Gunslinger Stratos (ガンスリンガー ストラトス) is a 4 v.s. 4 third-person shooter arcade game came out in 2012. Every character in this game is equipped with some type of dual weapons. During the gameplay, players can transform their dual weapons into speciality ones based on situations such as a machine gun for rapid fire or a rocket launcher for more power. My favourite part is that these weapon transformations are initiated by combining the physical lightgun pieces in different ways.
In 2010, I had the opportunity to lead a group of students and work with General Engine (GE) on re-imagining the cockpit of a new commercial airliner. During the research, I also looked into robot animations and live-action films for inspirations. I couldn’t help to notice how much thinking has gone into the design of fictional mecha cockpits.
From a single fighter jet joystick to a PS2 game controller to twin stick setup to motion capture to mind-control, all is possible when it comes to piloting a giant Mecha. While motion capture seems to make the most direct sense, my personal favorite is the twin stick (ツインスティック). The concept of a twin stick interface is more of a metaphor than direct control.
I played Cyber Troopers: Virtual On in an arcade center in Tokyo when it first came out in 1995, it was love at first sign. Because the controls were intuitive thus easy to pick up, I was unstoppable that night (and that night only). The idea behind the twin stick is brilliant. The player only has to send out a combination of binary commands, and the robot (AI!?) will interpret the commands and put them into actual actions. It is very similar to how our body works. When we think of walking forward, our body turns it into action by moving all the related muscles.
Cyber Troopers: Virtual On (電脳戦機バーチャロン )
It is inevitable for me to become a veteran of this arcade game – Gundam: Senjou no Kizuna (機動戦士ガンダム 戦場の絆). I spent most of my free time on this game whenever I am in Japan. It is a full-size Gundam cockpit with a panoramic view. Besides tiny legroom, this is the most authentic experience of robot piloting. The controllers I am interested in building for VR are inspired by the twin controllers in this cockpit.
Gundam: Senjou no Kizuna ( 機動戦士ガンダム 戦場の絆 ) Arcade Cockpit
Okay, the elephant in the room – the Steel Battalion controller. I love everything about this controller excepting the game. Just by looking at the hardware, there are endless possibilities in terms of what the play experience could be. I would completely detach it from the dreadful, demanding, and unforgiving Steel Battalion gameplay and re-imagine it in a Virtual On setup and add a SEGA Saturn in the back. I am very confident that I can come up with a fun mechanic or two for the WASHING button.
My first impression of this arcade machine was beyond joy, I thought it was the overdue Cyber Troopers resurgence. However, after a few games, I was very disappointed about almost everything about this poorly put together experience. It didn’t come anywhere close to the hype I had when I played Cyber Troopers for the first time, especially the control of the mecha, it doesn’t make the slightest sense and everything after that go south quickly. Maybe the game is trying really hard to differentiate itself from Cyber Troopers and Gundam Pod. The twin joystick of the game reminds me of the twin-stick for ACE COMBAT™ 7: SKIES UNKNOWN. Whoever designed the control scheme forgot two fundamental principles of interfacing a fast pace game – intuition and simplicity. The fewer turns and associations when making a piloting decision the better.
ACE COMBAT™ 7: SKIES UNKNOWN Controller
Honorary mentions: [PS1] Remote Control Dandy (リモートコントロールダンディ) [PS2] Tetsujin 28 go ( 鉄人28号) [DS] Super Control Mecha MG (超操縦メカMG)
In Remote Control Dandy, the player has to press left foot forward (L1) and then right foot forward (R1) in order to move a step forward. It was weird and difficult at first, but it somehow resonates with my imagination of how a 1st generation giant robot would work. After becoming better at it, I felt achieved as a player. ROCKET PUNCH!
sketch of the right stick
These cheap Zero Delay Joystick encoders appear on PC as generic gamepads. In the Device Manager, they are found under the Human Interface Devices. It can also be found in Setting/Devices/Devices and Printers/ as a USB Joystick. Right-click the icon and select Game Controller Setting and then Properties to bring up the USB Joystick properties window for testing the joystick and buttons.
I decided not to worry about making the handle look like the one in sketch and tried to re-imagine the left stick because I didn’t want it to be just a mirrored version of the right stick. Sliders, flip-switches, emergency exit switch, the weapon of mass destruction switch, key switches, a small touchscreen, more buttons, no buttons, …etc. Ideas went through my head like I was in a Mecha hanger going over different customization options.
