Clang: a historically accurate swordfighting video game

[Tony Wolf]

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang

The links above is to the new Kickstarter campaign for CLANG - a historically accurate swordfighting video game from the Subutai Corporation. Less than a day into the campaign and they're already over US$80,000 towards the target of US$500,000. Check out the fantastic videos and consider helping to fund this project; it may be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

Tony

[admin]

This is really interesting

[Tony Wolf]

Less than three days in to CLANG's Kickstarter campaign and it's currently crowdfunded to the tune of $190,664, which is 38% of the target: 28 days to go.

The videos have gone viral in a big way, being featured on io9, Gawker, BBC News, Wired, etc., etc. I think this must be the biggest pop-culture exposure the recreation of historical fencing has ever seen, let alone the potential follow-on benefits to the activity when the game is actually produced ...

[Mitlov]

Not to be a naysayer, but I don't see how this would work. Your controller wouldn't have the weight or balance of a real sword, so all the real-world "customization" of swords (i.e., altering the weight or balance of the weapon) would have no effect. It's not like customizing a submachine gun where adding a flash suppressor just changes the noise and power of the weapon in-game, adding a scope allows you to zoom in in-game, etc.

Also, if you get parried in-game, your controller wouldn't stop moving in real life. Haptic feedback (a buzz in the handgrip) just isn't the same. And there's no way to "feel" or apply leverage.

I admire the spirit behind this project, but I think it's doomed to failure. There are no realistic motion-control sword games for a reason.

[Tony Wolf]

Similar comments are being posted all over the Web; I think that salient counter-argument is that CLANG isn't trying to break the laws of physics, just to build a better swordfighting video game. Personally, I'm less excited about the control mechanism that the fact that it will deliberately showcase historically authentic combat techniques.

[Mitlov]

Similar comments are being posted all over the Web; I think that salient counter-argument is that CLANG isn't trying to break the laws of physics, just to build a better swordfighting video game. Personally, I'm less excited about the control mechanism that the fact that it will deliberately showcase historically authentic combat techniques.

I think the best way to feature historically-accurate swordfighting techniques would be to ditch the motion controls and rely on traditional game controllers, but just add realism to the defenses and attacks and effects thereof that the people use. Kind of like how there are now realistic UFC-style fighting games in addition to the absurd Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter style fighting games. I think the real barrier to realism isn't the very idea of a video game, it's the motion controller.

[Alex B]

I think they're trying to do much. They're trying to:
A - showcase historically accurate fighting
and B - come up with a novel input method, when both A and B can be done fully independently.
I think if they just focused on A, they'd be able to focus more resources on it, and so be able to create better and more animations etc., than have to split resources and worry about the input method.

While the bit of the video where he gave the gamer a sword like controller to shoot a gun amused me, the reality is that controllers aren't like guns. Using a controller to fire a gun is no less ridiculous than using a controller to swing a sword. Controllers are just arbitrary and convenient things that don't actually resemble anything. Plus, (although I admit this doesn't apply to non-HEMAists), if I wanted to swing a sword, I could do that, I have several. If I want to play a video game, that means I want to sit down and relax.

[Tony Wolf]

Five days into the campaign and they've passed the US$275,000 mark. Here' a new video:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuNQP6eP7Zo

[Magnus Hagelberg]

cute vid.

[Tony Wolf]

Neal S. interviewed about CLANG, and going into some detail re. the historical fencing content: http://www.g4tv.com/videos/59356/neal-stephenson-on-clang/

[Tony Wolf]

More from Neal S. on the historical fencing content in CLANG, from an interview on Games Industry International - http://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2 ... ons-racket .

Q: You're focusing on Western sword arts in CLANG - It's interesting that these martial arts have been relatively neglected, whilst in the East they're culturally venerated. Why do you think that is?

Neal Stephenson: Well, when we got guns, we forgot how to sword fight. A really odd thing happened in Japan: they got guns and decided not to use them for several hundred years, so they never broke the lineage. So, in the East they just did a better job of curating their old martial arts than we, maybe pragmatic, Westerners. Then they just really nailed it on the image making front. All of these pop culture icons turned up in the '60s and '70s, like Kato in the Green Hornet, Bruce Lee, the Kung Fu television series - innumerable martial arts films from Hong Kong.

The term martial arts became synonymous with the martial arts of Japan and China, which is fine - they deserve all of the attention and glory they can get for themselves. A different point of view seemed to take hold around the way in which people fought in mediaeval Europe, which was predicated on the idea that a person in a suit of armour is so weighed down that he can't stand up, can't mount his horse, can't move freely, that the weapons are heavy and slow and ponderous, that everyone is nasty and brutish and stupid.

