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The Future of Strategy Games? 'Fleet Commander'

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StarBlade

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I hope this little video works. It's a demonstration of a concept that involves a wall-sized touch screen and a real-time strategy demonstration. It's just a concept at this point, and one probably well in violation of copyright, but who cares. It's Star Wars on a giant touchscreen. What's not to love?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V0o3TjB2Tw
 
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CABAL

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The concept looked interesting, but the game itself seemed somewhat lacking. It's just a proof of concept though so that's to be expected. Anyway, I've always been interested in what you could do with touchscreens and strategy games and this thing seems to have a great idea of what the controls could be like. The only problem was that there didn't seem to be a way to group units.

As a side note, looking at Newegg, the average price for a touchscreen the size of the ones used is about 1000 USD and that wall looked like it was probably three screens tall and seven screens wide, totaling 21 screens, putting the price around 21,000 USD minimum. Holy ****, that's an expensive setup.
 
S

StarBlade

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Former MSFC Member
The game was developed for a course by a university student (I don't remember the specifics, just the video), so I bet they ponied up for the touchscreens. But yeah, it'll take a loooooong time for that to be the gaming system in my house. I have a car I'd buy with $21K before I'd spend it on gaming display. Games are fun. Cars are fun AND useful. ;)

That being said, however, a pool-table sized version would be awesome. I'd settle for card table, even.
 

Terra_Inc

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Ah I think you're on to something.
When I was invited to the DFKI (the German Artificial Intelligence Research Institute), they showed me a really interesting concept. They had taken a touchscreen and really built it into a table, like horizontally. They used it to demonstrate interactive maps and presentation environments, but the researcher said that he was really interested into implementing strategy games with such a device. The cool thing is that it would really be like a map of the area where you can command your units with simple hand and finger motions. Rectangle or circle selection becomes really intuitive in such an interface, and you can do vectoring (like, saying "go into this direction") and targeting (like, saying "go to this location" or "attack this object") separately, with very simple motions. He had some really great ideas for the controls, but considering the "srs bsns" attitude of the institute, I doubt that he'll ever get to do a tech demo.
(The DFKI does not only AI, but also visualization and human-computer interaction research. They have this really cool prototype for full 3D television using polarized light, meaning that you need only small and very light 3d glasses.)
 

Majestic

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That was absolutely fantastic, very impractical for the everyday lounge room but awesome none the less. Nice game too, I'm into Star Wars atm too. :)
 

miklosgo

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I like this game - Fleet Commander - Would be nice to have some kind of big screen or at least a 19" monitor and use our fingers instead of mouse.
 
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