DUAL GEAR
Then it came to me (like a wrecking ball), what I needed is an RFID reader. This RFID reader will be built into the front of the left stick and served as a docking station for a Haro-like robot.
I want to mod Monster Hunter Generation Ultimate (MHGU) so I can get my fashion on and maybe bypass all those delivery quests. I have done it on PS2, PS3, PS4, PSP, and 3DS and it gets harder and harder each time. Over time, the quest to mod the console or the game saves has become a game itself. My knowledge of low-level hardware and software can only get me so far. I remember back in the days when the modding was simpler, I was able to figure out the cheat codes for the English version of the game by offsetting the Japanese ones through trials and errors. I am glad that there is a strong community online that supports this liberation – to enjoy the gameplay our way.
The only way to mod MHGU on Nintendo Switch right now is through Switch homebrew launchers because the 3DS version of MHGU doesn’t exist. MHXX is the Japanese version of MHGU and it was also released on the Japanese 3DS. That is a much easier quest because I can just mod the 3DS save and then update it to Switch. For MHGU, I get 1 chance which is when I upload the MHG 3DS save to MHGU on Switch, but that only gets me all the pre-G contents.
ゲームラボ 2017年 5月号 [雑誌]
ゲームラボ 2017年 5月号 [雑誌]
ゲームラボ 2017年 5月号 [雑誌]
ゲームラボ 2017年 5月号 [雑誌]
I purchased an R4S dongle which is the latest payload dongle in the market. However, since I didn’t follow the Switch homebrew before this dongle, the installation didn’t go smoothly. I decided to stop being a Google zombie and put some thoughts into it. Here are some notes:
Payload: Payload senders (or payload injectors, or code loaders), are programs or devices used to transfer a small binary file (the payload) to the Nintendo Switch while being in Recovery mode (RCM), which allows early custom program’s execution at console boot before the Switch official Operating System (Horizon OS) is loaded.
Recovery Mode (RCM): The Recovery Mode (also known as Maintenance Mode in firmware version 1.0.0) can be accessed when turning on the Nintendo Switch while performing a button combo.
Jig: A jig is a type of custom-made tool used to control the location and/or motion of parts or other tools. In this case, a jig is used to short the Switch so we can get into the RCM and inject custom payloads.
Atmosphère is a work-in-progress customized firmware (launcher) for the Nintendo Switch. I need Atmosphère to run the homebrew tool, Checkpoint, on Nintendo Switch. There are other firmware/launchers out there, but this one is my favorite, and Checkpoint is included in the release. https://github.com/Atmosphere-NX/Atmosphere
The R4S website was a bit confusing to read. After looking at it in both English and simplified Chinese, I finally got it to work. My goal is to be able to use Checkpoint. It helps me back up the save file from MHGU.
1 semi-useful video for beginners: There is no all-in-one tutorial online that aiming at modding MHGU. Most of the posts require some sort of hacking knowledge. For someone who just wanted to mod 1 file, it is really difficult to get the right help online. Many videos cover a portion of what I needed e.g. this video has some basic information on how to inject the payload with R4S dongle but there are some outdated pieces of information here and there.
I eventually stomp on the tables above. These two tables were separated by a horizontal line and a heading that reads, “Previous Version”. However, it turns out I need files from both tables to make it work. I tried R4S’s official Dongle Firmware V2.5 and ArgonNX SD-files V0.3 and the combo didn’t work on my console with firmware 7.0.1. The above combo, Atmosphere For NS 7.0.1 and Atmosphere_UF2_7.0.1, was the only one that worked for me.
It was a success. I was able to back up the save file and edit it on my PC with the MHXXSaveEditor. The editor works well but crashes from time to time, especially when I try to save for the second time. The editing was a lot of back and forth between my MHXX save and my MHGU one. The ネセト set in MHXX becomes the Neset set in MHGU. The name of each Neset weapon, instead of having a unique name for each weapon type in the MHXX editor, are all simplified to “Jewelled” + weapon type, i.e., Jewelled Greatsword and Jewelled Hammer.
Atmosphere 8.10 came out last week and it supports Version 8.0.1. , finally! The links to SD content and the UF2 file were also updated on the R4S website to version 8.0.1.
Fortunately, this time the dongle doesn’t need an update. I was able to keep my version 7.0.1 console as it is just in case something horrible happens to the new Atmosphere 8.10. The install was super smooth, but it took me a while to figure out how to launch the homebrew menu. It changes almost every update. For 8.10, simply click on the player account icon. Finally caught up to the current version. Before Nintendo strikes back with a newer update, gonna take advantage of the save editor and go to town with MHGU, thanks to all parties who made this possible. PLAY LIBERATION!!
