Monday, December 5, 2011

Mobile game sketch and long paper - my project

Click on game sketch to enlarge it. Summary is written below.
Game
1. Shown picture: "Where is this landmark?"
2. You have 3 ways to find the landmark:
  • your memory of the city
  • a math problem (adapted to your level)
  • a street map (like Google maps or Mapquest)
3. Orientation and location: Given a starting place, and facing a certain direction.
4. Follow the pathway virtually within a 3D scene (Google Earth), a zooming panorama (GigaPan), a flat or topological map, or actually in the physical world.
5. The player draws in straight lines, step by step (node by node) until reaching the goal...using a cube interface.
6. Each new segment automatically begins at the point the last one stopped.
QR code
from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_code 
7. See if goal you reached is correct, by pointing your smartphone towards a QR code or RFID.  There will be a few fake ones to mislead you!
8. Picking landmarks: Don't make it easy. Even if someone knows the city. their memory won't be enough:
  • optical illusions where a road disappears (what's behind the bend?)
  • within a different era (bridges torn down)
  • different size (tiny gargoyles)
  • hidden views (behind trees, smoke, darkness....) that need tools to view them.
  • unexpected scale or perspective
    _______________________
    This grew out of my 1993 Masters' thesis,
               http://slmasters.biz/Masters'%20Thesis,%201993%20(OCR).pdf
    about a set of games, a cognitive tutor that connects them, and a 2d/3d interface for authoring, which I call Funfunctions.  It's about a 4 MB download.

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