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Steel Battallion Heavy Armour - "1/10" "It does not work" "Should not have shipped"

DodgerSan

Member
That was one of Skyrims most detrimental flaws, but only on one console. Remove that issue and there is a still a satchel full of gameplay design and mechanic atrocities laden within a shallow game. Its like people who say ME3 was a good game besides the ending, those people are over looking detrimental flaws.

One is a matter of opinion, one is demonstrably bad design and implementation. There's a difference.
 

Alx

Member
Maybe you can shed some light on this. For a game like Star Wars, the developer has obviously programmed it to read the player input right, or "making sense of the sequence of frames" as you put it because what the character does on the screen is exactly what you are doing, just really, really delayed. How does programming play into the response of the movements? What you seem to be saying is that with the right developer and the right coding these problems shouldn't exist.

That's both a limitation of the device for the gameplay they wanted to implement, and something that could be done better, IMHO.
One problem with gesture recognition is that most of the time you can only recognize a gesture once it's over. So if you do it in a naive way, it goes :
Player makes a kicking gesture > software : "hey he just did gesture #423 !" > software triggers animation #423 of a kicking character.
If you do it that way, the resulting animation starts only once you finished yours, plus the few milliseconds required for recognition. Big delay.
A better idea, but not so simple, would be to decorrelate animation and gesture recognition. If the animation follows the raw information without waiting for the recognition, it can provide a low latency with the real input, and the recognition will only trigger the effects of the gesture. For example if you make the "hadoken" gesture, the fireball will leave your hand as soon as you push your hands forward, while with the other method the hadoken animation would have only started at that moment. The drawback is that you will see your own (filtered) animation on screen, instead of a predefined one.

If you want to trigger pre-baked animations, like in Steel Battalion mostly, there's no way to circumvent the problem completely (that's also why I think it's better to make clear gestures to trigger the actions, without waiting for the ingame animations to follow... and also why kinect is better for immersion of the user in the game environment rather than triggering scripts).

Secondly, for pretty much every Kinect game, everyone has experienced the situation where you perform literally the exact same gesture multiple times, but sometimes it doesn't register, causing you to have to perform the same gesture again until the system "picks it up". If the Kinect is as you say and is capturing 30 frames every single second, why does this happen? How does the programming make it so that even though the Kinect is catching the movement, the game simply doesn't want to respond?

That's a matter of pattern recognition (aka "analyzing the gestures"). While you think that you perform the same gesture multiple time, it's never exactly the same, there are always slight variations. The difficult task of pattern recognition is to be able to recognize all variants of similar gestures, while avoiding to miss some or misinterpret others. It's the same problem as voice recognition, if you want it to react to the "xbox play" command, it should be able to recognize/filter "play", "plaaaayyy", "ploy", "pray", "bay" etc.
Of course speech processing has been studied for decades now, while gesture recognition is still in its infancy in comparison.
 

Truespeed

Member
I think a lot of people are being hard on the game. It's a perfect party game. Watching your friends try and play it is worth the cost of the game alone.
 

pelican

Member
Another indication that Kinect is a waste of time.

And yet the MS executives still like to use the term "the magic of kinect" at E3:) meh
 
Yes he "stated" it clearly and very often throughout the video but the video didn't "show" the problems he was expecting hense the excuse.

No multiplayer
barebones co-op,
shit story,
bad characters
missions that last 1-3 minutes

These are not control issues and whether or not these are included or are good or not, isn't a measure of said controls, which is why we are talking about this game right now and why they gave it low scores.



When I played the demo I had no problem with it telling the difference between the shutter and the periscope. Switching between the two missile types was a hassle and one that I feel should have been relegated to voice control, since the guy who changes the ammo is sitting right next to you.



No I'm not him :)

well... I believe he mentioned he played most of the stuff at home, and they did mention that the setup they have for the QL shoot is as close as it gets to the 'ideal room/lighting'.

maybe that's why there is a discrepancy.
 

Mdk7

Member
3JtMd.jpg


... back to the store!

LOL
 

Easy_D

never left the stone age
I think a lot of people are being hard on the game. It's a perfect party game. Watching your friends try and play it is worth the cost of the game alone.