7/23/2019
I wiped my SD card and did a fresh install of the firmware (Atmosphere 0.9.1). I had tried to overwrite the existing files without formatting, it gave me an error. I had to back up the 120G SD card and re-install everything, I must miss a memo somewhere.
I played ドラゴンボール 大魔王復活 when I was a kid and I was impressed by the card battle mechanic in the game. It was a brilliant idea to bring some strategic thinkings into dice rolling which is usually just pure randomness. I didn’t fully understand how it works because it felt like there were more than just comparing numbers on cards. The mechanic evolved over 6 Dragonball games on Famicom and then was carried over to Super Famicom. I missed old animes that were made into RPG games back in the days such as Saint Seiya, Jo Jo’s Bizzard Journey, and Dragonball. All of them had become fighting games in their recent video game adaptations. Looking back to those old RPG games, I really appreciated all the efforts went into telling a complex story with so few pixels.
The first time I saw Rez was in a Tower Records store in Shibuya, Tokyo. It was the first time I saw a video game being sold at a hip music store. The gameplay was out of this world in 2002. For music games, I also love Guitar Freaks and the early Guitar Hero. I am not a big fan of Rockband because of lack of real friends to play with. Also, it was too much to handle when it became 5 buttons. I want to make an enchanted guitar controller for a sound generating shoot’em all play experience on Oculus Go (or Focus). hmmm…
“Comfortably lying on a couch in any position you want, stripping a Cardboard VR on your face, bearing your arms behind your head, and let your tongue take over all the snapping, just like a hungry frog boss.”
Here comes my next experiment. The tongue controller is already working, the player has to reach his/her tongue out and touch the controller, and it will register a hit in the game. The feedback, SFX and Visual, has to be satisfying to make it a worthwhile experience.
Makey Makey Go is able to simulate a touch easily with just 1 contact (capacitive touch), in this case, it is the player’s tongue. This setup will require a USB adaptor from Makey Makey Go to the android phone.
The “Dogs of War” heading includes the Regiments of Renown. The name “Regiments of Renown” was used prior to the introduction of the Dogs of War concept for certain units led by a particular hero and they were given rules in White Dwarf and sold as boxed sets. Again there are limitations on use, for instance regiments such as Bugman’s Dwarf Rangers or “Prince Ulther’s Dragon Company” can only fight with groups from their own race. “Ancient Astronauts” can join any race in the world of Warhammer because they are the creators of all.
Ancient Astronauts
The ancient astronaut is a scientific hypothesis that posits that intelligent extraterrestrial beings have visited Earth and made contact with humans in antiquity and prehistory. Proponents suggest that this contact influenced the development of human cultures, technologies, and religions. A common claim is that deities from most, if not all, religions are actually extraterrestrial in nature, and that such visitors’ advanced technologies were interpreted by early humans as evidence of divine status. Once a while a scout unit is deployed to Earth for routine survey. The members of the unit will participate various human activities in disguise and report back to their superiors.
Acron Riders coin dispenser and capsules digitizer
Acron Riders – Rise of Evil Chestnauts is designed to be a half physical and half digital gaming experience. During the gameplay, the player will be rewarded in real coins. The player purchases power-up capsules from a gashapon machine (coin vending machine) with the coins. These capsules can be used strategically in the digital game through a custom digitizer.
Acron Riders coin dispenser
priority 1: Get a coin hopper to work with Arduino Having a machine that can spit coins when there is an upgrade is the most crucial element to the success of this game. I am going to test this first. I call it an “up-coin dispenser”, a part of my Acronrider Physical Power-up System (APPS) that I am building for my 1/2 digital shooting game called Acronrider – Rise of Evil Chestnuts. The most difficult part is to get the coin hopper to work. I had seen a few youtube videos of people controlling a coin hopper with Arduino, so I was confident. However, I wasn’t able to find any detailed documentation of how it actually work together. At one point, my research had led me to coin hoppers with built-in CCTalk or serial communication. However, I realized that they are not necessarily friendly for Arduino both voltage (12-24v to 5v) and data parsing wise. I decided to do some virtual autopsy on coin hoppers online. Most of the coin hoppers, without the fancy CCTalk and serial interface, are made of four basic parts: a coin dial, a geared motor, a light sensor, and a small circuit board that manages power and standard I/Os to other vending modules. I began to search for a coin hopper that outputs their light sensor value through their standard I/Os because if I could read the pulse from the light sensor, I would know exactly when to stop the motor.
priority 2: Get my capsule vending machine to use game tokens instead of .25 cents. The current system (up-coin dispenser + capsule vending machine) works well with .25 cent coins, but that is not ideal for me. I prefer the game tokens. Normal game tokens are slightly bigger than .25 cent coins and about the same thickness. The up-coin dispenser works for both, but the vending machine doesn’t. I have to either modify or 3D print a coin dial that works with my game tokens. After close evaluation, I decided to sand it down with my Dremel tool. It worked like magic.
