Managing multi-player video game input

• US 8,092,288 B2
• Filed: 10/31/2008
• Issued: 01/10/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 10/31/2008
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Activision Publishing Incorporated (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Theis, Richard M.
• Primary Examiner(s): Laneau, Ronald
• Application Number:
  US12/262,388
• Publication Number:
  US 20100113116A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,166 Days
• Field of Search: 463 7- 9, 463 40- 42
• US Class Current: 463/7
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 13/10 Control of the course of the game, e.g. start, progess, end
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 13/422 automatically for the purpose of assisting the player, e.g. automatic braking in a driving game
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 13/45 Controlling the progress of the video game
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 13/843 involving concurrently two or more players on the same game device, e.g. requiring the use of a plurality of controllers or of a specific view of game data for each player
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 2300/209 characterized by low level software layer, relating to hardware management, e.g. Operating System, Application Programming Interface
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 2300/6054 by generating automatically game commands to assist the player, e.g. automatic braking in a driving game
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 2300/8088 involving concurrently several players in a non-networked game, e.g. on the same game console

Abstract

A method of managing multi-player game input as single-player game input includes building a command queue, the command queue being a series of time-slices; extracting a most recent time-slice from the command queue, the most recent time-slice including at least one command from difference inputs of the multi-player input; building alternate command queues with information extracted from the most recent time-slice; analyzing the command queue and the alternate command queues to determine an optimum command queue, the optimum command queue including commands from at least one input of the multi-player input; and outputting the optimum command queue as the single-player game input.

Claims

1. A method of managing multi-player game input as single-player game input for a computer gaming apparatus, the method comprising:

building, at the computer gaming apparatus, a command queue, the command queue being a series of time-slices, each time-slice of the series of time-slices including a sequence of commands received from the multi-player game input;

extracting a most recent time-slice from the command queue, the most recent time-slice including at least one command from a master player input of the multi-player game input and at least one command from a slave player input of the multi-player input;

building alternate command queues with information extracted from the most recent time-slice, each alternate command queue including different input arrangements of the master player input and the slave player input;

analyzing the command queue and the alternate command queues to determine an optimum command queue, the optimum command queue including commands from at least one input of the multi-player input, and the optimum command queue providing a sequence of commands as the single-player input; and

outputting the optimum command queue as the single-player game input.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the series of time-slices is organized based on an order of receipt of the sequence of commands from the multi-player game input.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein analyzing the command queue and the alternate command queues comprises:

analyzing and/or simulating each command queue to determine simulated results; and

choosing the command queue with the best set of results as the optimum command queue.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein building alternate command queues comprises:

building several combinations of queues based on command patterns in the command queue, the command patterns being compared alongside at least an assistance level of master player to slave player input and an order of received commands to determine the alternate command queues.