Every time friend fails to control the game the way he wanted, take a shot. Alcohol poisoning guaranteed! (From Software takes no responsibility of your health)
 

nofi

Member
A similarly glowing review from us: http://www.thesixthaxis.com/2012/06/20/steel-battalion-heavy-armor-review-xbox-360-kinect/

I can’t reiterate this strongly enough: Steel Battalion: Heavy Armor doesn’t function as it should. I tested it in various situations, with various lighting set ups and even different clothes and chairs to make sure it wasn’t just incredibly fussy about things and although there were moments when it felt like it was functioning as you might expect a Kinect-controlled game to function, that feeling never lasted longer than a few minutes before the next game-breaking control malfunction.

It’s fundamentally broken.
 

remnant

Banned
Yes he "stated" it clearly and very often throughout the video but the video didn't "show" the problems he was expecting hense the excuse.

No multiplayer
barebones co-op,
shit story,
bad characters
missions that last 1-3 minutes

These are not control issues and whether or not these are included or are good or not, isn't a measure of said controls, which is why we are talking about this game right now and why they gave it low scores.

Even if the controls were good, it had all of the above it should still get a average to low score at best.

I don't know. Two videos that showed bad controls( The angry joe one especially. He wasn't even moving at some moments) and so many text reviews all pinpointing the same thing. It can't be a coincidence.
 
Seriously? So Capcom was forced to make this game were they?

Kinect is an OPTIONAL accessory made my Microsoft.

No third party developer is forced to make games for it. If they choose to make a game, then it's on them to make it work.

The fact that there are games out there that work means its perfectly possible. I'm sure being first party helps, but it's about effort.

Why are multiplats on PS3 generally worse than the 360 version? Is the PS3 broken? Why do the first party games look and run do well?

Developers. Yeah, Sony made it trickier for third parties but it can be done. Same way Microsoft made it tricky by taking out the processor in Kinect and making the res pretty low, but it can be done.

I don't know where i said capcom was forced to make a game for it. That's a strange retort.


And yes, they chose to make a game and they failed. Is it their fault they failed? Hard to say. I'm guessing that they struggled with the device more than they thought and it was going to take too long/cost too much for it to be worth it so Capcom decided to ship a piece of shit.


If your argument is that tons of money should be dumped into the game I guess i can understand that.... but there are certainly risks in that as I sure you can see.


And yes, I do blame Sony for making their system harder to port for. I prefer the PS3 to the 360 because of Sony exclusives, but they made a huge mistake going with the cell and the weird memory setup. It's absolutely 100% their fault. Now, Naughty Dog sure knows how to make it work, and good for them... i'm psyched to play their games. But when most ports on it are shittier I don't blame the companies. They want something easy to make games on, they don't want to jump through hoops to make shit work. And nor should they have to.

Kinect is the same thing. It's clearly not easy to make a compelling game on the platform. Now, if you're a fan I can see why you want money thrown at it... but realistically that just isn't going to happen.

And I know your pain. I have a Vita.
 

Lijik

Member
(I've gotten better with it thats why it looks like it working)----Well of course you did just like I got better at Super Mario Brs. every time i played it.

(I've found a way to circumvent all the BS)-----------Yes by doing the gestures correctly.

You can apply this to any game no matter how abysmal the controls are. If you play enough Awesome Possum Kicks Dr Machimos Butt or Bubsy, of course you're going to get used to the horrid controls by playing it "correctly".
 

Alx

Member
Same way Microsoft made it tricky by taking out the processor in Kinect and making the res pretty low, but it can be done.

People keep bringing on the table this "processor" being taken out, but even if we're not even sure if such processor was even considered for the final product (my opinion being that the embedded processing was probably worse than what they managed to do on software), it wouldn't have been a magical processor either. That is, its task would have been to track the user skeleton, and that's something that the final version of kinect does right. Embedded processing may have reduced lag, but the problem of gesture recognition would have remained exactly the same.
 

mujun

Member
I think he's talking about Skyrim for the PS3 being unplayable after the first couple hours of playing the game due to game-breaking bugs that 99% of the people that played the game experienced for the first 6 months of its release.

So 20+ hours game saves are now "after the first couple of hours".

