Good news for Wii developers, and what's good for them...

O

Oops! I did it again.

CAGiversary!
...is good for us. :)

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/10-12-2006/0004450259&EDATE=

Nintendo and AiLive Inc. announce the immediate availability of LiveMove, a groundbreaking Artificial Intelligence product, that enables the Wii Remote(TM) to learn.

Instead of complicated programming, developers need only take a few minutes to train the Wii Remote by examples. LiveMove lets developers focus directly on creative work without the burden of onerous coding requirements, helping them quickly unleash the potential of Wii(TM). The only limitation is the game creator's imagination.

"The Wii coupled with AiLive LiveMove will usher in a new era of natural game control," commented AiLive Chairman Dr. Wei Yen. "Powered by AiLive's patented Context Learning, LiveMove will allow the game industry to move away from indirect digital control to more natural analog control for the first time."

"In early 2006, I challenged Dr. Wei Yen and his AI scientists to develop AIware for the Wii Remote. When Nintendo's development teams saw LiveMove, we instantly recognized how it would greatly increase our ability to explore and experiment with new concepts and make our lives easier," says Genyo Takeda, Senior Managing Director/General Manager of Integrated Research & Development Division, Nintendo Co., Ltd. "This revolutionary tool liberates the imaginations of game creators. We are more than happy to share this collaborative LiveMove tool with independent Wii software developers all over the world. From a cowboy's lasso to a samurai's sword or a chef's cooking utensils, we just can't wait to play the developers' new, 'unexpected' applications."

LiveMove is currently available exclusively to Wii developers and priced at a mass-adoption license fee of $2,500 per seat. Tutorials and demos will be offered by AiLive. For detailed information about LiveMove, visit AiLive's website at http://www.AiLive.net.
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Here are some details from LiveMove's site:

What is LiveMove?
  • - Create motion recognizers with LiveMove in minutes simply by showing examples of motions; no coding or scripting is required.
  • - At run time, a motion recognizer can robustly determine which motion a player is performing from the set of developer-provided examples.
    • LiveMove is fast and efficient!
      • - Recognize up to 40 different motions on 8 Wii remotes or nunchuks simultaneously using less than 5% of the Wii CPU.
      • - Total memory usage is typically below 700K.
    • What's in the box?
      • - A high-performance runtime library you can integrate into your game in just a few hours.
      • - A Windows XPTM application for building motion recognizers from motion examples.
      • - Sample applications, example code, full documentation, and more.
For more details about how LiveMove works please read our white paper.
Why do I want LiveMove?
  • Enhance your gameplay!
    • - Perfect your game controls by using LiveMove to recognize any motion including complicated curves and nuances.
    • - Iterate on your motion designs quickly! Create a motion recognizer from scratch in just a few minutes so you can experiment with all of your ideas.
    • - Record signature motions from celebrities.
    • - Adjust how easy or difficult moves are to perform for the player with simple controls.
  • Cut development costs and improve quality!
    • - Eliminate a lengthy and difficult production step required to use the Wii.
    • - Remove uncertainty in the quality of your game-play by prototyping early and often.
    • - Recognize anyone's motions. Recognizers are robust and accurate across all players.
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Sounds like the tools are there to make the transition to Wii's technology smoother than ever imagined...which should, you'd assume, allow for the software quality to continue to evolve quicker and easier.
 
So if I'm reading this right, it would let developers mimic motions that are picked up by the program and convert that into game-usable data, rather than having to write code for each motion from the ground up?
 
Sounds cool! Hopefully wii devolpers can use this tool well,and it will allow them to get more time on making better graphics & animation etc...
 
This will really benefit the second or third generation sports games on the Wii. Thanks for the information OP.
 
This coupled with cheap development costs good really give Nintendo an edge this gen. Hopefully 3rd parties will embrace the Wii.
 
Well they're definitely trying to make it as easy as possible, hopefully 3rd parties and small dev teams will support the Wii.
 
Damn.

That sort of destroys any last development ordeal, doesn't it?

Well.

Nintendo could include a hooker in the devkit box. I guess then that'd be everything.
 
This is a very good thing. If the toolset works as well as it claims to, then it means developers are going to be able to concentrate on online functionality and really working those graphics. The games for next christmas should be amazing.
 
Blah blah blah toolset weird mimic stuff computer things I dont understand... Oh Easy developing? SWEET
 
[quote name='Strell']Damn.

That sort of destroys any last development ordeal, doesn't it?

Well.

Nintendo could include a hooker in the devkit box. I guess then that'd be everything.[/QUOTE]


You know Nintendo used to run those love motels...
 
From a more realistic business perspective I see big developers developing their own MoCap for the Wii-mote inhouse. $2,500 a license is more than they would be willing to pay. I could see them even developing their own Wii-mote MoCap tech and then licensing it cheaper.
 
[quote name='BrandonOne'] $2,500 a license is more than they would be willing to pay. [/QUOTE]

Holy crap, are you kidding?

We're in an age where devs spend tens of millions of game development.

$2,500 is a drop of a drop in a very large bucket. And since we've heard some people complaining about motion programming can be difficult, I'd suspect lots of devs would just pony up the cash for this.

Compared to doing other things - forcing HD for example - this is miniscule.
 
Yeah, from a business standpoint, you would easily spend many times that $2500 in labor costs developing your own motion capture, unless you already have something similar to build on. As a developer, I hate licensing other peoples' shit (rather do it myself), but it's oh so much cheaper.
 
[quote name='botticus']Yeah, from a business standpoint, you would easily spend many times that $2500 in labor costs developing your own motion capture, unless you already have something similar to build on. As a developer, I hate licensing other peoples' shit (rather do it myself), but it's oh so much cheaper.[/QUOTE]

I spent $2500 just this week discussing the Business Requirements for a project my team is developing and it uses set data and transaction methods.
 
[quote name='Oops! I did it again.']http://wii.ign.com/articles/739/739007p1.html

Great article that covers the possible significance of LiveMove, and also the basics of how it works.[/quote]
Thanks for the link. This really sounds amazing.

On a much more simplified level, this sounds a lot like coding a website in Notepad, vs. formatting a document in Word. Work is required either way, but in the one each minute detail has to be accounted for and worked with, vs. the other where work is done, but it's moer in the polish because the "tough" stuff is done for you.

Second Generation Wii games could be incredibly immersive with this tech available to developers of all sizes.
 
Wow!!! This dev app along with the possibilities of the Virtual Console could really inspire very small indie developers to come out with some awesome games!

I was getting kind of burned out on Wii hype, but this has really sparked my interest again!
 
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