Or, everything you ever wanted to know about the Rez Trancevibrator,
but were too busy jacking off to the pictures on
GameGirlAdvance to actually do any
research for yourself.
For every thread about the
SeXBox around the
internet, there's a reply of
"GameGirlAdvance/Rez did it first!".
Yes, I realize this. I even pointed it out in the project article.
They did it first. They did a great job on the presentation. They
involved a GIRL. Even so, lots of people seem intent on making SURE
everyone knows GGA did it first. I harbor no ill will toward GGA,
hell, I love that site, and they provided me with a ton of hits
through links. The other people, though....
I'm not one to ignore the will of the masses. So, I could get mad, I
could rant, but instead, I'll just fill in all the blanks about the
Rez Trancevibrator. Like the fact YOU CAN'T GET IT ANYMORE. At least,
not yet. =D
So, here's the background on the toy that started a revolution.
What's Rez?
Rez is a video game. But I'm sure
most of you already know that.
Rez is a rail-based shooter from United Game Artists. Like every other
game in the rail based genre, you float down a line, you shoot at
everything that moves, you score points. However, what makes Rez
different is that the interaction with the environment helps to add to
the music for the game. Every level has a different track composed by
a very famous techno artist (if you did not recognize the artists that
did the music for Rez, you are no longer allowed to call yourself
cool). As you shoot at/kill enemies, the sounds created add to the
background music to make for some pretty bitchin' choonz. So, you fly
through a crazy glowy neonish world with techno playing in the
background, shooting weird geometric shapes that hate you for some
reason you can figure out. It's a lot like candyflipping at a rave
with a laser gun, except cheaper and a slightly smaller chance of
getting arrested.
It was originally released for the Dreamcast, but due to the fact that
Sega had been fuckwits about their hardware long enough to drive it
into the ground, it never saw the light of day in the US for DC. The
game was rereleased for the PS2, and that's the verison we're
interested in.
The game was created by Tetsuya Mizuguchi, who also created the
Space Channel 5 (ok, here's a
real link)
series. A game so good,
Deee-lite sued!.
Litigation is in the heaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaart! rimshot
Oh yeah, he also created Lumines, which is apparently like sex with a
PSP.
What's the Trancevibrator?
Well, in Japan, all games have to come with some crazy add-on that
half the nation will buy.
Densha de go!,
I'm looking your direction...
Why? Because, well, they're asian. It's what they do.
Rez was no exception. Since turning up your subwoofer in your 5 square
foot apartment in the middle of Tokyo was likely to cause dishonor to
your neighbors and shame to your family, they created a vibrator that
hooked into the USB port of the Playstation 2. The game activates the
vibrator while your playing it, and, when added to the vibration in
the controller (at least, the vibration in the controller up until a
few weeks ago), made the game more "interactive". It was shaped like a
square to fit in a shirt pocket.
But it didn't stay in shirt pockets for long....
Time for teh s3x0rz!
In 2002, GameGirlAdvance posted the
now famous
article on using the TranceVibrator as a sex device.
It's a great article, and set off a ton of discussion about sex and
games. If you google Rez, this article is now the top result. The page
for the game is somewhere around 4th or 5th. That should tell you
about how popular this article got.
Now, a lot of people think this is where the story ends, but little
did they know, an underground hacking community was growing...
How does it work?
The TranceVibrator is really, really simple. The game sends a single
byte (8 bits) over the USB line to the controller. Since the value
resolution is 1 byte, that means the value can be anywhere between 0
and 2^8-1, or 255. The controller translates the value of that byte
into a PWM, or pulse width modulation, value. This value regulates how
fast the vibration motor in the controller will run. Basically, pulses
of power are sent to the motor in time slices. The higher the value,
the longer the pulse is kept on for in each slice (or, the "width" of
the pulse is longer, to make this description fit with the PWM term
definition), and the faster the motor runs. It's basically the same
way the rumble feature in controllers work, though that gets a little
more complicated since there are 2 motors that have to blend to
produce certain vibrations.
The Drivers... THE DRIVERS...
For every game controller, there is a driver that will make it work on
your computer. From the old
8-bit NES
all the way up the
Steel Batallion Xbox Controller,
someone, somewhere has spent their weekends making it so that you can
play Half-Life 2 with any damn controller you like, even though mice
and keyboards have suited most of us just fine for many, many years.
The Trancevibrator is no exception. There are drivers and programs for
Windows that will control the TranceVibrator.
http://homepage1.nifty.com/mcn/lab/machines/trance_vibrator/
(archive.org link, original site now dead) has information on the USB
Descriptors for the device. TrV.exe
is the only link still live, and it's in Japanese.
Current Projects
Update 2013-05-25: libtrancevibe is your best bet
for drivers these days.
So it looks like most of the japanese projects are dead, as this
product is pretty old. However, I found a project that's still alive!
TranceSharp by Jibakushounen
This is a project that will allow usage of the TranceVibrator on a
computer using Microsoft's .NET architecture. Currently it will
regulate the PWM values, and that's about it, but the author has quite
a lot planned for it.
So where can I get one?
YOU CAN'T! HAH!
It's not impossible to find a TranceVibrator these days
(ebay is always a good source),
but most retail outlets no longer sell them
(Lik Sang
has had them as "Temporarily Not Available" for a very, very long
time).
However, why buy one when you can just make one! In an upcoming
article here on slashdong, we'll be showing you how to make your own
Rez TranceVibrator. Sure, it'll probably cost you more than just
ordering one, but what fun is getting something preassembled?