The tall poppy syndrome associated with Skyrim is pretty damned irritating.
 

Reclaimer

Member
i would shed a manly tear, but, i had started pretending this didn't exist a while ago. Once it was Kinect-only, I knew its fate :(

Exactly. A handful of us at work were crossing our fingers for controller and LAN play, it was to be glorious lunch hour fun... And then the Kinect was announced, and confirmed, and we all decided to bottle that dream up and sent it out to the ocean to be forever forgotten.
 

remnant

Banned
Even the guy in that video had bad moments. He would do a motion, get something he didn't want, deselect, do the exact same motion and get something else. Almost as if random

You can adapt to bad controls. doesn't make them secretly good.
 

Htown

STOP SHITTING ON MY MOTHER'S HEADSTONE
Hey Robotech Master, you wouldn't by any chance have anything to do with the creation or marketing of this game, would you? I only ask because you've been a member for like a year and a half and this thread now makes up half of your entire post history.
 

Alx

Member
Are you new to the internet? Ever head of memes?

I have. doesn't mean I have to support them, especially when it's based on posting the exact same picture again and again. That's not even a meme, that's parroting.
As a counter-example, see the neogaf "airplane.gif" meme : posting the same image of an airplane taking off in the sunset isn't funny after the third time. But finding creative and appropriate sunset images are funny uses of the meme. Creativity, that's the secret.
I don't mind gifs making fun of kinect. Most of them made me laugh (the first time), and I registered my account on GAF precisely because of the gifs. That's why I'd appreciate more wit in their use.
 
Hey Robotech Master, you wouldn't by any chance have anything to do with the creation or marketing of this game, would you? I only ask because you've been a member for like a year and a half and this thread now makes up half of your entire post history.

LOL!
 

Raoh

Member
Hey Robotech Master, you wouldn't by any chance have anything to do with the creation or marketing of this game, would you? I only ask because you've been a member for like a year and a half and this thread now makes up half of your entire post history.

ShockedMuppet.gif
 

The Hermit

Member
Hey Robotech Master, you wouldn't by any chance have anything to do with the creation or marketing of this game, would you? I only ask because you've been a member for like a year and a half and this thread now makes up half of your entire post history.

Nah, hes just defending his race.
 
Well I just finished the first mission. I only died once. I must be God like! ;)

I really enjoy the gesture and controller combination, and pretty much works all the time for me. I guess it gets harder from here though.

One thing I will say about this game. I reckon this game represents the confusion of being stuck inside a metal box whilst it gets shot at pretty well.
 

atomsk

Party Pooper
got this from gamefly today, but i need to put my xbox in the living room tomorrow since I have to sit SO FAR BACK that I can barely make out anything on my PC monitor.
 
I have. doesn't mean I have to support them, especially when it's based on posting the exact same picture again and again. That's not even a meme, that's parroting.
As a counter-example, see the neogaf "airplane.gif" meme : posting the same image of an airplane taking off in the sunset isn't funny after the third time. But finding creative and appropriate sunset images are funny uses of the meme. Creativity, that's the secret.
I don't mind gifs making fun of kinect. Most of them made me laugh (the first time), and I registered my account on GAF precisely because of the gifs. That's why I'd appreciate more wit in their use.

camron.gif
 
I don't mind gifs making fun of kinect. Most of them made me laugh (the first time), and I registered my account on GAF precisely because of the gifs. That's why I'd appreciate more wit in their use.




the gif sommelier

are you that guy who tells his friends about how gifs and memes are a revolutionary method of communication
 

Robotech Master

Neo Member
Hey Robotech Master, you wouldn't by any chance have anything to do with the creation or marketing of this game, would you? I only ask because you've been a member for like a year and a half and this thread now makes up half of your entire post history.

Na, just been a lurking reader for a long time and just decided to post some after playing the demo. Might post more often maybe.


lol :) One of the funniest muppets on Sesame St.
Yeah Micheal Steele always cracks me up
 
if this game fails, it means FROM won't have the funds or courage to tackle more big mech games, which means no more Chromehounds 2 for me.

wait a damn second, those mech designs, the movements, the green hue....THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE CHROMEHOUNDS 2 AND MS FORCED THEM TO MAKE IT A KINECT/COD-ripoff title!
 

