Game.

Who all thinks that they should make Kris Holm’s Pro Unicycling? I think you all have talked about this before but I thought I would bring it up again. That would be such a cool game.

For sure man!

I would buy it in a heart beat…Heck if I were in debt, I would take out a lone to buy it!

-Sabin

The game wouldnt make money because not enough people would buy it. Sure most unicyclists would buy it but there just arent enough.

i dont think that would be the problem. i play tony hawk even though i dont skateboard. in fact, i cant imagine skateboarders really wanting to play it, as they can skateboard for real just as easily. the problem is that it would be very hard to make a fun unicycling game. unicycles are slow, cant jump very high, and there arent enough tricks to really do more than what is in tony hawk, which would be required to sell. there have been other copycat games, a bike one, i think, that didnt do to well. the problem is that the game was already made, as a skateboard game. but of course, i would buy it.

Uniracers was fast and awesome

good point

It would be a cool game, but how would the player’s stats go? The better the stats, in certain areas, the easier the character becomes to control. Who would be the characters in the game? Who would be the sponsors? What would the types of play be? What kinds of unicycles would you use?

I say you upgrade your unicycle as you win more money. If you try like a drop too big for your unicycle it breaks, you get this crappy starter unicycle and have to busk on the streets to get something better :stuck_out_tongue: Oh and if you have an awesome uni but you try a huge drop and your characters drop stats suck you can hurt yourself badly and be out for X amount of time (miss competitions in that particular season).

game

i would buy the game no matter the cost

now i’ve been thinkning about a unicyclist game for along time, your stats would be something like hop height, comfortability(which would improve hop, improved by KH saddle, aIr seat etc.), speed, drop height, strength(of uni), balance of corse

the carrer would be a mix of freestyle events, Muni events, and trials, and of course street sessions

i think a stand still would be like the manual or an endo in the bike games

also it would have like challenge mode or in game compition, or missions like how in the BMX games they’d be like “o0hh clear these dirt jumps and we’ll except you as an extreme biker”, or in THPS impress the skaters

and the secret characters would be awsome, i was thinking a cave man with a big old stone wheel and a frame/cranks made of wood. maybe a clown(wich would be an obvious)

the final level would probably be a challenge to Kh him self, maybe an extremly crazy Muni Mission,

and the characters would be like dan heaton ryan atkins kris holm, and any other unicyclist

there would be a custom character and uni application, you could change the color of your paint and wheel color and stickers on it and what type of seat(every addition would cost money)

you would earn money by winning events completing misson ect.

i think that would be pretty awsome

It would be very difficult to use a viewpoint that would work well with unicycling. You have to watch your balance side to side and forward and backward. You could use a top down angle, but then you cannot see how high obstacles are, or slopes. Using say a top-right view, you could see height, slopes, and some balance, but it would still be difficult. They could not cut out any of the balancing because that would just make it really easily. The forward and backward balance does not always come into effect, but if they took that out, then hopping on slopes would be way too easy. It would be a very very difficult game to make well.

john

it would be cool to have as a bonus game with tony hawks or something of the likes, so that once you complete it you unlock pro unicyclist. i doubt the game would have much selling potential by itself as mentioned by muniracer due to the nature of the sport.

I tend to think it’d be a popular game. The sheer idea of extreme pro unicycling would be something new, fun and bizarre for a lot of “gamers”. You wouldn’t even need to concentrate on originality in the making of it because it’d come naturally. All you gotta do is make it big, fun, look good and be multiplayer & people will buy it.

As for the complications some people have pointed out with balance systems and viewpoints. I think an easy way would be to have the screen split in 2 on special aspects of the game to allow an additional viewpoint for … a closeup of the wheel for skinnies, a cross section of the rock for natural trials etc. This additional viewpoint would also be useful because it’d indicate to the player that they’re in “skinnie mode” or whatever so they’d know that a different button control system applies.

I’m almost certain someone’s gonna make a pro unicycling game soon enough, I just hope they find the inclination to employ me when they do it… it’d be so much fun, you could even get Kris Holm himself in to help out with the motion capturing.

Importantly, I think an XBox or PS2 or whatever unicycling game that became popular would really bring about a lot more actual unicyclists in the world. A good idea would be to have some real life trick tips during loading screens, maybe even exclusively to the buttons u gotta press in the game (non unicyclists would prob be like “you can do that?!”) and you’d also have to throw in a bit of real unicycle video footage throughout the game.

Seriously though, the popularity of the game wouldn’t come down to the nature of the sport, it’d come from the quality of the game (and the amount of money available for marketing). I’m sure if it was good, it’d get good reviews and it’d have enough appeal for a non-unicyclist to pick it up off the shelf and read the back and go “wow, this looks fun…” & take it up to the counter.

