Here is a character test for a new game we are working on. The speed of the animation, movement and sound of the character are all linked to the accelerometer. The animation is all motion capture.
Looking smooth!
Off to a great start!
Off to a good start. I would caution you about using the accelerometer though. Based on my experience as well as App store reviews, it seems the majority of gamers buying stuff from the App Store don’t like using the accelerometer to control in action games 
Thanks.
We’ve been toying with the idea of allowing the user to choose different control types. Accelerometer being one of them. What other type(s) would you recommend?
On screen “buttons”, in the form of a joystick or something (iDracula and assassin’s creed are good reference). It’s getting to the point of being a pretty common and accepted practice, and is (in my opinion) much more precise and intuitive than tilt controls.
I have a few visual critiques if you’re interested. Otherwise, feel free to disregard them.
- He seems to walk sorta sideways at times, when he hasn’t rotated fully to face the direction he’s translating. This has the appearance of sorta ice skating a bit.
- His drop shadow is enormous and really dark
- His walking animation and overall pose is very vanilla, it doesn’t look like a warrior who’s striding into battle. He just looks like a regular guy, walking across a room to pick up the tv remote or something.
- Its quite jarring when his pose suddenly snaps to and from his attack animation. His whole stance changes abruptly back and forth. Again, if his walking pose were more “at the ready”, it would feel more appropriate for him to immediately go into swinging his weapon. As it stands, the two animations feel disconnected.
Looking great CG, almost like a 3d diablo. I have to second the opinion of the other comments here, and strongly advise against accelerometer controls for main character.
We used this control system for our driving games and are now switching them to on screen buttons because of the negative response that we received from customers.
I’m starting to thing that the only games accelerometer controls could be used for is marble type games like rolondo or labyrinth 3d.
That’s quite visually impressive.
I am curious as to whether or not you have stress tested your work on an iPhone or iPod touch. With such a high-detailed player model coupled with a few equally detailed enemy models, I imagine you will encounter significant performance issues. Do you have any particular strategy for dealing with performance issues, such as using sprites for enemies or targeting the iPhone 3Gs exclusively?
I wholeheartedly agree. Boo to accelerometer controls. One of the main issues is that for anything other than a simple marble rolling kind of game, it’s an awkward control metaphor and imposes a number of constraints that can be frustrating to the player. For example, with accelerometer control the player has to account for their posture and grip for adequate control, and with the phone’s glossy screen the view may be obscured at certain angles during play. Basically for most games, players are used to holding the device however feels comfortable and viewing it at whatever angle they can see most clearly, and accelerometer controls break both of those.
I know for me personally, accelerometer controls in a game type that doesn’t really scream for that control method is often enough to make me reconsider a purchase.
About motion capture, what do you use for this ?
I agree that accelerometer controls are overused - they feel fine for controls that involve banking left/right (flying, snowboarding/skateboarding, riding/driving) and the “tabletop” games like Labyrinth, but for example, if you have to tilt the device to/from yourself, then I think that’s a sign it’s not appropriate.
But if you don’t have an accelerometer option, someone is sure to complain that it needs one. So making it an option seems like a good idea.