The token I have is a 0.984 token according to this chart:
priority 3: read 3 serial ports at the same time on Arduino Had a brief glance on software serial on Arduino Uno, didn’t think it was a roadblock. It turned out to be problematic with a regular Arduino. I use 3 Sparkfun RFID USB boards to read 3 acorn capsules at once but separately, so basically, I needed 3 serial ports. That is all I needed on the board so it was a waste to switch to the bulkier Arduino Mega with 3 extra built-in hardware serial ports. What I realized with the software serial library is that it allows multiple ports but only 1 port can be accessed at 1 time, and the data arrived at the deactivated ports are discarded. That was disappointing. It worked well with 1 serial, but when I added 2, it failed to work correctly.
After some trial and error, I eventually got it figured out. I combined 1 hardware serial port, 1 software serial, and 1 altsoftware serial port to get the job down.
I also decided to make the acorn digitizer a separate piece than a part of the controller. I had originally thought this to be a lightgun game, an upgrade from the lightgun I built at MFDT.
Priority 4:Laser Pistol
02/18/2015 Sketched out all the possible acorn power-ups, planning to 3D print the parts. 03/02/2015 Currently working on the casing of real-time physical power-up system. 03/09/2015 Dissamble vending machine coin mech and took out the coin wheel out.
Quest-to-Learn teachers, Limor Levy and Andrea Henkel were leading the “tinkering” part of the boss level (12/06/13) and interested in having a digital simulation of the tinkering experience in SMALLab. She showed me a web game called Tinker Ball as a reference to what they had in mind. The game was made by Lemelson Center for the study of invention and innovation. In Tinker Ball, the player has to build a contraption to guide a little ball into a randomly placed bucket at the bottom of the screen. This is a potentially effective learning mechanism – theory building and iterative process – if bundled with properly design supporting lesson plans.
My biggest dissatisfaction from a game developer’s point of view is the poorly integrated physic simulation. The physic interactions between the ball and all the tools are far off from the reality that they stop learning moments from stimulating. I immediately accepted the proposal and took on the challenge to develop this new SMALLab game in two weeks. I’ve recently tested out a new development pipeline to build games and it involves a physic engine, so this project came at the perfect timing! SMALLab hasn’t had any game using a physic engine before because the concept of gravity might be confusing on a floor projection. Now is the time to find out.
The new SMALLab game is designed to have two phases. They are the tinkering phase and simulation phase. Players will be going back and forth between the two phases to improve their contraption until the ball successfully falls into the goal bucket in the simulation phase. In terms of game control, some of the objects in this game require angle adjustment and it’s challenging to have two separate control states – position and rotation, on a buttonless SMALLab controller. After a few testings, I decided to have those objects start rotating on itself once the player picks it up and stops rotating after the player drops it off. This way, the player only has to worry about one thing at a time. During the testing, I thought of making use of the rotation data from Optitrack. However, because I am developing this game remotely, I decided to save this task for later.
After sent in the first prototype and discussed with Limor over the e-mail, I realized what she envisioned was more complicated than Tinker Ball or maybe her imagination had grown since last time we talked. It has become more like a Rube Goldberg machine builder. The first time I saw a Rube Goldberg machine was in an old Jackie Chan movie called “Drunken Fist”. My most recent trendsetting experience with Rube Goldberg machine was by Shogakukan’s Pitagora switch (ピタゴラ装置) on YouTube. At first, I was worried the current prototype is lacking the defining element of a Rube Goldberg machine – the chain reaction. Tinker Ball type of game reminds me more of LEGO’s Great Ball Contraptions (GBC) or games like “Screwball Scramble” than Rube Goldberg machines. I thought that a Rube Goldberg machine focuses on triggering different contraptions with various types of energies like the game “Mouse Trap”. However, after researched further, I was convinced that creating a modular contraption to guide the same ball to a goal bucket is a type of Rube Goldberg machine.
