Including amBX features?

LapichonLapichon Join Date: 2005-01-17 Member: 36035Members
in Ideas and Suggestions
<div class="IPBDescription">Or how to extend the player experience with more feedbacks</div>Hi,

I recently (today) discovered the amBX hardware (http://www.ambx.com/)...
To shorten it down, it's an equivalent of <u><b>the Ambilight system of Philips </b></u>(backlighting the computer screen), also with a "<u><b>rumbler</b></u>" (shaky thing for the resting the wrist) and .. *wait for it..* <u><b>Fans that simulate wind</b></u> or motion!!
Yeah!?!
This is geeky.

I ordered it straight.
I will let you know how it actually feels when playing but I was wondering if this could be put into the game for a future release?

I believe it could be pretty amazing.
Can you imagine walking in an quiet and empty corridor, all of a sudden your keyboard shakes as a skulk bites you, out of cloack?
Or if the whole right side of your <u>wall</u> was getting dark bloody red when being hit by a marine?
Getting the flow of air in your face when jumping from a ladder, only to smash your legs on the floor and feel the keyboard shake.. !
Terrific I believe :p

The SDK is available, so my very first idea was to adapt the system to NS1..

So not only do I want to suggest the idea for NS2 (this might be something easier to implement straight say) but also to ask for people's opinion about hooking something into NS1 code...

Any idea of where to look for info, what to start with?
Can that be done by myself or does the dev team have to take part?

The ambilight effects should be working anyway (painting the wall behind the screen with the color of areas of the screen).
At first, I was thinking of catching any keyboard event in a third party application:
- left strafe for left fan, right..
- a quick flow of air when jumping, etc...

But then comes the rumbler aspect: reloading, being hit... those are events inside of the system.
Can I access those? Can I hook a DLL somewhere to get callbacks ?
Can scripts make callbacks to something outside of the engine?
Can I open a side-mod tool that communicates with NS1 and catches events or registers somehow?
Can I use the SDK of Half Life 1 to run in parallel something?
I'm just lost..

If someone has enough knowledge, could he start a new post dedicated to the technical issues and put the link here?

That way, this post will be for people giving their opinion about the worthiness of that idea and I expect some please!
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Comments

  • Renegade.Renegade. Join Date: 2003-01-15 Member: 12313Members, Constellation
    What a joke. I saw a"demo" of this a few months back, it amounts to a $500 disco ball system. I find it funny and sad at the same time that people actually buy into these things; like Novint's "Falcon", Project Epoch, TN's "3rd-space", that thing that generates smells (seriously, aroma gaming?) and other over-priced, useless, crudware that was a dying fad before it even passed prototype.

    amBX is about as likely to be included as the TrackIR API, in other words: never.
    Keep your receipt.
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  • LapichonLapichon Join Date: 2005-01-17 Member: 36035Members
    Bought it for 45€ with everything included (Ambilight, Fans, rumbler, bass, 2:1).
    The concept did die before prototype I guess and they are getting rid of all equipment :D

    Any clue about how to hook it in the code myself?
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  • Renegade.Renegade. Join Date: 2003-01-15 Member: 12313Members, Constellation
    amBX would have to either provide Lua bindings, or UWE would need to expose the necessary game events via Lua, although even in unsupported games it's still able to detect things like lighting changes or even write a driver to inspect packets/memory. Beyond the curious tinkering, I wouldn't advise investing much time because the dev team certainly won't.
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  • Draco_2kDraco_2k Evil Genius Join Date: 2009-12-09 Member: 69546Members
    edited January 2010
    amBX is the kind of thing that's relatively easy to add post-launch, so while I don't see it being particularly high priority, post-launch support would surely be nice. I very much doubt you can add support for it on your own though, you will indeed need .dll's if it's at all possible.

    Assuming, of course, it doesn't fall into obscurity due to high price/lack of interest: ambient systems have a pretty big impact on player experience, but it's just hard to portray via Internet in the same way 120Hz displays/HD video - until recently - is/was.
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