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First Person Shooter (FPS) Games in the Real World with Mobiles

Jeff Senita & Russell Smith

First Person Shooter (FPS) Games in the Real World with Mobiles

Imagine games like laser tag, paintball, or “killer tag” games but you can play anywhere with just your cell phones. Some key “wish list” equipment to simulate weapons would be a built-in laser pointer device, a built-in range finder (or more accurate GPS locating system), possibly an external sensor to detect the laser pointer beam, or simply by snapping pictures of the other players.

Basically, you can track your friends on a GPS enabled map. You can shoot at them with your laser or with your camera. Using the range finder or GPS system, you can simulate the range of a weapon. Perhaps you can shoot at someone 50 units away with a sniper rifle, 35 units away with a rifle, 15 units away with a shotgun, and 1 unit away for a sword attack. The real world is your arena. Spawn points are customizable for every game. If you are “killed,” you are sent back (by physically walking) to the GPS-designated spawn point to re-enter the game with full ammo. Capture the flag type games can be done in a similar way – to capture the flag, you take a picture of the designated flag (a monument, a sign, object, or person), then return to your base without being “killed.” Most forms of FPS multiplayer games can be replicated in this way with cell phones. Flash bomb grenades could be used which could disable player locations on the map, interfering with your game information. Face recognition software could be particularly useful for taking pictures of targets instead of additional devices (although heavy in processing). Grenades to a certain GPS location could create an area effect weapon, and anyone inside of that area would be affected.

Games can setup and disintegrate in 10 minutes for quick games in-between classes or on a break at work. Games could easily encompass large numbers of players in a single game since no server would be required just user cell phones. Players use the abilities of their phones, but experience real world limitations of how fast they can run, but will be able to use their own real world skills to their advantage over other players.

“Audio for Mobiles” notes from the Austin Game Developers Conference

“Audio for Mobiles” The future of sound for mobile devices from the Austin Game Conference

You can create a 3D stereo sound experience from two headphone by manipulating the properties of sound. Uses of this would include spatial relationships. Like listening to music, playing games, and Example: a conference call. Many voices become hard to discern who is who. With 3D stereo, you could put your boss’ voice directly in front of you, and arrange colleagues around you in different directions.

He envisions the future of mobile sound to be dual ear Bluetooth headsets that become small and non-intrusive to the point that they are worn like contact lenses for you ears augmenting all of your audio experience that streams in from all around. They will become so normal that you will not take them off throughout the day. You can share music with your friends, simply by them connecting their Bluetooth headsets to your mobile device. You can share calls. People can dance to their own music at parties, or share it –all completely supplied through Bluetooth (anyone watching wouldn’t be able to hear anything – like a silent dance party).

Other notes from the Austin Game Developers Conference 2007 (focus on online gaming), as well as audio recordings for purchase.

http://www.gamasutra.com/austingdc2007/

Mobile Uses Brainstorming

Mobile Brainstorming Uses

Improved Point of Sale (POS) -the first time you are aware of a product you are enabled to buy it immediately. If you can listen to a digital radio and the sounds are identified –then you should be able to “listen” with your phone and order that music from the first time you hear it. Other digital POS examples – preordering movie passes when you see a movie trailer, preorder movies that you are watching at the theater. This may be when you are most excited about a movie, and therefore you should be able to put your money down way ahead of time. Any commercial should allow you to purchase that product – or at least take you directly to the product website. You are at a concert, and should be able to purchase music from your phone as you are listening to it live – you can even preorder the live recording from the concert/music festival. This includes sports games (Superbowl), television series, special programming, and radio programs. Perhaps you can identify perfumes someone is wearing with a sensor, and purchase it yourself. At restaurants you can order completely through your mobile, and a ticket is sent to the wait staff. You can even preorder on your mobile before you even arrive at the restaurant, so your food is ready and waiting when you arrive.

I imagine you could even make original music on your phone, without the need to go to a studio. .

You could have a theme song that follows you around, and people hear it play in their own headsets when you approach.

A traveling castle. As your mobile devices moves with you, your own virtual castle or building that moves with you for others to explore, or this could also be an art installation. If a projector is part of the mobile device, you could have a virtual office that surrounds you. Using the projector, you could point it at different points of your office or art studio to reveal what is on the “wall” there. You could leave yourself Post-It notes, maps, lists, etc, like a portable desktop that could be shown to everyone in the room.

Tinkerbell Game / Art Installation. Everyone in the room is connected via Bluetooth, and a fairy could exist in their midst much like how Tinkerbell was portrayed in the original Peter Pan stage performance (just a bell sound, and the beam of a flashlight). She could travel between phones – all the audio devices acting like a distributed audio system that could always be in flux. Raising the volume of her presence of phone to phone you could audibly track her movement, and even lighting phones up as she passed. As she passes near enough to a mobile device, users could even interact with her, and send her bouncing to another participant.

Multiple mobile projectors, could be used together in a distributed system to create a virtual space all around the participants.

Zone Tag (third post, I can’t tell if its working right) It’s a research project of tagging photos you take with your phone by using user-created tags from the same “zone” you are in or creating your own. The photos are then uploaded to flickr. http://research.yahoo.com/zonetag/

This is from my phone.

from the site

this is a test post from the tumblr site