So that just became the standard kind of shorthand used by film makers whenever they were depicting people in the West. It's a remarkably difficult habit to break.

Q: From the very little I've learned it seems that full plate wasn't nearly as common as we're lead to believe...

Neal Stephenson: Even when people did wear full armour, it was much more lightweight and flexible than people realise. They could do shoulder rolls, run. There's plenty of YouTubery around this at the moment. Just within the last few weeks there have been a couple of mediaeval fighting tournaments where people have been going at each other in full armour, one's called Lists on the Lake, in Texas. The swords are far lighter and more mobile than is generally appreciated.

But as you say, it wasn't all people in full armour - a lot of these arts were intended to be used by people dressed in ordinary street clothes. They presume a much higher degree of lightness and mobility that we see in movies.

Q: This is clearly a great passion of yours, something very dear to you. Given that so much of the project seems to pivot on accurate simulation, is CLANG also going to appeal to people who just want to smack the hell out of a man in a tin hat?

Neal Stephenson: It has to. It has to have levels and modes that are just about the straightforward smacking around. That's key to making it work at all. We're sort of following the template that's been laid down already by first person shooters where you always have that. You can go into, say Halo, and set it to easy mode, and it's easy.

Many people don't want to go beyond that. Many people beyond a certain point say, 'I know, I'd like to make this a little more interesting, a little more challenging.' By changing difficulty settings or advancing to a more challenging level it becomes possible to increase the level of challenge and thereby get drawn deeper into that world. So, that's a tried and true approach to game design that ought to work perfectly well with what we're doing.

[Hindmost]

I think the swing could be the basis of a viable game controller for this, now that you can modify the POB and the weight of it: http://mblades.com/swing/index.html

[Tony Wolf]

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260 ... sts/255582 - a new update including considerable detail on the martial arts and computer animation content of CLANG, with two video clips.

[Tony Wolf]

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260 ... sts/256481 - much more technical detail, explaining how HES techniques will be designed into the game structure.

[Tony Wolf]

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang/posts/259624

This will probably be the final technical update of the CLANG Kickstarter campaign, thoroughly answering the #1 question the development team is being asked (specifically, "what happens when the two swords meet?") via detailed text and demo. video featuring Neal Stephenson, Guy Windsor and Devon Boorman. They're making the point (obvious to martial swordfighters, but not so much to gamers) that "swinging for the fences" and over-committing actions is not the way to actually survive a longsword combat.

There are five days left in the Kickstarter campaign and it is, at present trending towards just hitting the $500,000 goal - http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/260688528/clang . As a reminder, if the campaign succeeds in gaining that level of funding, the game will be made; if it misses, by however small a margin, no money changes hands. Another reminder; the longsword game is a prototype towards a MASE (Martial Arts System Embodiment) system that can potentially be modded to incorporate virtually any specific fighting style.

Please help spread the word; the CLANG project Kickstarter page is at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang .

Tony

[Jonathan]

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260 ... sts/259774

Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan has generously said that he will donate $1 (up to $10,000) for every Like or Share of this post! Please help spread the word!

[Tony Wolf]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzZ22x-VMiw

Neal S. posts a final promo. video from the CombatCon event in Las Vegas, with "help" from some friends ...

With only one day to go, the campaign has hit the $500,000 target; thanks to all who pitched in. Now, roll on the game!

[Lyceum]

Hm may contribute. :S

[Tony Wolf]

Here's a video of the playable Alpha test version of CLANG. Even at this early stage, it's by far the most realistic swordfighting I've ever seen in a video game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFZxx7Z-nBQ

[Dave Long]

Off on a tangent, just ran across:
Ho & Komura, A finite state machine based on topology coordinates for wrestling games, Journal of Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds, Vol. 22, issue 5, pp 435–443, September/October 2011.

They take an interesting approach to wrestling, modeling it in terms of a state space of limb entanglements, and using an inverse-kinematic quadratic solver to translate player intent into avatar motion. Potentially of interest is their off-hand mention (fifth page) that when the solvers had precise access to both* player's state, it was so effective as to ruin gameplay, but the simple solution was to only allow the each player's solver access to their own kinematic state, limiting the feedback loop to wetware frequency via the human players.

In other words, it was the reaction to and prediction of the opponent that made the game worthwhile.

* "...you put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot"