Today's hottest game video: Wiimote control Half-Life 2

This looks like it would work awesome if the sensitivity was about five times higher.

Still, it's pretty cool people are adapting this remote for other devices.

Cool tech, but missing the whole point of why a mouse (positional) will always beat a stick (acceleration based). So cool, but applied on the wrong game.

LiquidIce said...

"The latest version of GraphPIE supports multiple wii-motes and the ability to use the IR on the wii-mote to get pointer positions. The devs are working on code to make this a useable pointer and I will post an update when it's ready."

*squeal*

Lol, a calaboration of Apple, Nintendo, and Microsoft?

who saw that coming.

if they can harvest the data for the roll, why can't they use the IR data from the wiimote? it's not as if the IR bar has any output itself, so it seems like they could set up some candles or something and get the pointer working.

That's when it will truly be a feat. the Keyboard-Mouse control scheme is what came to any computer FPS player when they first saw the wiimote...why haven't devs tried to emulate that as opposed to the bounding box style of Red Steel?

Hopefully Nintendo pulls off the proper transition in Metroid Prime 3....

Apple should just buy Nintendo and get it over with.

@ 36ii

check out the revenue and price of the two companies, Apple is a mole on Nintendo's shiny plumber's crack.

If anyone is on this forum in Israel, please go to a military base and use the GlovePIE program. This guy must be out of his mind if he thinks he could actually prosecute anyone.

Why can't they hook up the nunchuk and get those buttons + stick to work as well? Am I missing something?

I have to agree with the sensitivity comment by play. This just looks so lumber sum. It might but fun for a few minutes but I think I would prefer using a simple mouse.

I posted it on kotaku, but it merits being posted here too:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Vp1_pZ-AteA

they hacked the IR bar.

That's a hoax. Just look how the character starts moving and the guy moving the Wiimote is not doing anything to achieve that, he's just doing the same motions as before.

@seriously: Nope... watch his thumb. He clearly goes to the d-pad ("mapped to WASD") when he starts moving. The audio was obviously dubbed in afterwards and he doesn't *mention* the WASD mapping until later, but he's definitely using it to move.

They need the Pointer and Nunchuck. The Pointer/Sensor Bar will allow for faster on screen pointing and the Nunchuck will allow for faster/natural movement. When that happens it will also (hopefully) convinced some of the developers that not all FPS need a movement box...

But this is a great proof of concept, showing that the Wii-mote is starting to be used.

I really dont understand why they dont use more pc like controls for fps's

just use the nunchuck for movement , the wii remote for a view, and a button for a 180 turn.

Make the controls just like a pc mouse combo. It can be done the hardware and buttons are there. Why arent devs doing it this way ?

hmmmmmmmm.....
how come the analog "wii-chuck" or nun-chuck accessory isn't used?
i mean.. wouldn't it be easier to move with the analog stick!?

Answers to the "Why not use pointer" and "Why not use Nunchuk" Questions: read first, remove head from asrse and foot from mouth, then speak. If you head over to WiiLi.org and read through some of the wiki stuff there, it's basically beacuse homebrew devs are still figuring out the specifics of the Wiimote and all it's funy little bits and bobs.

There's no magic "Pointer go!" command. In order to get any sort of useable pointer info out of the wiimote, you have to go through a whole series of other steps first. So, give it time.

Me, I'm gonna pair that sucker up to my mac the first chance I get - In addition to being a fantastic additional game controller, I'll also be able to use it to give presentations at uni! Woohoo!

All of you asking why they don't use the pointer and/or nun-chuck, go connect your Wii-mote to your PC and use it as a mouse. Does it work? No.

They are trying to reverse engineer the HID profile of the wii-mote. There is always a progression to this type of thing. Once they get the wii-mote down, I'm sure they'll move on to the pointer and nunchuk capabilities.

They haven't reverse engineered any of the attachments yet, thats why no one is using the nunchuck.

About pointer sans bounding box: What happens when you have to turn more than the sensor bar range allows? You can't "pick up" the wiimote like you can a mouse to put it back in a usable position. Thats the whole reason the bounding box was developed. Trust me, the bounding box is a MUCH better way to do it. I've got a gyro mouse (as mentioned before) and it gets really annoying and imprecise using it in FPS.

Just great to see he's using the strap...

Don't want that remote to go shooting out of his hands now!

looks like this software is rated NJ for No Jews allowed. Did anyone see the little bit at the bottom of the glovepie page?
"You may not use this software on military bases, or for military purposes, or in Israel. Violation of the license agreement will be prosecuted. See the readme for the license agreement."

wow, use glovepie in Israel and he will come after you! Fucking Nazi.

