BodySurf — Audiosurf Meets the Wii Balance Board

Chardish writes "Forget the hype about Wii Fit — the coolest thing about the Wii Balance Board is its potential as a game controller, and what better way to christen a new peripheral than by rigging it to work with games that predate the peripheral's existence? BodySurf is a (somewhat lengthy) GlovePIE script that manipulates the input of the Balance Board to work with the PC music game Audiosurf. It's fairly sophisticated, and includes Wiimote motion controls, special controls for each character, weight calibration, and a few play options."

Audiosmurf

[stainlesssteelpat]

oops read that as audiosmurf. methinks it's time for bed.

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[stormguard2099]

audiosmurf

i would sooo play that game

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[Bandman]

The sequel was better.

Smurf Smurf Revolution

Re:Audiosmurf

[Shadow Wrought]

I loved that game. I played it until I was blue in the face.

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[stainlesssteelpat]

Soundtrack by Chris Cornell??

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[geekoid]

Smurfkakai?

AudioSmurf drinking game

[LordEd]

1. Stand on balance board
2. Watch episode of Smurfs
3. Drink every time the word 'smurf' is said
4. Last one standing wins

WiiWare

[Translation Error]

Sounds like Audiosurf would make a great WiiWare title. You can already load MP3s onto an SD card and play them in certain games (Excite Truck), the balance board is a natural controller that can make the game more interesting (without being incredibly hard to add support for), and the price of Audiosurf fits in with other WiiWare games.

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[glittalogik]

That's how I play eraser too! MS Paint just isn't the same without a decent gaming mouse. It must suck on Xbox...

Balance board as a controller..

[somersault]

I actually thought the balance board was rather counter intuitive as a controller, for certain things at least. For example when you are ski-ing or snowboarding, sure you have to balance (though if you are able to stand still in a certain position without falling over I'd say you were balanced okay), but your direction of movement is largely decided by the angle of your skis/board rather than where your center of gravity is - if you get your center of gravity in the wrong place you'd fall over sure, but your board or skis would be going in the direction that your feet had them carving. I found myself trying to push down on the board with my feet a lot more than just shifting my balance. Or I'd move my head but leave my center of gravity where it was for example. I've only used one for about half an hour, and I was getting used to just shifting my center of gravity around instead of doing anything else by the end, but I think it's a rather awkward control system in and of itself. Combined with other methods of input it could have some novel uses though..

It also predicted my body age as 33 which I was a bit miffed about, as I think my balance is pretty good. I was doing a lot of martial arts last year and still have noticeably better balance when standing on one foot than the years prior (I'd done a bit of martial arts when I was in primary school too but over the years my ankle strength and balance ability relative to my body mass obviously dropped off a bit!), though perhaps I tend to wave around a bit when I'm standing on both feet..

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[drinkypoo]

It also predicted my body age as 33 which I was a bit miffed about, as I think my balance is pretty good.

Are you by any chance a big-nosed barbarian? Check to see if your region is set to Japan :D

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[KillerBob]

actually thought the balance board was rather counter intuitive as a controller, for certain things at least. For example when you are ski-ing or snowboarding, sure you have to balance (though if you are able to stand still in a certain position without falling over I'd say you were balanced okay), but your direction of movement is largely decided by the angle of your skis/board rather than where your center of gravity is - if you get your center of gravity in the wrong place you'd fall over sure, but your

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[nullchar]

You steer the skis by turning them...

With the "new" shaped skiis (more parabolic than hyperbolic) you roll them. It really is a matter of moving your mass from side to side, which puts the curved edge of the ski into the snow. Then you just ride in the direction of the curve.

Of course by forcing your feet, you can turn your skiis, but that requires much more energy.

That said, I've not used the balance board yet so I don't know how realistic the skiing/boarding is.

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[KillerBob]

That said, I've not used the balance board yet so I don't know how realistic the skiing/boarding is.

I don't snowboard, so can't really comment on how realistic that part is. As for the skiing, I found it's too responsive. I used to race GS and Super GS on my school team, and the Wii version thereof is far too responsive... hugely oversteering. That could be the difference between parabolic skis and traditional skis... the last pair I bought was a pair of 210cm K2 Extreme, almost 15 years ago. I want to get

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[nullchar]

Yeah, with those old GS straight sticks, you really did force them to turn, pressing more forward and down on the inside edge, than a roll to the side. After reading your description, I'm excited to try the skiing on the balance board.

