04/03: Wii Remote
I owe Coffee Quest fans a few more hours as I have been busy this week and didn't get as much time in as I planned. This time will be made up Friday or Saturday as today through Thursday will be a race to get Dungeon Romp finished for release on BlazingGames.com this week. I am not going to say what will be released if I fail, but lets just say that even though Classic Dungeon Romp is text only, it is probably the better game by a long shot (and when people actually play modern dungeon romp, they will discover this. Too bad so few people will bother with the classic version). Still, with the poll results out of the way, it is time for a rant. This time it is about the Wii Remote.
After playing around with a Wii for a while, I have come to the conclusion that the controller for the system is really the direction that game controllers need to head. Perhaps this is due to some type of computer gaming bias, as much I obviously use a computer to create and play my own games and will occasionally play other peoples games on the computer. Still, consoles are becoming more and more a replacement for the computer.
The reason I like the Wii controller is due to the nunchuk and the way this works. For those not familiar with the Wii, you can essentially plug in extension controllers into the remote. Right now there is only the nunchuk and the classic controller, but I suspect that in the future there will be other plug-in controllers to facilitate specific games, such as a guitar shaped controller or a dance pad control. While having this flexibility is nice, for me the big thing I like about the controller is that my hands aren't clamped together. Having the controller broken into two halves was just a brilliant design. Now if only Nintendo could get rid of the wire between the remote and the attachment things would be even nicer.
The motion sensing is kind of neat as well, but I personally found that it was not as accurate as I would like. I have had instances where I did the proper move with the remote, but the game just didn't notice. More to the point, where the remote is pointing to on the screen does not necessarily reflect where the cursor is. This means that shooting games require a cursor on the screen. While this is not that huge of an issue, it is a bit of an issue.
If there is actually a human reading this, they may be wondering if Blazing Games is going to be supporting the Wii. I wish I could get a Wii development kit and develop a commercial game for the Wii, but I doubt that will happen. The browser functionality does support flash (but not Java), though I don't know which version of Flash is being supported. When the final version of the browser is released I will look into the flash support and see if I can get my flash games working on it. If the browser does not support Flash 9, then my future development will not work on the Wii. If Flash 9 does work, then I will do my best to get my games to work on the Wii, which in theory shouldn't take much work.
As I have no intention of purchasing a Playstation 3, I can not test my games on the PS3 even if it supports Flash 9 (no idea if it does). If someone want to send me a free PS3...didn't think so.
After playing around with a Wii for a while, I have come to the conclusion that the controller for the system is really the direction that game controllers need to head. Perhaps this is due to some type of computer gaming bias, as much I obviously use a computer to create and play my own games and will occasionally play other peoples games on the computer. Still, consoles are becoming more and more a replacement for the computer.
The reason I like the Wii controller is due to the nunchuk and the way this works. For those not familiar with the Wii, you can essentially plug in extension controllers into the remote. Right now there is only the nunchuk and the classic controller, but I suspect that in the future there will be other plug-in controllers to facilitate specific games, such as a guitar shaped controller or a dance pad control. While having this flexibility is nice, for me the big thing I like about the controller is that my hands aren't clamped together. Having the controller broken into two halves was just a brilliant design. Now if only Nintendo could get rid of the wire between the remote and the attachment things would be even nicer.
The motion sensing is kind of neat as well, but I personally found that it was not as accurate as I would like. I have had instances where I did the proper move with the remote, but the game just didn't notice. More to the point, where the remote is pointing to on the screen does not necessarily reflect where the cursor is. This means that shooting games require a cursor on the screen. While this is not that huge of an issue, it is a bit of an issue.
If there is actually a human reading this, they may be wondering if Blazing Games is going to be supporting the Wii. I wish I could get a Wii development kit and develop a commercial game for the Wii, but I doubt that will happen. The browser functionality does support flash (but not Java), though I don't know which version of Flash is being supported. When the final version of the browser is released I will look into the flash support and see if I can get my flash games working on it. If the browser does not support Flash 9, then my future development will not work on the Wii. If Flash 9 does work, then I will do my best to get my games to work on the Wii, which in theory shouldn't take much work.
As I have no intention of purchasing a Playstation 3, I can not test my games on the PS3 even if it supports Flash 9 (no idea if it does). If someone want to send me a free PS3...didn't think so.