About that Israel thing, I don't really understand the comment attached there, something about Israel and military bases being the same thing? Other than that, is there any other evidince that this is religious/political/race dependant at all?

Perhaps it could have something to do with various export treaties on certain kinda of software? It just seems like some people are freaking out and I don't see the evidence to justify it yet.

Anyway, the pointer is not a lightgun anyway so it doesn't matter if it points at a spot on screen instead of just turning the view. It's just going to take a while to figure out what people are most comfortable with.

Also VerdigriS should stop making me laugh at work. :)

Carl Kenner, the creator of GlovePIE, is apparently an anti-semite and a socialist freak. He links to both of these sites from his own home page:

http://www.resistance.org.au/

http://www.greenleft.org.au/

His homepage is here:

http://carl.kenner.googlepages.com/

This is in the readme file for PIE 0.19:

* You may not export this software to Israel, or use it in Israel(including the occupied territories), until Israel has ended its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

He mentions nothing about the reason why Israel occupies these territories. He neglects to call for an end to the constant attacks against Israel by the terrorist state of Syria along with their henchmen, Hezbollah or the fact that Syria got their butts kicked off what was their land because they decided to attack a sovereign state. He apparently has decided to ignore the fact that the PLO continues to attack Israel as well.

OK - Spartan, it's obvious that you hold *strong* positions about this political issue, but to call this Kenner guy an anti-semite is ridiculous if you are basing it simply on his disagreement with the nation of Israel. That's quite a leap, and it is far more offensive and morally problematic for you to declare him an anti-Semite for opposing Israel than it is for him to add a comment in his program declaring that no one in that nation should use it.

RE: the Israel thing, can we take that discussion offline? People have really strong feelings on both sides, but neither are particularly relevant to gaming, unless you're going to tell both sides to knock it off and focus their agression on somebody more deserving like Jack Thompson.

RE: the pointer, it's my understanding that they've gotten as far as having the pointer send X-Y coordinates of the Sensor Bar light points, which you *should* be able to translate into a pointer location with minimal mathematical wrangling. Somebody on another thread posted a link to a YouTube vid purporting to show the Wiimote being used as a pointer on a PC, but I'm on a slow enough connection that I can't really watch it right now. That said, I don't think the interaction paradigm is right -- it would be like trying to do mouse-pointer control of HL2 using a touchscreen, but without being able to pick your pen/finger/whatever up off the tablet and put it down elsewhere.


I had an idea for fixing this that I was going to save (to get "credit" for it), but I guess I can post it here. I think you need to make the B button a "pointer enable", that is, either you hold B to "turn on" the mouse, or hold B to turn it off. I'm not sure which would be easier -- holding B to "pick up the mouse", or releasing B so you don't have to keep holding your hand still when you're not trying to point at stuff. The + pad can be used as various mouse clicks, since you have more inputs under your thumb than if you're resting it on the A button. This would be useful outside of games, too -- if you want to, say, web browse, and not have choose between letting your mouse go all over the screen or holding stock still to keep it in place. I'm going to try to buy a BT adapter today or tomorrow and test this out for myself ASAP.


Another thought -- what if you hold the wiimote *sideways* like for NES games or Excite Truck? You get 6 buttons (+ pad and 1/2) plus the exact same tilt control these guys are using now, and it's a lot less awkward to turn (IMHO). Hrm... must buy BT adapter!!!

"The Israel thing" is relevant here b/c the program you are using contains a disclaimer in the release notes that states people in Israel can't use his program. I don't think it should have anything to do with this but the programmer brought the issue up by including this in his readme file.

to hmmm: This isn't simply about a disagreement. He declares using the software on a military base or for military purposes the same as just using it in Israel. If you can't read between the lines, you should wake up. I think calling the situation with Israel, Syria and Palestine a "disagreement" is quite an understatement since it involves the deaths of thousands of people on both sides. If this guy thinks Israel should hand over lands that have become necessary to maintain control over in the defense of their people, then he obviously doesn't value their lives.

Even with what limited (but nonetheless impressive) functionality the Wiimote has in Windows, I think this control scheme could still be massively improved upon with one simple change.

Make the pitch of the Wiimote map directly to the pitch of the player's camera.

No need for more buttons, no need for special training, and the positional functionality mesa is looking for. Before anyone sets in on me, yes, I know this guy's just using what's available to everyone. I know the concept may not be easy to implement, especially if unmodded HL2 doesn't support that kind of control scheme (axis -> pitch). I'm just saying... it'll be awesome when someone cobbles it together.

Help support the anti-evil license of doom petition. http://www.petitiononline.com/GlovePIE/petition.html