This article is more than 1 year old

Gamers gun down Half-Life

Literally...

If you hold the view that violent videogames encourage real-life violence, then stop reading now. Because Register Hardware’s discovered news of some US gaming geeks playing Half-Life with real guns.

Can't see the video? Download Flash Player from Adobe.com

Waterloo Labs - a group of engineers and “other nerds” from Texas – recently projected a Flash version of Half-Life onto some drywall and, well, destroyed the game’s aliens using a Ruger Mark III silenced pistol.

The assorted nerds stuck accelerometers onto the drywall’s rear side, connected them into a PC and then used LabView software to triangulate the location of each shot fired at the drywall.

LabView turned the location of each shot into a mouse click, the team explained, which the connected PC then translated into a mouse click in Half-Life - making the game think that the main character had just fired off a round at the assorted aliens ahead of him.

From the looks of the video, each real-life shot fired from the pistol generates a pretty realistic in-game response.

And because accelerometers are based on vibrations, the nerds were also able to hit the wall with everything from rubber bands to axes and generate the same effect- dead Half-Life aliens.

Worryingly, Waterloo labs has posted the code required to mock up your own deadly version of Half-Life online. Guns not included… ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like