (by a loooooong shot) controller for these games.
Re: (Score:2)
The trouble is that either the movement is realistic (table tennis) but limited to games where you always return to the same spot (fitness type games) or it's unrealistic movement because you have to stay in view of the camera (no combat roll, good luck turning your character around while viewing TV still). I don't think that it was hard. I just think that it's not the best (by a loooooong shot) controller for these games.
the best? no. Better? yes
Re: (Score:2)
Better than what? For a third or first person shooter, I'd take (in order from best to worst) keyboard&mouse, wiimote, dual analog stick controller, and I guess kinect would be about here because I can't imagine anything worse. Ok, I would put kinect above punchcard computers. Other than that... ok, above or maybe on par with DS games that require you to blow on the microphone. Or any game that requires voice input.
Besides, I yell at my games enough.
Re: (Score:1)
I really liked shouting 'OBJECTION!' though...
Re: (Score:2)
Ok, so I move left to take cover then I decide to try to backtrack down the hall (further left). What do I do? Keep moving left until I bump into the wall of my living room or do I signal the kinect to ignore me moving right and again signal it to watch as I move left again?
Those dance and fitness games work only because you don't go running all around. A track&field game would work because you can run in place.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm interested to see what they do for Steel Battalion and the Star Wars game.
As a sidenote, you mentioned general gaming catagories (FPS, Fighter, Platformers). Perhaps this is the official beginning of a new genre?
Re: (Score:2)
It can actually add to the experience if the input is flawless. Because, well, I don't know about you, but I do sometimes "move" behind the keyboard, without even noticing it, involuntarily and in reflex. This can actually enhance the experience and even lead to better results as the mostly learned (and not reflex supported) movements of keyboard and mouse.
I do not know the kinect yet, so I cannot judge its accuracy or speed, but so far all "real life" input devices failed horribly due to exactly NOT using
Re: (Score:2)
That completly depends on the actual implementation, TrackIR [naturalpoint.com] for example seems to be quite popular and allows you to do more in a game then you could with just a keyboard/mouse or gamepad. Similarly I could easily imagine a game where you for example would throw a grenade via a Kinect motion or lurk around a corner by tilting your body or just give hand gestures in multiplayer.
The whole running and jumping, yeah, that won't be of much use other then party games until everybody got an Omni-Directional Treadm [youtube.com]
Wii controller? (Score:1)
Glovepie (Score:1)
In the summery is written he is using GlovePIE [glovepie.org] That can be sued to use all kind of controllers, including wiimote, on a PC.
Since having a controller to control traditional (not made from the ground up kinect) games is a good idea i think the wiimote is a good alternative for this:
-It has a button. (shoot)
-It has a joystick.
-It is wireless (bluetooth), and can be connect quite easy to a PC.
-It was reverse enigeered some time ago, no hard hacking to do.
And lost but not least:
Why not?
Ballmer supports Kinect hacking! (Score:2)
Too much lag. (Score:1)
Unfortunately, there is too much lag on the Kinect for any serious gamer to use.