Skrybe wrote:
I was wondering how difficult it would be to emulate the Uforce accessory, a motion dectector device that uses infrared sensors. While no released games required use of the Uforce, I recently recieved a prototype of Uforce Power Games, an unreleased title that can't be played without it. I've dumped the rom and would really like to see it supported in emulators one of these days. Would this be easy to incorporate in emulators? Impossible? I'd love to hear any feedback you all might have.
Being the (proud?) owner of a Uforce I can say that without question it was the one peripheral for the NES that underperformed the most. The principle of operation was simple: IR leds and IR photosensors that make a complete switch when something gets close enough. Yet despite that, it failed to deliver because it just wasn't sensitive enough. Also the small area of reception on the device made games like punch-out nowhere near as fun to play as they should have been.
Anyway, as far as emulation goes, I really only see two possiblities:
- allow for multiple keyboard profiles in the emulator, so one can use a more 'u-force style' layout - something where the controller keys are mapped at the corners of the keyboard for example.
- spawn a second window for the emulator (yea, can't do this fullscreen) that shows a uforce shaped interface area that is sensitive to mouse clicks. This presents a few more problems as I think as some of the modes (remember the four mode switches on the device?) assumed that the user had use of two hands.
Outside that, it really falls into a "why bother" kind of category since the whole point behind the u-force is to provide a 3D touchless interface. You just can't emulate that unless you have a 3D mouse or glove at your disposal.