Hey guys,
I spend most of my time on the audiogames.net forum, and every now and then
I'm reminded that I've shared news with them but forgot to post it here as
well. My apologies, people of the audyssey list! :D LOL.
After my 2.9 patch for Swamp I began working on a new project. To make a
long story short, I learned I was going to need to get a second job in 2 months
so I wanted to make the most of them. I officially ended development on Swamp
and have dedicated myself to getting some stuff accomplished in the 2 months I
have left. After I get the additional job I will have a lot less time
available to work on projects, so I don't know how that will impact my efforts
as a game developer.
The new project can actually be thought of as 2 separate, but linked,
projects. My new game is going to be an RPG based in the Daytona/Castaways
storyline. It will take place many years after the Daytona game, and you will
learn what happened to the leader from the end of the Castaways game.
The mouse hardware requirement for Swamp was a terribly unpopular move for
a very very long time. Using the word unpopular may even be an understatement,
ROFL! Well that battle was fought and won, and I feel the audio games
community is a better place now that the mouse is an accepted tool for gaming.
This opens up more options for game developers, and that is always a good
thing! Well this RPG is going to follow in those foot steps and require a new
piece of hardware. In a move that will go down in audio games' history as an
epic mistake, or as a revolution, my RPG will require players to have a 3D head
tracking headset I have named the See Munkey. (I still crack a smile when I
say See Munkey out loud.) While wearing the headset in the RPG you can simply
move your head around to move the head of your in-game character. This will
give a more natural playing experience plus allow you to easily look up or down
to get a 3D feeling of your
surroundings. To determine the locations of sounds in the real world, we
naturally move our heads to see how the sounds will change. This gives us far
more data than we can get from being perfectly still, which is how we normally
are in games. I'm trying to give players that same advantage inside of the
game world.
Development of this device has burned through 3 weeks, which is more than I
planned for. The good news is that I not only have a working prototype but
I've already ordered a shipment of parts to produce 13 more. More detailed
information about the "Munkey" will show up once I'm ready to sell them but
here are the basics:
The device clips on to your existing headphones, or clips on to a plastic
headband that comes with it in case you use ear buds instead of headphones. It
does not produce sound to replace your headphones, which is a common
misconception, but rather tracks the orientation of your head in all 3 axis.
This data can be read by games and programs to customize the experience. This
is similar to how a game can be designed to receive input from a mouse or a
joystick.
The device can be used by other developers! If these do find their way
into the hands of many players, it will be a brand new tool for developers. It
is my understanding that BGT is already set up to handle serial communications,
which means programmers who use BGT will be able to incorporate the headset
immediately into their own projects. Other developers can easily look up how
to read and write to the device using serial communication, which will give
them the same ability.
Games that aren't designed for the headset won't suddenly become 3D when
you use it. This is the same as playing a game that isn't designed to work
with a joystick or mouse. Separate software can be used to map the See Munkey
to the mouse or keys though, which means you can have an interesting new way to
play even those games. As an example, Swamp is not designed to use the headset
yet I was still able to play using it. I mapped turning my head to the mouse
X-axis, forward to tilting my head down, and backward to tilting my head back.
I didn't do it at the time, but I could have also made tilting my head left or
right to perhaps side step, reload my weapon, or toggle the radar. It wouldn't
replace the need for the keyboard, but it was definitely a new playing
experience!
So yeah, that's pretty much what I've been doing lately.
I'll answer some questions before they're even asked:
Q: How much will it cost?
A: The device will be $50 plus between $4 and $8 in shipping, depending on
where you live. Since I haven't shipped any out yet I don't know the exact
shipping prices yet. I'll update that once I've sent out a few and know the
exact rates.
Q: Where will you sell these?
A: My website will be set up with a special page to sell these once I'm ready
to do so.
Q: Can I pre-order one?
A: No, I will not accept pre-orders. I've already had a handful of people ask
me about that, but I'm absolutely not comfortable taking anyone's money until
I've got the product in my hands to ship out to them.
Q: What happens if I drop it?
A: The device is completely encased in hard rubber to make it, hopefully, drop
proof.
Q: What happens if I eat it?
A: You'll die. Actually I don't really know that. My friend Steve isn't being
a "team player" so I can't answer this question yet. The device is about 2.5
inches long, 1 inch wide, and 3/4 inch tall so swallowing it would be difficult
but not impossible. It also has a 6 foot USB cord on it, so I actually think
you'd choke on that after getting the thing down. LOL!
Q: Will other developers have to pay to use this device in their games/software?
A: Nope, not at all. I'm definitely not going to get rich from selling these
things, so the entire point is to get a new and useful tool out there for other
developers to take advantage of. This probably isn't the perfect solution to
adding 3D to audio games, but it's far better than what we're using already.
Q: Will this come with a warranty?
A: I don't know, but probably not. Most places that give you a warranty are
charging everyone extra money to pay for that. I've cut every corner I could
to make these as cheaply as possible, so replacing devices with a warranty
would quite literally be money coming out of my own pocket, and I'm far too
poor for that! HAHA! I do believe I'll at least let people send back broken
headsets to I can see if they can be fixed. I'll feel terrible if someone gets
a broken one, which is why I've encased them in hard rubber and am sending them
in boxes rated as "indestructable". I'm pretty sure I could step on this
prototype without hurting it, but I'd rather not find out.
Q: Can I get a cordless version?
A: Sorry no. Making this thing cordless would easily double or triple the
price. I searched high and low to get just the right parts to keep this thing
affordable, and wireless just didn't work for that. To give a small idea of
how many corners were cut, just ONE of the parts in this thing costs $100 when
purchased fully assembled! I went with off brand, unassembled parts, that had
to be calibrated manually and run my own software written from scratch.
Q: What happens if I buy one and then you build a more advanced version?
A: I've actually planned for that. The See Munkey headset is already packed
with all of the accelerometers, gyroscopes, magnetometers, processing power,
and memory it should ever need. Writing software that turns all of those
sensors into reliable Yaw, Pitch, and Roll data is something groups have
invested years into. I've spend about a week coming up with my own, but I'm
sure that will improve quite a bit over time as I work out more complicated
math to improve performance. The headset has already been designed to grow
over time in 2 ways, without you needing to replace it with a new device. If I
wake up in the middle of the night with some brand new idea for coding the See
Munkey, I can release it as a firmware update that anyone can choose to
download. That would improve the performance of your device while still having
it work on every game and piece of software that it worked on before. It would
just work better! The other option is for
developers to output the raw sensor data instead of just the yaw, pitch, and
roll. So lets pretend that a game developer feels he can do a better job
arriving at yaw, pitch, and roll than the device naturally does. In his game
he can pull the raw data and use his own set of mathematical equations on it.
For developers who are happy with the results provided by the headset, they can
just have their game pull in the 3 processed values. I like this approach
because people are going to come along that are far smarter than I am. With
the ability to read the raw sensor data, they will be able to make the See
Munkey perform in ways far beyond what it can do at this exact moment, and yet
no one would have to go buy a new one! Yay! :D
Q: What was the third question?
A: That was asking about pre-orders. I don't allow pre-orders.
Q: Does the See Munkey use binural sound to more precicely simulate real life
when sounds are around you?
A: That would be a software thing, and the See Munkey is just hardware. If a
developer is using binural sound in his game or program, then the See Munkey
can easily be used to enhance it, but we are talking about 2 different things.
---
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