Location Aware Games
From MoDe
Virtual Football
Audio jigsaw -- piece spread out over the world, try to fitthem together.
Chop up an image. Must physically find the person with neighboring piece
Pieces tied to coordinate. Can have teleportation places.
Active version of pictionary. Running around the city to draw a picture.
Draw picture world-wide.
Virtual relay race. Baton goes back aqnd forth between singapore and boston.
Catch me if you can. Person runs around in a room (virtual escape route that pop up).
Hide and seek, 20 people ... 10 per group. Find all the member. Do not know who is on your team and who is not. Recognize your group members on ly if you meet them in their numeric order.
Hide and seek, If you are worried that you may be found, you teleport blindly to the other place. Can be physically or virtually tagged.
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Virtual Minesweeper
Similar to the "Minesweeper" game in windows, but played with several players, or by yourself, around the world.Each player uploads a layout of the building that they will be playing in. Then, depending on the size of their building and their opponents' buildings, they get a certain number of "mines" to "place" in rooms around their opponent's buildings. If the player is playing by themselves, the mines are placed randomly around their building. Then the game begins.
Each player moves around their building. In each room, they get a reading for how many mines are in the rooms adjacent to their current room. From this, and knowledge of the layout of the building, the player must determine where the mines are.
When a player thinks they know where a mine is, they flag the room. If they are correct, they get to place that mine on one of their opponent's maps. If they are incorrect, they lose a point. If a player walks into a room that contains a mine, the opponent who placed the mine there gets a point and the player who stepped on the mine gets to place that mine on any of their opponents' maps.
The game is played until a player has a pre-determined number of points. When this happens, that player is the winner.
- Interesting. A few rule clarifications. Can a person at all times see the building layout of their opponent including the mines they have laid? If yes then you can infer where the opponent is as mines disappear. Then what happens when you try to lay a mine directly on your opponents room? If no then you may have the problem of accidentally stacking more than one mine in a room. What happens then? If you disallow stacking then this would be an alternate way of determining if a mine has exploded/flagged.
The major difference between this and real minesweeper is you can't teleport in this like you can in minesweeper which has major consequences but definitely clever use of rooms.
--jasperln
- I think that mines can be stacked. If a person steps on those mines, then both opponents get the points. If the person flags the room, then they get to redistribute two mines. If an opponent tries to put a mine in a room where the player is, it should probably just wait until the player moves out of the room to become active. About seeing mines on opponent's maps, I am not sure. Probably not, but I can think of reasons for both.
--jonv
- Yea stacking mines may not break the game. It may need to be spec'd out slightly though. Like if you are standing next to a room with 2 mines in it does your iPaq report "there are 2 mines adjacent" or "there is 1 room adjacent that is mined". There is also the ability to stack all your mines in one room and instantly win if anyone steps in this room which is slightly weird but maybe ok.
--jasperln
Virtual Hide-and-Seek
This is a turn-based two player game that can be played across the world. Each player uploads a layout of the building that they are playing in. The goal of the game is to know what room your opponent is in. The game screen has a map of your playing area and your opponent's playing area. Initially, you see a blank outline of your opponent's building layout. During each turn, you can choose one room to look into. If your opponent is currently in that room, then you win. If your opponent was in that room recently, you will see an indication of how many turns ago your opponent was in that room. You can "see into" each room that you have chosen for the rest of the game. A player can move only to an adjacent room each term. If a player comes to a room that their opponent has looked into, that player can move to another room adjacent to it, and the opponent is given a notification that the player was just in that room. The map of your area on your game screen indicates to you which rooms your opponent can see into.
The end result is sort of like a game of battleship, but with only one ship and it can move around between turns.
- The game may mostly end up being who can fill up the other person's building the fastest. Maybe have a decay on which rooms you can see into so after a certain number of rounds you can no longer see into that room. Actually, I can think of a frantic non-turn-based version of this. Basically you can run around as fast as you want and can reveal rooms as you please but only the last n rooms you touch are revealed. So after a point every room you reveal hides a different one but as you reveal it you get a reading of how recent the person was in the room. Also you can see a person run by one of your revealed rooms but the trick is you got to click that room in time=) If you aren't paying attention he can be long gone by the time you click. If necessary there can be a cap on how fast you can run and how fast you can reveal rooms but having the game be non-turn-based probably doesn't destroy the game.
--jasperln
- The hectic version could be fun. Also, I like the idea of a set number of visible rooms. However, with that there is no force driving the game to a conclusion... it could go on forever...
--jonv
- That may be true. Perhaps have the number of simultaneous revealed rooms increase as time goes on. Or the game may just go on until someone gets tired=)
--jasperln
Crazy Doors Puzzle Solving
Inspired by the movie "The Matrix", where by using a special key doors can lead to places other than the adjacent room. This is a puzzle solving game between any number of people or teams. Each team submits a list of rooms that they will be playing in. The teams' rooms are mapped to each other randomly. To begin the game, both teams are given a puzzle. The team that completes it first gets the "key". This team then goes into any other room of their choosing. When they get to that room, they are given another puzzle. The team that did not get the "key" must go to the room in their playing area that corresponds (via the random mapping) to the other team's chosen room (which may be nearby or far away). When the entire team gets to this room, they are given the next puzzle, as well.
The game ends when a team completes a specified number of puzzles.
