Half-baked Wii game idea

[prog]

* Using only your TV's stereo sound, and aural/tactile feedback from the controller as you wave it around, feel your way through some challenge. (Obstacle course? Blind combat?) The TV picture is blank and won't help you.

* Multiplayer variant: as above, except that the TV has useful visual imagery on it. However, the Wii controller input is flipped left-to-right. This is because you are meant to face away from the TV to play. You instead face your gathered friends, who can see exactly what you're not seeing, and are encouraged to shout advice at you.

Comments

[taskboy3000.livejournal.com]

It might be a fun mechanism for a "marco-polo" game or a "move the ball through a maze" game.

Unfortunately, most people's hearing isn't super-sensative. We hear pitches pretty well, but getting spacial information is trickier (I think).

[prog.livejournal.com]

I think you have it backwards. Unless I'm mistaken, many people aren't good with pitch-matching, but almost everyone can hear where sounds are coming from. (Or be tricked into it through a stereo sound device.)

[taskboy3000.livejournal.com]

Perhaps you're right, but managing the stereo field of sounds is tricky programming. Perhaps just saying "%70 left and %30 right" for the volume of a particular sound will be good enough for a game, but I think the implementation will be harder than that to create a truly "virtual aural space" (tm).

That's just what my experience tells. Programming audio effects are tricky to do right.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

They've done some very surprising studies on the pitch accuracy of lay people. They're not spot-on, but relative pitch (of the X is higher than Y variety) is very good, and if you ask them to sing their favorite pop song chances are quite good they'll be within a few semitones of the right key. (I can't recall where I read this, but I think it was a <1 month old BBC or New Scientist article.)

I imagine an audio game like that would be very popular with the right crowds. Alternately, put some flashy imagery on the screen that has little or nothing to do with the game play, just to engage the visual centers while your brain figures out the sound-controller mapping.

Dang. Now I want to write something like this for desktop machines. Too bad the Java sound libraries still suck dry rotting flesh.

[kahuna-burger.livejournal.com]

I agree about some sort of imagry, even distracting imagry.... as part of a larger dungeon crawling sort of fantasy game, a section where you face an illusionist with all sort of dragons and flames that you have to ignore and use the other cues to hit the real threats?

[doctor-atomic.livejournal.com]

Actually, people are good at both.

[chocorisu.livejournal.com]

Someone made a game a bit like that using a 360 controller (which has rumble) : In The Pit. Pretty entertaining and surprisingly playable!

[hahathor.livejournal.com]

I love the second one, which reminds me of mirror charades. If you've never played that, the person who knows the answer - lets call this person A - stands in back of the people solving. A teammate who doesn't know the answer - lets call this person B faces A, and the people solving (lets call them C through Z). A clues the answer, unseen by all save B, who mirrors A's moves while C, D, E, etc try to guess the answer.

[mrmorse.livejournal.com]

The Lost Woods in Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time was navigable by sound.

Basically, it was a maze of twisty passages, all alike, but by listening to where the sound was coming from, you could figure out where to go.

One limitation is the sound quality on most people's televisions. At this point, most TVs have stereo sound, but the built in speakers are still relatively crappy. But with good enough speakers, listeners can place sounds extremely accurately. I have live concert recordings where I can identify where individual people in the crowd are located relative to the stage.

[mr-choronzon.livejournal.com]

That's a great idea! I love the party game aspect; where your friends can see the TV and shout at you.