BlogLm                                               

Good news as we hear that we have been select to receive a grant under the Technology Strategy Board’s Creative Industries programme.

Entitled “A ToolKit for Authoring Distributed Mobile Games for Schools” the proposal was put together jointly by Brighton University and LocoMatrix.

From our submission “The aim of the proposed project is to develop an authoring facility for a mobile phone based game play system, suitable for use in secondary education. The games use an innovative location- based technology which enables users of mobile phones to play active outdoor games, either individually or linked via the Internet.”

“The project will allow children and their teachers to create exciting interactive games to share with their peers, integrating engaging outdoor games into a wide range of subjects, from geography to mathematics. At Locomatrix, this project aligns itself with one of our future strategies which is to work with schools and children as a part of a strong interest in computing and education.”

More on this as the project progresses.

Max Glaskin (to whom I demonstrated the LocoMatrix treasure hunt recently) has written a very good article in the New Scientist. A comprehensive round-up of what is going on in the outdoor gaming market plus some interesting comments from our friends at Portsmouth Uni, of which more in the near future (ok early clue - expect some new games from final-year MSc students this coming year).

TechGutter recently reviewed LocoMatrix and a number of interesting points and criticisms were raised which I thought needed challenging. So here goes:

1. The £30 price tag for a GPS unit will put people off - maybe put some people off, but others spend far more on other gadgets (Geocachers seem prepared to pay a lot for handhelds). The price of GPS is coming down - the ones that I have been buying recently cost around £25 including postage, and you can now buy them sub £20. The price will continue to fall. Also as I have said elsewhere, there are advantages to a separate unit (as opposed to built in phone) - better accuracy, longer battery life, and you can turn it on and put it in your pocket. As to large groups playing LocoMatrix: it will depend on how much fun the games are. There are plans for games where not everyone needs a gps unit.  We are at an early stage still - and hoping that dads (and mums) may enjoy playing games with their children.
2. Long time before every phone has GPS. Agreed, but we are not expecting everyone to start playing LocoMatrix today, or even tomorrow.
3. Manufacturers will make their own GPS games. Agreed, but our games are cross-manufacturer meaning that you don’t have to have the same make of phone to play with you friends. We see LocoMatrix as more social - where you can compete against rival teams and play games over longer periods of time where the website side of things will come into play. Also, we may be creating games for the manufactures (watch this space!) - and expect to see our platform used by other very soon.
4. Levels of games will always be available for free - users will be asked to pay only if they want to compete at the higher levels. It may be that we will have games funded by advertisers - would rather see an Innocent Smoothie than a Big Mac (but that’s another story).
5. My quote - “I think this is the next logical stage, rather than manipulating the character on the screen, to go out and become those characters in your own real life adventures” was meant less about creating a real life GTA (this exists quite happily in many areas without LocoMatrix) and was a genuine belief that people could get more fun from playing computer-type games outdoors.

As to who is right - we’ll just have to wait and see. Early days yet.

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.