Pete

Maybe there could be, like, a little red dot or something drawn on the ground that would show you where your balance was. If the dot is directly under your wheel, you’re balanced in a stillstand. Moving forward, the dot would be a bit in front of the wheel; in a turn, the dot would drift to one side or the other. You have to adjust your pedal speed and your lean in order to keep the dot where it needs to be in order to move you in the direction that you want to go. When you come down from a jump over or off of something, the closer the dot is to your wheel, the better the landing; if it’s too far away, you have to make another hop in that direction to recover balance. The physics would be the same for all players; your ability to do radical things would improve as you gain skill in the game.

The physics of unicycle movement would be a pretty complex thing to program if it were done at all realistically, probably on a similar level as a high-end flight simulation. How a unicycle reacts when it lands from a jump depends on so many things; the direction of its travel, the angle of the wheel, the amount of pressure on the pedals… Making the virtual uni “feel” anything like a real one, to a real unicyclist, will be a tremendous challenge. Some compromises will probably have to be made.

There could be different levels of realism in the physics, from arcade-level to maximum.

Game control would need some thought. You want to link the joystick and the virtual uni as intuitively as possible. You’d need at least a 4-axis stick with a good array of buttons I think; forward/backward for pedal speed, left/right for lean, twist-handle (“rudder”) for twisting. The throttle axis could control the force of your hop action, which you would launch with the fire-button. Other buttons could trigger seat-out, gliding, left/right pedal grabs, etc. We want to keep keyboard use to a minimum here.

You would have a variety of terrain types to ride on. You need some easy surfaces for learning and practicing basic control. You could start in a gym, and then ride out into a big park with paved and dirt paths to cruise around on, nothing too complicated, with bumps and hills and potholes here and there, and maybe a track oval for racing. Beyond the park would be a complex urban neighborhood with all of the stuff that you dang kids like to jump around on, and playgrounds here and there with trials courses set up, and buildings that you could ride in and out of. This could be about on the level of “Midtown Madness” let’s say, with pedestrians and traffic and so on, only tailored for unicycling rather than driving. You could find teleports that would transport you to various MUni environments, from desert to mountains to swamps to rocky seacoasts. The MUni terrains would be difficult to simulate I think; things like logs and boulders and ravines wouldn’t be too bad, but the essential small-scale complexity of the ground itself over the length of a course would be a challenge to recreate convincingly.

Of course there would HAVE to be a Trials Course Construction Set, so you could build ludicrous obstacle courses and send them to each other and do multiplayer on them.

All unicycles in the game would be controlled the same way. You would however be able to customize your uni by choosing different wheel sizes, tire types, crank lengths and so forth. Different frames would vary in weight and durablilty, affecting performance. You could customize the uni to fit your riding style and the course or terrain that you’re riding on. You could try doing trials on a Coker or MUni on a 12-inch if you wanted to. You could start the game with only a basic generic narrow-tired 20" uni, and unlock more advanced equipment (wider and stronger frames, fat tires, air seats, brakes, better hubs/cranks and so on) by successfully completing various skills and tricks.

You could accumulate various injuries by falling off during a competition; this would reduce your performance or even sideline you if you took too many hits. Using the freely available safety equipment would make you more durable.

And of course you would refresh yourself by consuming your corporate sponsor’s excellent beverage product.

Okay, get started! I want this for Christmas.

And you would have to be able to choose your tire pressure. I’m not talking soft, medium, or hard. At least to the tenth of one psi. Thats minimum.

john

I’d buy it, but it would be extremely unrealistic. The skateboarding games are already. You can do like 100 foot drops and land them, and you can grind a rail about a football field long, and you can ollie about ten feet. So overall, it would definitely be a crappy game.

I think it would be cool if it was an arcade game like that skateboard game where you actually stand on a board and you can control it by leaning and pushing on the back and stuff like like that. It should have a uni frame, saddle, cranks and pedals so you actually petal to go, lean to turn, hop to jump, etc. i think it would be a little more realistic and alot more fun.
I tried to make a picture of it but im not very talented in paint.

uni game.bmp (311 KB)

oops

oops that pic didnt work:

yea so james_potter it would be unrealistic but thats the point of playing a video game, you don’t play it to simulate real life you play it to have fun and do crazy thing you know couldn’t be done in real life,

you don’t play a skateboarding game to be realistic and try and do a little 50-50 cuase you could just go try it and it would be much more rewarding, you play for the crazy jumps and drops

So basically you’re saying that any unicycling video game would be crappy. Your reason: skateboard games are unrealistic. Nice logic buddy.

How about instead of making a whole unicycle game, in the next tony hawk game they have a little segment when you beat it where you can choose to be Kris Holm. Then they would only have to make one small level instead of a whole game.