The origin: Rube Goldberg’s “Professor Butts and the Self-Operating Napkin”
I finished coding the game early and decided to work on the visual of the game before the SMALLab testing and rehearsal which is the week before the boss level. The visual presentation of the game is one of the many elements I utilize to build engaging play experiences and it is often inspired by the overarching theme of the semester. However, the upcoming boss level doesn’t have a theme to follow so I came up with my own look & feel – creamy pastel colors and wallpaper patterns. Because of Pitagora switch videos, I was determined that this game needs a Xylophone background music. Iva made me the perfect one in minutes with her music composing magic.
Limor and Andrea designed an amazing excise for students prior to the SMALLab experience. They made a paper version of the game and have the 6th graders cut and paste the paper tool pieces into a design that they imagine would take the ball to the goal bucket. This is done a day before SMALLab. Till this point, they have not seen how each tool actually behaves in matchbox tinker so they have to come up with their own theories around each tool. The result of this exercise is an amazing collection of creative solutions to one single problem – ball in the bucket. This preparation built up such a fun and engaging need-to-know for students to want to find out if their own crafty design actually works out in the digital simulation.
The day has come, anticipating students surround the white mat with their own design in hand and eyes on the glowing projection in the dark SMALLab room. We ran the usual schedule, 8 home bases in one day, and that is about 120 students in 4 consecutive 45-minute sessions with breaks in between. After Andrea explained the game to students, we ran the first simulation. I heard a student yelled out and I continued to hear it many times throughout the day in different sessions, “This ball is so bouncy!” They noticed the differences in behaviors between their imaginary ball and the ball in the game. Many of them also realized the dryers are stronger blowers than what they had originally imagined in their paper prototypes. By the way, gravity on the floor wasn’t a problem at all!
I noticed an interesting embodiment piece that some students had difficulties getting the angle they want when placing the tool down in the workspace. This is their 2nd time in SMALLab and not very good at working with their body in the space yet. In order to get the right angle, the player has to predict the rotation and side out the controller early to cover up the delay caused by the hand motion. This requires good eye-hand coordination and it was definitely a challenge for some students.
“Let’s just build a tunnel for a ball to go down!” and this happened…
The ultimate next step is to have the working contraptions printed out from a 3D printer so the students can see their own creations in action in the real physic space. This will bring the learning home and to the next level. It rounds up the play experience in full cycle with paper prototypes, digital simulations, iterative designs, and real working products.
12/03/13 Basic build is finished, sent an e-mail to Limor for more ideas for artifacts that are relevant to the boss level players. If spacebar is pressed (drop a ball) while dragging, makebody() of the dragging artifact will not run therefore ball goes right through. 12/12/13 Update to Ver.2 for the desktop application, change the control to mouse-friendly. 12/16/13 Major slowdown on gameplay when first tested on the SMALLab computer because all the PNGs used in the game. Switched to OPENGL in 1.5.1 solved the problem. 12/17/13 When the controller lost tracking while carrying a tool, it takes the tool to (0,0). When this happens to a cog, it simply disappears and left with a small pink circle at (0,0). Solved by repositioning all the tools that land on (0,y). “Where is the ball?” heard that a lot during their first building phase. When two objects collide, they also make the ball impact sound.
Deign & Technology mailing list is a treasure trove for game ideas. Yesterday we have a new thread on whether or not we should purchase a refrigerator. Sven replied with this awesome idea of a walk-in refrigerator. People start to contribute to this fun idea, here are some of the highlights.
“This will be a walk-in refrigerator, and will replace the Director’s office over in the corner. We will each have a large locker in the refrigerator. There will be a side for ice-cream making, and another area housing the frozen vegetable section. The whole room will be videotaped 24 hours, and will become part of an international new media experiment on refrigerative theory. And there will be robots strewn about, some with identifiable duties, others more mysterious.” -Sven
“And if the fridge incites bugs to visit D12, Mr Ayo can use them for his garments for the future. Everybody wins. A Soda Machine would be nice too.” – Daniel
“And a city bike station instead so people can bike around for food.” – Aero
…
and I added the wardrobe to Narnia at the end.
“…And if you pass the ice-cream and vegetable section, you will run into a closet that takes you to Narnia.”
This is very inspiring on a Sunday night so I decided to make it into a RPG game.
There is a set of armor and weapon to collect. Power up yourself with popsicles and vegetables and see if you can beat the optional boss!
PC Only: Quest Of Procrastination