Variation on Crazy Doors After the first puzzle, when the team with the key goes to the next room, they are given a series of puzzles. They get a point for each puzzle that they complete before the other teams show up. When the other teams show up, either everyone is given another puzzle to solve to get the next key, or another team is given the key based on another metric (maybe just randomly, or the first team to get to the room, ... anything else?)
The game is finished when a team gets a certain number of points.
- Pretty creative. Just need to be a bit careful that randomly winning the first puzzle doesn't put you in too big a lead for the rest of the game. After wining the first puzzle the team will likely choose the very next room to get started on the next puzzle immediately. Meanwhile the other team needs to run to some other random room and by the time they get there the winning team may have already solved the 2nd puzzle causing the losing team to run again. Could just be a downward spiral from there. The game just needs a little negative feedback like maybe the puzzles get noticeably harder each step so eventually the bottleneck is the actual puzzle solving and not the running around.
--jasperln
- Yeah, I agree, that is why I added the variation. I think that evens it out. So by winning a puzzle, you get to start getting points by solving other puzzles. But once the other groups get there, you are left with the points but there is no more latent advantage. This encourages the other groups to run to the other rooms, encouraging fitness, too.
--jonv
- Oh ic. So after the loser reaches the destination room both the previous winner and the loser get a fresh new puzzle to start on at the same time. That way the loser isn't immediately put into a disadvantage again. The bonus puzzles that the winner gets to work on while waiting for the loser is mainly to encourage running but probably shouldn't contribute much to the final score unless the loser is lazy in getting to the destinations. Yea that sounds like a good variation.
--jasperln
Physical Oregon Trail
Oregon Trail is a classic computer game where people pretend they are a family of settlers in 1848 trying to travel from Missouri to Oregon in covered wagon for a better life. There is more information about the game at http://www.classicgaming.com/rotw/otrail.shtml and more information about that time in american history at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon_Trail . Anyway, I was thinking that we could make oregon trail more physical.
Basically, people would jump/run to move their covered wagon towards oregon (or maybe go to different rooms or something). The ipaq will beep at you if you are at some important landmark, have some disaster, or run out of food. Then you can interact with the ipaq to buy food, ford rivers, repair the wagon, etc.
I can think of two variations for gameplay:
1. Each person is 1 family+covered wagon. You and all of your friends play and see who can get to oregon first.
2. A group of say, 4 people is the wagon and the average (or sum) of their jumps is the movement of the wagon. The goal would be to see if you can all get to oregon without anyone dying :P
This still has a lot of logistical/gameplay issues to work out, but I think it'd be really fun. Plus, then you can pretend you've traveled in covered wagon with people from around the world.
- Heh, memories.. Well I don't remember every detail but I remember hunting was fun and my axles or something breaking a lot. I think this could be pretty interesting. I feel more important than deciding if the game is single player or multiplayer per wagon (you can probably support both pretty easily) is deciding on the pace of the game. Is this going to be a fast-paced game using sensitive equipment like crickets and accelerometers? Or is it going to be a multi-day game using more coarse-grain technologies like gps and cell-towers? There are already several fast-paced games proposed so this game could represent a more leisurely game that you could bring with you everywhere ala Tamagotchi, Nintendogs, Animal Crossing, etc. Would make sense with a real trip from Missouri to Oregon taking several days, but it's up to you=) If the game lasts long enough teams could even have division of labor like one person in charge of making sure the animals are fed and one person making sure stuff stays fixed.
--jasperln
Other Game Ideas
Below are some other ideas submitted by students in the class (MIT only so far). Brief summary of each idea follows. Most of the ideas are based off ipaqs since we just recently started using cellphones, so those could be some obvious additions/modifications to the games. Please include additional comments/additions as above for each game.
1. MobileStarLogo - using location to control various software agents. Will require some familiarity with StarLogo software, but could potentially offer many different kinds of games to based off of one system. Description (http://web.mit.edu/6.883/files/coreymcc_p1.pdf)
2. Online Battleship. Use gps for location when playing battleship. Try to hit gps location of opponent based off map. Description (http://web.mit.edu/6.883/files/jasperln_game.pdf)
3. Mobile Pictionary. Play pictionary over wireless, and use gps with ipaq to draw. Could be quite challenging to draw something coherent, but the again people struggle to draw coherently on a white board. Description (http://web.mit.edu/6.883/files/vikki_game.pdf)
4. Ipaq Twister. Play twister with other people where each person is considered a "body part" and must move to the correct color quandrant defined by crickets while staying "connected" to the rest of the body. Description (http://web.mit.edu/6.883/files/jwlin_mobile_game.pdf)
5. Mobile Castle. Map a physical space to virtual space in castle, with physical objects being special items and monsters (identified via Bluetooth). Goal is to navigate through the maze ("castle"), solving puzzles and avoid monsters. Description (http://web.mit.edu/6.883/files/djwendel_game.pdf)
Interesting and lots of potential. Bluetooth can be used as the medium for exchanging or loading up tools/weapons/powers or whatever -- there are just python snipets that are gotten via a bluetooth device located in each room. One can exchange current weapons with the room by exchanging code.
But how to keep people honest? Perhaps there is a server that knows who got what weapon and where. The effects of a weapon must somehow be verified by the game server.
This is all a bit like having virtual money that can be transfered (but not replicated).
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Spring 2006 Class Without back links, the wiki feels like "crazy doors"
Please contribute more ideas to this page!
