Nintendo Co., Ltd.

Stephen Lee

Yukimi Shimura

Yoonjoon Lee

Steven Petofalvi

Claude Comair

Robert Champagne

Sun Tjen Fam

Prasanna Ghali

Jun Pan

Xin Li

Samir Abou-Samra

Methods and apparatus for controlling movement of a digital object displayed on a screen provide a virtual dynamic direction control pad based on zone detection and touch stroke direction to control customized animated character motion. A player wishing to move the digital object can use a stylus or other touch to indicate a first point on the screen. When the player first touches the stylus to the screen, the system analyzes the touch and divides the screen into multiple zones around the first point indicated by the player. To move the object, the player moves the stylus to a second point on the screen. Movement of the stylus to a second point within one of these zones causes the digital object to perform a predetermined action. Each zone has a predetermined associated action. Direct control of character motion by the game player is enhanced.

Touch-controlled game character motion providing dynamically-positioned virtual control pad

Methods and apparatus for controlling movement of multiple independent animated objects such as characters displayed on a display use zone detection and touch stroke direction. A player wishing to move the digital objects can use a stylus or other touch to draw strokes or gestures on the screen. Different strokes can correspond to different types of control inputs. For example, based on where a stroke begins and ends on the screen relative to character position, different animated characters can be selected and controlled. Some strokes control only one animated character to move in a particular direction, whereas other strokes can control multiple objects to move in a coordinated manner.

Gesture-based control of multiple game characters and other animated objects

Loss-less data compression/decompression especially useful in a limited resource environment such as a handheld portable video game system allows graphics and/or attribute data to be efficiently and quickly decompressed on an as-needed basis in real time response to interactive user inputs. A two-level run-length-encoding is used to encode redundant patterns and redundant symbols. A common sentinel field format encodes whether data following the field is non-redundant data, a symbol run, or a pattern run. Compression ratios of 60% for representative symbol-mapped video display graphics/attribute files can be achieved.

Data compression/decompression based on pattern and symbol run length encoding for use in a portable handheld video game system

Growing community of inventors

Redmond, WA, United States of America

Stephen Lee