Hello Halo Community and 343!!
My golden idea for the first installment in the new halo trilogy is about Kinect Functionality. I don’t own a Kinect, but i would imagine that there are a good deal of halo players out there that do and i wanted to give 343 a totally sweet idea free of charge for halo 4.
alright, this idea is to allow players who have a Kinect to be able to control the majority or all the options of theater mode with the device. I understand that there are going to be technical challenges to doing this, but i will outline some possible commands and how they can be applied to the game mode.
These are going to sound obvious, but i think that implementing Kinect in this way would not overtly force players to get the device, but those who had one would get a very nice added benefit from it.
After the player has chosen the particular game to watch/dissect and started it, the voice commands would be as follows:
“Stop” – Pauses the game for screenshots or to start a clip
“Play” – Starts or resumes action
“Third-Person” – switches the camera to that default position over the shoulder in 3rd person
“First-Person” – switches back to the starting first-person perspective
“Switch to player 1-16” – jumps to the player numerically assigned 1 thru 16, with 1 being the host or owner of the video
“Rotate camera: 15, 30, 45, 60, 90, 180 degrees” – This would pan the camera around the current player the camera is pinned to in the increment of degrees stated. i.e. stating 90 degrees would cause the camera to make a quarter-turn around the given player
“Shift camera: 15, 30, 45, 60, 90, 180 degrees” – This would be the same sort of command as the rotate function, but instead of a horizontal axis pan, it would be a vertical axis pan. (not sure if the 180 would be necessary, but cant be certain).
“Take Screenshot” – Self-explanatory.
“Zoom/Un-zoom” – Again, self-explanatory, but would serve to zoom the camera for tight photos or video clips
“Forward/2x/3x” – Stating “forward” would speed the gameplay up to a 2x speed and then saying “3x” after would bring it up again. If 2x is said at 3x speeds, the gameplay would slow to 2x.
“Step Back/Back” – This command would step the film back in increments. The first time mentioned or with ever phrase “step back” the film would go back 10secs. Uttering an additional “back” would leap 30sec or to the nearest “checkpoint” in the progress of the film
“detach/attach” – This command would remove the camera, just like the Y-button does now, but certain voice commands would be disabled. Mainly the rotate and shift commands. All other commands would be valid, but the player would need to manually move the camera around the map with a controller. saying “attach” would force the camera to stick to the nearest player in the game at whatever default perspective is necessary.
“Start clip” – this is the phrase to start the recording of a clip, just as it works now in reach or halo 3.
“End clip” – Same as above, but having the opposite effect. Would end the clip.
“Slow 1/2, 1/4, crawl” – This set of commands would slow the action to either 1/2 speed, 1/4 speed, or something close to a frame-by-frame crawl through the footage.
"Jump to: " – This command would jump the game to a certain point in the action i.e. 1 min or 3 min into the game. (Don’t know if this particular command would even would technically).
“reset (revert)” – Fairly obvious, but this command would revert the footage back to the beginning. ( I would opt to use reset over restart because the phrase reset might have a lower casual usage) (also, just replacing with “revert” might solve that issue too)
“exit” – This would be the command to end the film.
note: all input of titles and descriptions for photos and clips would need to use the controller.
Like i said, these commands would be rather obvious, but it was more my intention to “just get them out there” rather than have them seem extremely profound.
Basically, my vote for Kinect functionality in Halo 4 is for simple voice commands during the theater mode because i believe that this is where Kinect can have the biggest impact without seeming tacked-on or shoved down our throats.
343, if you folks have the time to implement Kinect in this way, more power to you.