BlogLm                                               

For those of you getting excited by the prospect of the GPS-enabled iPhone, here’s a quote from David Pogue of the NYT: “Unfortunately, there’s not much you can do with the G.P.S. According to Apple, the iPhone’s G.P.S. antenna is much too small to emulate the turn-by-turn navigation of a G.P.S. unit for a vehicle, for example.”

Will be very interested in the feedback we get as users start to try to use iGPS. My point that a separate Bluetooth unit is a better option (better accuracy, better battery life, small package, cheaper), may still be valid.

In the last blog I explained in some detail how you use the treasure hunt editor. Here we are going to look further at the process of creating a game - but bear in mind that I have, so far, only created a few and at the moment there is a lot of trial and error. You learn a lot from creating a game and then trying it out with real people. Expect to come back to this as I get more experience and feedback.

As the players start by being presented with a picture, an obvious ploy is to present them with a view of where they are and the direction they should be traveling in. Below is a view from my front door where my first test game started. As they walk towards the destination, the second picture is displayed. Now if we want to do something simple - this is a picture of something they can see easily. Here after 1 minute, they come to a fountain.

It may seem obvious, but worth stating anyway. I plan a route that I know, so have a fairly good idea of the places that I am going to use. I take my camera and look to take portrait-orientated photos (for usual phone screen shape). It might be good here to introduce the subject of theme. For a general treasure hunt, this might be unnecessary but it can serve to focus on how one goes about creating the game. A couple of examples close to where I live are: a “blue plaque” trail, a seafront exploration, or a tapas tour.

But of course this is a fairly simple way to use it. I have created a couple of games for places that I haven’t been to. A bit risky, but so far, so good. Satellite photos (e.g. Google Maps/Earth (and  can be used and you can use them even for places that you have access too - a treasure hunt of aerial photos and maps can be a challenging. A general point here is that the contrast is not so good with most maps - a spot of improvement can be useful (praise be the “one step photo fix” : )

A difficulty that one is presented with when creating the initial picture to point the player in the right direction, is will it really show him the way. A map of the general area with a hand-drawn arrow had been useful to me. But we can also think laterally. A clue to take the player to a nearby roundabout could be a road sign of a roundabout. And now we are thinking laterally, why don’t we start to create some really cryptic clues. I’m looking for volunteers - but don’t worry, if all else fails, there is still the warmometer.

Our Treasure Hunt is now available for playing. I have created some test sites (Soutbank, London / Portsmouth Uni / Brunswick, Hove / Weald & Downland Museum, Singleton) but it is very easy for anyone to create one. The beta can be found here.

The goal of Treasure Hunt is to navigate a course of waypoints using picture clues (with a little help from the “warmometer” - it tells you if you are getting hotter or colder!). When the game starts you are presented with a picture on your phone that should point you in the direction of the first location. As you near this point, a second picture will be shown, which should allow you to identify the exact point (in a following post, I will be sharing some ideas for how you might do this). If the clues alone are not enough, you can reveal a hint - and don’t forget the warmometer.

And now down to details

Start by giving the game a name. This is how you will see it in the list of games when you go to Treasure Hunt on your phone.

Then click on “add new waypoint” then go down to the Name and er… give it a name. Then add a description - this will appear when the user gets to the destination. If you give a hint, the user will see this when he clicks on the hint button on the phone.

Now use the map to find your target - you can use either a map or the satellite view (hint: you can also the search facility). Click on the map to add the coordinates of your waypoint.

Click on the image tab to upload the 2 images needed for you location. You select them from your local drive and then click on the red “upload” thingy. Bear in mind that different phones have different screen sizes and that you need to make sure that your clue will be understood however seen. In order to help, click on the point of interest for each picture and the program will crop the image in the best way possible. Also don’t forget that in strong light your pictures may not be seen to best advantage so try and increase the contrast and not include too much detail (more on this soon).

Nearly there. Just repeat the above by adding new waypoints. And (I was going to say Hey Presto, but changed my mind) there’s your treasure hunt. Click on “Submit Game” to send it off to to LocoHQ.

“Hundreds of money-wielding shoppers lined the streets of Brighton last night to bag their long-awaited copies of Grand Theft Auto IV” - quote from Eurogamer.

So how long before the LocoMatrix queues? But not, I hope, for an augmented reality car thieving game. My sincere hope is that we continue to develop some high-quality fun games that will foster cooperation and social understanding. Developers that is my challenge.

The new Balance Board from Nintendo has managed to gather a lot of publicity (small sign of envy), but I am not convinced that it will really allow people to exercise in a meaningful way, and I think for many, the novelty will wear of quickly c.f. all those exercise bikes rusting in garages.

