by Jeff Woleslagle on Mar 16, 2007
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Videos, interviews and commentary with the people who make the industry great; our coverage of the GDC 2007 conference is still plenty fresh as we begin to wrap up the con:
TenTonHammer.com's GDC 2007 Coverage PortalJeff "Ethec" Woleslagle filling in for John "Boomjack Hoskin to close out the week. Boomjack will his illustrious return to the posh Loading... chair come Monday.
One of my guilty pleasures at GDC every year is wandering around and exploring all the cool cutting edge hardware and peripherals that vendors promote, hoping the coolness factor is high enough to start a trend. We wonât call it ânoveltyâ-ware, I think thatâs trite since the gaming industry as a whole is built on creating novel experiences.
For developers, making the decision to support this more, shall we say, interesting equipment is often a bugaboo. Beyond the minimum requirements, allowing gear to alter gameplay is a good way to piss off the less fortunate, since youâre essentially letting people buy a better experience. This is especially true in an online game, where a gamer with all the amenities might go up against a minimally specâed player.
That doesnât change the fact that thereâs some really cool upcoming tech that, if developers can use it to increase the immersion factor without providing a gameplay advantage, well, gaming will be the better for adopting it. My take on the Novint Falcon, an alternate controller, and why PhysX might be the next big thing in online gaming (really!) is but a click away.
The Novint Falcon
The Novint Falcon
A cross between a Wiimote and a force-feedback controller comes nowhere near describing the Novint Falcon, but it's a start. According to Antonia Chappell (Marketing VP for Novint) the device was named for one of the natural predators of the mouse, it sort of looks like a mouser that finally ate a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. You move the interchangeable handle portion in three-dimensions while the rest of the unit resists your motion and keeps the unit firmly anchored on the desk.
âResistâ doesnât really convey the feel of the Falcon; part of the demo was moving the cursor across and into various surfaces such as molasses, sand, rubber, slate, etc. I found myself giggling; I honestly felt the crunch of sand, the thick grasp and release of molasses (as I pulled the cursor out), the conglomerated bumps of granite and the solid smoothness of slate through the Falcon controller.
The second part of the demo had me drawing a slingshot and pummeling some targets, then stepping behind the plate to catch some fastballs thrown by a pitching machine. I was surprised by the Falconâs power â I was expecting a little push when the ball impacted my âmitt.â What I got was a nice crisp snap that could take anyone back to their teener minor days.
Though the Falcon is a fixed-mount peripheral and doesnât allow the range of motion of a Wiimote (PC gamers like to keep their seat, last I checked), the possibilities are compelling- even for an online game. Imagine feeling the heft and clang of a parried sword, the twang of a bowstring, or the chaotic energy of a spell gathering power. The modded Half Life 2 demo gave me a feel for the weight and kick of various firearms, and thatâs something that coming wave of high-action futuristic MMOs could certainly incorporate. Stepping back from MMOs a moment, if you got into bonus content for Falcon users, you might have a low-visibility maze that players would have to feel their way through. Oh, and hopefully that goo isnât your best buddyâs face. Itâs this kind of cool stuff that could help RPG gaming climb out of the present creative rut of repetitive DnD-inspired themes +1.
The Novint Falcon uses a USB interface, meaning you could potentially see X360 and next-gen console games (in addition to PC games) developed to make use of the nifty new controller. The price tag might be a little steep (~$190, shipping in June 2007), but when you consider that the medical industry is developing very similar tools for applications like long-distance surgery for millions more, itâs a bargain.
But the worthiness of the Falcon ultimately depends on the kind of reception it gets from devs, and whether or not theyâre willing to support it. Chappell, smiling, asked me to let the developers know about the product â so there you go, developer friends of Loading⦠take note of the Novint Falcon next con!
AGEIA PhysX
Iâm not out to tell you anything you already know. Youâve probably heard of PhysX acceleration, and you probably think of it as a physics processing card that will bump up your framerate. Thatâs partially true, but Michael Steele (Marketing VP for Ageia) would prefer devs and players think of the PhysX solution as a way to see and do more visually without incurring a performance hit. Objects will scatter and fragment into tangible component parts, burning liquids will flow and pool, and fence will drape and tear without bottoming out your framerate.
Whatâs new is the implementation. What if what the devs call a âprocedurally destructible environmentâ changed the way you play the game? What if the wall youâre crouched behind crumbled due to shock of a nearby mortar blast, a proximity mine took out the ladder to the loft to where the sniper is perched, or if you could take out that sniper by knocking out the floor beneath him?
At least one late spring / early summer titles will attempt to create just that kind of paradigm shift: Warmonger, from NetDevil (makers of Auto Assault), seeks to take NetDevilâs explosive heritage a notch higher. But, lest you think thereâs no MMO tie-in, itâs Warmonger Producer Chris Sherlandâs stated intention to take the lessons Net Devil learns with Warmonger into an MMO. âWe really think Auto Assault is a great game, but we probably tried to do too much too fast with it,â Sherland admitted. Heâs hoping that introducing the game-changing concept of âprocedural destructionâ by degrees will help sell the gaming community on the concept. NetDevil is in general sold on the tech, since theyâre giving away the system-intensive game for free as sort-of a proof of concept.
What you also may not know about PhysX is that itâs in Gears of War, GRAW 1 and 2, and itâs available to any game that makes use of the the Unreal3 or Gamebryo back-end. Steele admits that heâs not sure how many games are being developed with PhysX (the software-enabled aspects of the technology, that is) since Ageia gives away the development toolkit for free. The absent price-tag assures that many MMO developers will follow NetDevilâs lead in taking advantage of this one-of-a-kind physics solution.
For more on NetDevil and Warmonger, check out Codyâs article Explosions and Legos. And for other great articles from GDC 2007 last week, visit the Ten Ton Hammer GDC 2007 portal page.
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- Jeff "Ethec" Woleslagle
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