Not sure if anyone has seen this as it has largely been on facebook but Daffodil a rider from the community has been working on a video game aiming to recreate old extreme sport games like Tony Hawks Pro Skater but with street unicycling.
They have done an amazing job so far but they are aiming to make it into a complete game with more levels,riders,tricks,game mechanics etc
They have a kickstarter campaign to raise funds to finish the game off by working on it full time. If anyone is interested have a look
Kickstarter Campaign Link if you want a copy or want to donate! Kickstarter Campaign
Thats the beauty of video games, you can land things you may never be able to in real life. Similar to Tony Hawks Pro Skater series, I can’t skateboard but it gives you that ability
It gives you the ability to play video games, which some people enjoy doing. Many games take serious skills and study to perfect as the emergence of eSports has shown
That may be and I also suppose Flight Simulator can help in that regards, but unicycling can’t be learned from a computer game. Also they way the character slides on the rail all around the pillar is very unrealistic. So as a game it is prolly fun to play the unicyclist, but I don’t expect you can learn much from it.
Not everything has to involve learning something. Sometimes it’s fine to just play a game mindlessly and enjoy the unrealistic grinds and massive air.
I had a quick go of the demo and it’s definitely an awesome throwback to the old Tony Hawk games! Kudos for giving us Linux users a version too
If anyone expects to learn anything about unicycling from this, he will be dissappointed. But the game does look very fun. Probably too fun for me, I prefer games that are hard to improve at.
Regarding difficulty: I’ve learned skills in video games that took more time to learn than it took me to learn how to unicycle, and those are pretty basic skills for an entry level competitive player in that game. As I said in the “the learning curve”-thread, I think unicycling isn’t that hard for most people, it just has a terrible learning curve.
Once you learn, it’s difficult to forget how to ride a bike. Possibly also a unicycle. I doubt the same is true for video games. Responding to something on the screen with arbitrary button presses…does not connect in other ways to the physical world. Unicyling, on the other hand, involves balance, which is grounded in the physical world. The motions used in video games are only transferable to other video games.
I find it amusing that the promotional video says “Real Riders. Real Tricks.” Now we apply the bullshit test to that statement. Change “real” to “imaginary”, then decide if it makes more sense that way.
Why am I such a hater? I teach beginning violin to 9-11 year olds. I suspect video games are compromising the coordination and social skills of many of my students. If they could only make a violin played entirely with the thumbs!
If you want to not like video games, it’s absolutely fine. If I had kids, I’d keep them away from them as much as possible. They are designed to make you addicted, and bombard you with feelings of success in a frequency real life can’t provide.
But you have to try REALLY hard to miss the point the video is trying to make with “Real Riders. Real Tricks.” After showing a video of real riders doing tricks, and then virtual riders doing the same thing. He could have programmed a unicycle game that involves BC wheels doing quadruple backflips on big half pipes…
Funny you mention that. On several occasions I’ve been asked by young boys if I can do a flip. I attribute that question to the effect video games have on the kids’ sense of reality. I wonder if playing a “realistic” unicycle video game (in all its 16-bit glory) would set them straight?
As mentioned above, it gives you abilities to play more video games. Unless those other games use a different controller…
Also, there is a market for pro-level video gamers, and they can make a lot more money than any “sport” unicyclists, as well as possibly any entertainer-unicyclists in history.
Yes, unicycle skills stick. Several times I’ve encountered someone who hadn’t been on a unicycle in many years (up to 20). Most were up and cruising within a minute!
I suspect this could be true. And while playing the violin is not necessarily a major way to improve social skills, at least it usually involves your listeners being in the same room with you.
Not that I disagree with your theory, but that question predates (most) video games, at least going back to the Atari console games that they would demo at Sears.
The point of the game is not to teach you unicycling skills. The main purpose of fictional video games, films, AND books is to entertain, not to be educational. Almost all music is also for entertainment, not to educate. Why are films, books and songs acceptable as entertainment but video games are held to a higher standard and must teach you something?
Here is a real video of someone grinding around a curved rail. The grind in the game is longer than what has currently been landed, but the Tony Hawk Skateboard games that this is based on have always had an arcade feel where gravity is different to real life. https://www.facebook.com/876630359091552/videos/270175787190724/
Untrue, the brain signals that are built when learning specific button combinations would be similar to other learned and automated movements. I played video games back in the day and can still pick up some games and play at a higher level than beginners. My skill has certainly decreased over 10 years but most people who I have met on the street who unicycled back in the day also fall off a fair few times before they manage to ride again. And they usually look quite wobbly.
Many skills for many activities humans do are only transferable to very closely related things. How do the hand movements in rubik’s cube solving benefit other aspects of life?
I don’t understand the real riders, real tricks remark. The game features riders who currently compete, performing tricks that are currently landed?
More likely we get that question because of real world sports that kids have seen like BMX, Scootering, Skateboard that riders do flips in. Most people don’t understand how a unicycle works, they don’t understand the limitations of a fixed gear so they don’t realise that a flip on a unicycle is rare.
That being said flips on unicycles have been done so it is not that farfetched to think it can be done.
Unicyclists constantly get made fun of in youtube comments by others for their sport being shit and are told to do a better sport like skateboarding/bmx/scootering etc.
It always amazes me how people are so judgmental and unaccepting of other peoples hobbies on youtube and I think to myself “why don’t people just support the fact that people have found an activity they enjoy”
Then I see these comments and it is the same simple mindedness as all the youtube trolls online lol.
Ok fair enough the game is for fun.
I play computer games all the time and in some of those games - I play Role Playing Games like Elder Scrolls or Fallout - you have to walk a lot. In that case I often think “if only I had a unicycle”. Also in games like GTA and Just Cause, where they did program riding a bike / motorbike, they just should have added unicycles too.
Just to bring this back to discussion about the game…
This looks INCREDIBLE and I can’t wait to see the final version. I really hope this Kickstarter goes well.
The project has been an enormous labour of love for Daffodil, and I really admire the effort and commitment they’re putting into this. Single-handedly designing a video game is not easy, regardless of doing that within the niche of the unicycle community.
For many unicyclists/general people today, the old school Tony Hawks games are a source of enormous nostalgia and I hope this is something that loops in many others who feel the same way who aren’t into unicycling.
I was never a good skater, but Tony Hawks games were one of my first introductions to street sports. Although unrealistic, they capture the essence of the fun to be had and have undoubtedly led many people to take up the sports in real life, even though the game itself is not a realistic tutorial in unicycling.
I want to apologize to everyone on this forum for acting like a jerk on this thread. I think computer programming is cool. It involves problem solving, same as unicycling. If I were involved in such a project, then someone came along and sneered at it, that would not feel good. Best wishes to the developers of this game. Pinoclean, please keep us posted if you learn anything else!
I hope it manages to get enough traction to get fully funded as so many street unicyclists want a completed game, but unless it is picked up by nonunicycling community I think it will be tough!