I think that there are some interesting things that could be done with it - I am thinking of things like weight balancing in tai chi, or possible gait analysis for sports fitness - it will be interesting to see what the hackers come up with - see here for some interesting things to do with the Wii remote.

It also brings to mind an interesting phenomenon that I noticed with our LifeFitness cross-trainer. If one has a glass of water in the drinks holder, and one is not exercising in a balanced way, the water will rotate in one direction - and if one changes the weight more to the other side of the body, it spins the other way. How about that!

According to Reghardware

An Australian council has dug-up plans to launch GPS burial sites, allowing bereaved friends and family to find the final outback resting place of a loved one with a satnav.

The burial site is in bushland attached to the Lismore Memorial Park Cemetery in New South Wales and has been created to cater for a rise in the number of people seeking eco-friendly interments. Burial sites can be picked out personally, and Lismore Council then records the location’s GPS co-ordinates.

Oh dear - I feel a game coming on

Years ago I was researching alarm systems for the elderly (in fact my Masters thesis was on this topic). We built small radio transmitters that our subjects would wear around their necks on a ribbon. In the event of difficulty they would press a large red button which would activate an auto-dialler attached to their telephone and call for help. Our very first incident taught us an important lesson - the subject who was wheelchair-bound had ventured into the garden and toppled over, chair and all. Unfortunately he ended up trapped by the neck - the ribbon from the transmitter (and the transmitter itself) under the fallen wheelchair. Luckily he was spotted by an neighbour shortly afterwards and was none the worse for wear.

I mention this now as one of the things that we are considering with LocoMatrix (following discussion with CEOP and others)is whether to have a “panic button” as a feature. If youngsters playing a game (or at any other time) got into difficulty, they could press a button (or sequence of) to send out an alert which would show up on our servers. What has come up in our discussions is whether this would be a good idea or would it be subject to abuse and false alarms (do youngsters abuse the emergency services with their mobiles?) and if we were to implement this service, who would we alert - police, parents, our own monitor? Or are there unforeseeable outcomes such as we found with our system for the elderly.

The Park to Park game described a couple of posts ago has generated a lot of interest and brought up some interesting variations on the theme. Obviously one of the things that can be done is to increase the number of locations where a game can be played - 3 countries? 6 continents?

But one of the difficulties that becomes apparent is that it will be difficult to map exact relative points. What I mean by that is, if player A moves to a point 100 meters West and 50 meters North, player B will have to move in exactly the same manner. This will add an element of interest if player B has to move through/around a hedge to get to this point, but if this point is in the center of a lake then the game may become unplayable. A better way would be to map relational paths…

… by which I mean that, for example, player A takes the route shown.

and player B would indeed end up in the lake. With a little bit of magic, we could adjust his position so that although he thought he was following A, he can just manage to stay dry.

Yes that’s right, the Electronic Arts today announced that they have sold the 100 millionth Sims game. I came across this in the NYT and of particular interest is how girls have been the most captivated audience.

“If this all sounds a lot like playing with dolls, you’re right. The core, most passionate audience for the Sims has become school-age girls. Across many years and many cultures, girls have long been the demographic group that most gravitates toward playing at “real life.” (Boys, meanwhile, with their footballs and toy soldiers, as with their video games, have usually played at inhabiting some external, aspirational identity.)”

Now can we do the same for LocoMatrix

This is a description of a proposed game to be played in New York and London at the same time. The game can only be completed if there is a player (or team) in each place. The intention is to introduce the game during the Come Out and Play festival in NY which runs between the 6th and 8th of June 2008.

We have created a treasure hunt using cell phones connected via Bluetooth to GPS. Our current version has players navigate a route on which several landmarks have to be found.

To get to the first destination from the start: a photograph of a part of the surrounding landscape appears on the phone screen. The player heads in the corresponding direction and as they get closer, a more detailed picture of a specific landmark or object appears. Once they arrive, a suitable piece of text is shown, maybe describing the object. Players are aided by the warmometer (goes from blue to red as you approach “warmer/colder”) which is displayed at the top of the screen.

The Come Out and Play version will be played in NY and London simultaneously. A player in NY will try to find the first location while the player in London has to follow (both players will be seen as dots on the screen and move relative to each other - the London player will have to stay on track). Once the first location is found, the roles swap over with the London player doing the leading/finding. Thus the course can only be completed by the corporation of the two players.

Pairs of players/teams would set off at 5 minute intervals from the starting point (also the finish) with an average course time of around 30 minutes. Phones and GPS would be provided at the start and a guide would be on hand for further help.

Teams have to visit all the locations in the Treasure Hunt in the correct order. Course time will appear on the phones when the last location has been found. The winners are the ones who complete the course in the fastest time.

A nice touch might be to photograph the 2 players and put them on a web site so they could see who they had played with - alternatively it might be possible to do this at the start/end if one can get internet access in the parks.