Riposte

Member
if this game fails, it means FROM won't have the funds or courage to tackle more big mech games, which means no more Chromehounds 2 for me.

wait a damn second, those mech designs, the movements, the green hue....THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE CHROMEHOUNDS 2 AND MS FORCED THEM TO MAKE IT A KINECT/COD-ripoff title!

Armored Core V was quite a success in Japan.
 

Beth Cyra

Member
if this game fails, it means FROM won't have the funds or courage to tackle more big mech games, which means no more Chromehounds 2 for me.

wait a damn second, those mech designs, the movements, the green hue....THIS WAS SUPPOSED TO BE CHROMEHOUNDS 2 AND MS FORCED THEM TO MAKE IT A KINECT/COD-ripoff title!

After this and Another Century's Episode R I'm not really sure I want them to. Damn it from, give me a game like ACE 3 Final damn it.
 
Maybe you can shed some light on this. For a game like Star Wars, the developer has obviously programmed it to read the player input right, or "making sense of the sequence of frames" as you put it because what the character does on the screen is exactly what you are doing, just really, really delayed. How does programming play into the response of the movements? What you seem to be saying is that with the right developer and the right coding these problems shouldn't exist. The devs for Dance Central never had to deal with this problem because rather than having the character on the screen react to what you are doing, it is in reverse where you are reacting to what the character on the screen is doing. Any lag wouldn't be an issue.

Secondly, for pretty much every Kinect game, everyone has experienced the situation where you perform literally the exact same gesture multiple times, but sometimes it doesn't register, causing you to have to perform the same gesture again until the system "picks it up". If the Kinect is as you say and is capturing 30 frames every single second, why does this happen? How does the programming make it so that even though the Kinect is catching the movement, the game simply doesn't want to respond?

the interesting thing with Kinect is that in a lot of ways you can make it super accurate...but that can lead to the opposite problem, where unintended gestures are seen as intended gestures. Like, were you really trying to do a kick, or where you just raising your leg to walk? Were you trying to swing, or are you just scratching your nose? And then when combined with the hundreds of other things someone could potentially be doing, that leads to problems. For example, I remember watching videos of people playing the tutorial Jedi level, and the lightsaber felt fine there (since that was the only focus), but once they were actually in a full on action level that required other actions and movements, issues came up. (There are about 8 different main mechanics that have to be tracked and/or logically separated, since the player can do them at any given time. It was a bit ambitious in that sense...though the experiment obviously didn't work too well)

Other moves like the kick and the jump are more traditional "wait for preset gesture, then do animation", so a lot of times, those felt the worse.

As you mentioned, Dance Central smartly avoids a lot of this because you're not directly controlling a character in that game, and the only sign of your input is the raw depth map information (which is pretty responsive). So even if it completely wigs out, you don't really notice so much.

In the case of Kinect Star Wars, it's basically using a mixture of animations and "raw" skeleton data for some of the moves. The lightsaber swinging in particular uses this method. The problem comes when determining what's really a swing, and what's just moving your arm out in front. Also, moving arms on front inherently adds more issues with Kinect, due to joints getting occluded and what not. The depth camera is good, but not perfect. Which is why it can sometimes work fine with some people and in some setups, but in others it completely wig out. One reason the Rancor mode in a lot of ways works better, even if it has the same control issues as Jedi, is because "giant monster that can smash everything" is inherently more forgiving control wise than being a Jedi (also, people have a point of control comparison with 3rd person action sword games..."swinging giant monster arms" isn't as popular a genre, heh)

Funnily enough, the initial prototypes for Kinect Star Wars were pure "1:1". No lag! It did exactly what you did! Of course, it looked terrible because, well, people aren't actually Jedi. So you were pretty much the laziest looking Jedi ever. So that's where the hybrid approach came in, heh.
 

marc^o^

Nintendo's Pro Bono PR Firm
Kinect 2 will be standerd for the 720.
With no impact on the price and/or console performances?

I don't know. Kinect works good enough for apps and services. I'm not sure x360 gamers care enough for this technology to justify tradeoffs in the console power area.
 
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