Knees suck. When they feel good, you should really try the new shaped skiis -- I'm sure you'll hate them at first, but once you get used to rolling instead of digging in, they are quite fun to ride. Carving is just so smooth.

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[Krater76]

It also predicted my body age as 33 which I was a bit miffed about, as I think my balance is pretty good.

It's a worthless metric. No one is quite sure how it's calculated but it's not done by anything resembling a valid or worthwhile calculation.

It's been posted here before but you should check out the experiment done by Vinnk over at 4-Color Rebellion [4colorrebellion.com]. If you read the entire blog his balance age widely varied even as he was getting into good balance shape. Great read if you have the time, just be sure to start at the beginning.

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[somersault]

Heh.. I don't have time to read that now as it's 12:40AM, but the guy says he finally finished the marble rolling game on day 55.. I did it on my second go after using the board for about 20 minutes (though maybe he was doing the advanced version rather than the beginner one) :s I'm 24 btw. I do think the age thing seems pretty weird because I stayed well in the balance circle thingy, I'm thinking they just try to make people feel bad at first and then let it get better over time to try and show that they h

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[andi75]

IIRC it also tells you somewhere that heavily muscled people do have a higher than normal BMI and the 'traditional' scale (20-25) does not apply.

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[somersault]

I thought of it as relevant, because my balance is still improved over what it was a couple of years ago. I was only referring to my balancing 'prowess' which I consider to be pretty good anyway, I can skateboard/snowboard okay. I had noticed my balance wasn't as good as it used to be though, and even after doing Choi Kwang Do for a couple of months I was definitely more able to do stuff like stand on one foot and do up my shoes, that kind of thing. That's dragging it out now, but originally I was just comm

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[somersault]

As others have pointed out the body age metric is very variable even in people who have been doing Wii fit for month and as such isn't reliable at all. I suppose you could say it was 2 belts but there are lower and senior grades on each belt so they did actually give me a new belt each time (senior ones have stripes). The quality of the training was pretty good actually (I too have done a few other things over the years, tho the fact that my family moved around a couple of times which meant I never managed

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[somersault]

Link to a CKD website [malaysiachoikwangdo.com]. The guy who invented CKD is the guy who brought Tae Kwon Do (which was probably my favourite martial art out of the judo, Karate and Tae Kwon Do I'd done as a kid) to the UK and North America. He'd done lots of martial arts all his life and it was taking a toll on his joints, he was in a wheelchair at one point. He then designed CKD so that you could practice without locking out your joints, and making the most use of your whole body. For example to punch you start off by rotating you

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[somersault]

Slightly better tone but not much. Your elitist attitude is far more immature than me using :p which signifies an element of jokiness.

I am quite aware that swinging your hips slows down the technique a bit (especially if you are inexperienced at it sure). It definitely is more powerful though and fine for a confrontation with a belligerent drunk or general idiot. I was not learning to compete at competition level (in fact there is no competition in Choi), I was training for a bit of exercise and basic self

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[somersault]

*sigh* thinking about this some more while walking home (oh am I allowed to call it 'walking' by the way or is that insulting hillwalkers everywhere?). Could you be any more arrogant and insecure about other people doing martial arts? You're like a high school football coach saying that people aren't allowed to mention the word 'sports', they have to call it 'exercise'. I maybe shouldn't have said 'a lot' of martial arts but I was consistently practicing 2 times a week as well as home practice as I said, wi

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[somersault]

I didn't say it was intensive. You're meant to give your body a rest from exercise every couple of days too you know, otherwise your body doesn't have time to recover.

Your elitist attitude shows that you haven't learned much from your training or even being an instructor, either that or your classes are purely about physical force and not cultivating a good attiude. Just because I'm white doesn't mean a damn thing, and I would have done longer classes if they were available, but they weren't (unless I kept

Frets on Fire with Wii guitar

[PIPBoy3000]

People have also had some good successes [honkeykong.org] hooking up other Wii devices to their PC.

I personally bought a bluetooth adapter specifically for trying out these sort of things.

But is it fun?

[LoudMusic]

That really doesn't look like much fun. It looks awkward and uncomfortable. Alternate input devices should be more than just alternate, they should bring something to the experience. I'd rather just hit the left / right arrow keys.

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[Chyeld]

Given it looks like a direct analog to the Soccer game in Wii Fit (dodging objects/heading balls = avoiding and hitting blocks), I'd have to assume that it would be alot of fun. I spend most of my fitness credits in the balance games (mostly because I need to work on mine).