You dont have to go nuts with graphics .... but you should try make things look cool. No more nintendo Badminton. Be clear to represent the models as athletes, at the very least. Try to represent the movements as close as possible to badminton. The real challenge will probly be how the game plays. What you'd have to do is make certain aspects automatic (computer does for you) while other things are under your control (your decision) - So while you choose the type of shot - the computer might assist you in some smaller things like recovering to the base or switching to defense after a lift. If everyhing is up to the player it might make the game too difficult to have a long rally. But your decisions will ulitmately affect your play - like how long you wait to hit the shuttle will decrease your power - if you wait too long you'll tend to put yourself in trouble and be hitting less affective shots - if you choose the wrong shots your opponent will take advantage. My advice would be to find the best people possible to work on the game - but also people who also like badminton because they will be more dedicated to the project. I would be carefull to make sure all the work (from each particapant) is shared with the rest of the project - people could take there work (stuff you were counting on) and go somewhere else - like sell it too a game company or something, I've seen it happen before and the Mod team is left to start from scratch. Perhaps you shouldn't go overboard at first and keep it simple, you only need a few character models.... the games playability is more important. Your choice of game engine to work with is going to be very important ... that alone could make or break the project.
I think a good way to get an idea of what to do is to try playing Virtua Tennis and see what the previous poster was talking about when he mentioned some thing automated and such. I was thinking, maybe some kind of manual/auto mode... actually more like easy/hard. Like lets say the com can auto jump smash for you, but purposely make the timing off, so that it encourages the "pros" to use hard mode, which is harder to use but has better timing and power if used properly. Honestly, I think i'm thinking too far already...
yeah, maybe we should make some things automatic. like returning to the center. we should start with a singles game before doing a doubles game. the diff should be mostly in the A.I part. the game doesn't need to be too complex but yet not too "nintendo" or 2D. at least, movements of the players should be like footwork we use on court. some existing badminton games have their characters moving like ostrichs.
returning to the center automatic? hmm... I don't know about that... it becomes a bit funny for me. But it might be interesting to see how it plays out. I have no better idea to not make the models moving like ostrichs. I was thinking maybe hard mode would introduce a "split step" button where you press it for the split step and a spring off the ground, and you can do it anywhere on the court. Sounds a bit hard, but thats why its called hard mode. But I guess you're right. We should start simple, and not delve into complex things yet. Just make something nintendo would make when you start playing one of their games (as in easy to learn...). Then once we get that settled, we can concentrate on the competitive side (...but hard to master!).
Hi guys, Thanks a lot for your comments, and it's great to see so many people are interesting in this project. I've been playing badminton for many years, I guess I know exactly what you guys want this game to be. I'm currently working on the control system. I think this should be the most important part of this project. The control system has two sub systems: Semi-Auto This is for people who don't want to take the full control of the player he/she uses. I'm not working on this since so many tennis games are using this concept. Full control In this system, we use keyboard to control the movement (footwork), and use mouse to control the racket. The trick part is how to use mouse to control the racket? My solution is using mouse path and the speed of mouse cursor. Imagining that you are picking up a smash in a real game, you should move your racket from point A to point B in the space, that is, Curve AB is the path. The time your racket travels from A to B and the length of AB are used to calculate how hard you hit the shuttlecock. My work now is teaching the system to know what kinds of shots a game player wants to do (based on your mouse curve), such as drive, smash, drop and so on (at least 10 shot skills). I will try to use neural networks, decision trees and a combination of my own algorithms to get this done. Once the full control system is in beta, I will release a flash game for you to test the idea. I think it is worth to pay 50% of the project time to research how to play the game. Cheers Robert robert@badmintongame.org project page: badmintongame.org
For a more detailed description, plz read my blog post: http://badmintongame.org/blog/2007/05/12/control-system/ Cheers Robert
i think it is best to use the keyboards all the way. mouse is pretty hard to implement as the mouse moves in a 2d axis while the racket moves in a 3d axis. i saw diagram while is kinda pretty innovative. but, they are some pitfalls there as the computer needs to know the difference between a dropshot and a smash. how does the computer know you are attempting to slice the shot.
To utopia_imminent, "they are some pitfalls there as the computer needs to know the difference between a dropshot and a smash. how does the computer know you are attempting to slice the shot." Yes, it is a very hard problem. But it can be solved by using neural networks. I will get a demo out of the box as soon as I can, maybe two or three weeks.
Now that is an interesting concept... it might be hard to think it all out though... I notice one thing in a game, most of the time, people love customization, so besides a keyboard+mouse configuration, a keyboard only configuration might make some happy. And as for footwork, it would seem to be a bit hard to animate. I mean that badminton is a game where you bounce a lot off the center. The animation might look funny or weird.
The only 'home-made' game I can think of is Mount&Blade http://www.taleworlds.com/ their mouse system is ingenius...and may be use-able!
the mouse idea could work very well if you limit the number of shots. example: a straight line (6 o clock to 12) is forward, and a horizontal line (9-3) is cross court to the right and (3-9) cross court to the left. So based on the movement one of three catagories is selected. ( down the line, cross to left or right) the power might be difficult and you could either use the velocity of the mouse to either drop it into the catagory or short or long (short being a net/drop depending on shuttle position and long being lob/clear) if that is too difficult to code, perhaps, left click for power, right click for short. a smash could be simply clicking both buttons together. thus using only 2 variables ( movment angle and velocity/button click) you have created straight clear crosscourt to left clear crosscourt to right clear straight smash crosscourt to right smash crosscourt to left smash net/drop straight crosscourt net/drop to right crosscourt net/drop to left for skill shots (e.g. serve) simply introduce some very minor and timed skill test (as has been seen in many games) for instance, once you click to serve, a bar appears and you must press a button to freeze a moving cursor at a particular point to achieve a particular serve. Of course, the cursor moves vey quickly and there is a time limit of perhaps a second, and failure results in a rubbish serve. thats just some of my ideas. Anything to avoid study.
But can't the game detect mouse acceleration at the contact time with the shuttle? Perhaps it can tell then whether its a clear or net shot. As for the service, I guess the bar thing can be used like many other games. Or we could just make left click drop the shuttle or something. Oh and bmagger, I only know how to use 3dsmax so, I dont know if I could get used to N-Sided's Quidam 3D... but then again i'm a low poly modeller so I dunno
I think something like that badminton flash game on badminton-information website would be a good start. That's a pretty fun game. Models were simple, but the gameplay was addictive and controls were effective. Starting off with something like that flash game as a base with update renderings and extra controls would make that game actually pretty good.
Yes that game was quite good, but you could never hit the shuttle out. So it eventually became too easy to play. Imagine how it would play if it had multiplayer, it would be like a game of tic tac toe, both players locking into a stalemate.
