Whoops!  Seems I missed a fortnight of blogging!  It's been a crazy time with work commitments, study commitments and mid-term exams, getting the final proof of concepts done to show the Kickstarter world that this isn't vaporware.

So the game targeting system is now complete, and there are a few screen animations and bling I've been working on!  We have the basic Player web services working on Google App Engine, but still just tweaking the OAuth 2 security connection from the phone to the web service.  This still probably has a day's worth on it, but the code to download and upload data through web services is all looking good.  A big shout out to Christine for yesterday's tireless effort on helping solve the OAuth 2 issues. Perhaps today she might be interested in throwing together some of the remaining web services for the rest of the app.  If I can get through my BioChem revision and Molecular Biology revision, I might get a chance this afternoon to finish the first player login.

In two days I have an exam, so here Sunday I will be studying instead of doing that last bit of coding.  Tuesday we fly to Tailgate Alaska world free-ride snowboard event for a much deserved holiday!  That means Tuesday morning I'll have 8 hours to get some work in, and then another 14 hours on the flight to LA!  For 2 weeks if we're snowed in I'll have some long days to while away and know exactly how to use them constructively!  Thompson Pass is about 80 miles out of Valdez so there won't be any other distractions! With Christine with me, we could wrap up a lot of the final functionality if the weather is real bad ... though we're still looking around an August completion after testing. 

I'm waiting today for a couple of graphics getting done so I can launch this Kickstarter campaign!  I plan to get it started 31st March!  Definitely avoiding April 1st release just for superstition purposes!  So as a teaser, check out the above proof-of-concept screens showing the local map of potential opponents, and the working screen for game play. It's getting exciting now!

A kickstarter that I prepared earlier

OK, two things happened last night! The first, I got the iPhone Core Position code working ... this results in a working "game compass".   The second, I put the blurb together for the kickstarter and it's waiting for the final proof of concept before it goes online.  If I can have a big weekend this weekend to polish up the storyboard and get the camera "game targeting" part done then all that is left is plumbing it up with the web services back end.  At this rate it's possible that the kickstart campaign can start in April rather than May.

Anyway,  here's a bit about the game, and the text for the kickstarter:

Back in the 80s there was this awesomely bad movie called Gotcha! It was about a university student who played some hide-and-seek type game on campus with paintball guns.  The main part of the movie was about him getting caught up with spies ... but back to the paintball game bit.  Apart from the improbable liability of “tagging” some random person with paintballs around campus, the concept of stalking and tagging people in some 007 cloak-n-dagger kind of way seemed really cool to my young teenage self!

How awesome would it be to be able to have a real world man-hunt type game that you could play anywhere and anytime!?  None more awesome I say!

Let’s face it … walking around with a restricted item like a paintball gun, or even a bulky electronic version like in laser tag is not really going to be something very many people are likely to do.  This is where my smart-phone app turns the entire world into a potential arena, and enables anyone who wants to play a way to find others and participate.

Welcome to the world of USC – Ultimate Stalking Championships.  A global competition for anyone using the Walkie-Stalkie app!

THE GAME

Walkie-Stalkie provides a way for players to discover other players and an interface for location-based laser tag.  Instead of using sensors the game uses location services and phone position information to triangulate where other players are.  To create a verifiable “shot” a photo is taken of the other player with some augmented reality screen visualisations for feedback.  During the game, players have a simple range/direction finder to the other player, a cloak to temporarily hide then from the direction finder, a temporary shield to protect them from shots, and the ability to take shots.

It will cost both players a “contract token” to begin a bout with the winner who gets a successful tag of the other receiving both “contract tokens”.  Either player can re-challenge the other in a double-or-nothing bout.  Winners accumulate contract tokens that can be used in future bouts, otherwise 10 contract tokens can be obtains as 99c In App Purchases.

The game acknowledges achievements through levels, and upon reaching each level a player receives 1 upgrade point that they can allocated to increase the number of shots / cloaks / shields that they have available in any single bout.  Of course anyone can obtain a little extra fire-power as additional In App Purchases.

RISKS AND  CHALLENGES

We had a problem to solve: how do you use an iPhone to accurately target someone and verify this?  Hasbro put out a Lazer Tag game that used an iPhone and it’s camera as a screen but basically interfaced with infrared sensors on a toy gun and body sensors.  It got some excellent reviews and proved that there was a market for such a game.  However, the equipment could not stay up-to-date with iPhone form factors, and no one is going to carry around a toy gun and body sensors on the odd chance that they’ll encounter another player on their daily travels.  But they will have their smart phone.

We have used the smart phone gps locations to determine bearings and angles for rough camera shot directions.  The camera will change the target sight image to show when it is pointed to the direction of a competing player.  

Our proof-of-concept shows that as long as we require a min 6 / max 20 meters that we have enough accuracy for a verifiable “shot”.  When a player considers that their “shot” shows the other player has been tagged they can submit the image to end the game.  This is very subjective and open to cheats so we have incorporated a player rating system (like eBay) to assess fairness, fun and freakiness.  This way we can quickly exclude players who either don’t play fairly, or are people who you just don’t want to be around.  In either case, the players can request adjudication (from randomly selected other players) to assess the shot.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

As you can see in the video, we already have a fully functioning prototype and proof-of-concept!  We are now ready to go through a polishing round and roll out a beta version for players.  This is the perfect way to express your interest in the app and let us know that it has a viable user base.  We invite all interested people to help us raise the capital to take this game to that level.

A successful Kickstarter campaign will provide the much needed cash-flow to hire some experienced app developers to audit our code and ensure that our first app does not contain any obvious errors.  It’ll also provide the opportunity to clean up final UX issues where we get feedback from our Beta users.  We’ve hit the ground running on this project but need the extra funds to ensure that we have a product that is polished, and also to fund the servers for our back-end to run on.  

We know that you’ll be very proud to be part of this exciting project, but we also hope you’ll love the rewards that we have to offer.  Every contributor will have their playing account associated with a special map-marker icon so that when the game goes live people will know you were in at the ground floor.  Please consider how much you can contribute, look over our reward and become one off the elite USC champions.

Of course, there is much more to do than just Beta test and polish the iPhone version.  If we can achieve greater Kickstarter success than expected, we have many more features that we hope to incorporate into the game.  Below are a few of the features and the direction that we hope to take the project as we create revenue.   We want to raise the minimum of $10, 000 here, but we have some very big dreams and the rewards are geared to try and realise that potential.

$10, 000 – Complete prototype, get lawyers to create Terms & Conditions, and get Walkie-Stalkie onto Apple’s App store for Beta Testing

$15, 000 – Implement a free training mode that has augmented reality sprites to chase for free

$20, 000 – Implement “team games” such as capture-the-flag and last-man-standing

$25, 000 – iBeacon items that can be used as trigger-able “ambush mines”. How cool would that be!?

$30, 000 – Android version

$50, 000 – Turn the simple “shield on/cloak on” and point-n-click camera action into a fully selectable and upgradable weapons system.

Please help us get the capital we need to make USC a “virtual” reality!

Is this how to make a new post?

In the beginning ...

So a little under 4 weeks ago I thought it might be a good idea to start learning how to code Swift .... Apple's new C++ style language.  As a programmer with over 20 years of corporate software development, I was not impressed with Objective-C when it first came out.  In an era of Java and C# I couldn't believe how Objective-C had none of the useful features we expect in modern development environments.

I've had an idea for Walkie-Stalkie for a while but the thought of dealing with Objective-C (and being tied down on other projects) left me uninterested given the learning curve.  Now that Swift is maturing and there are reasonable resource on the web for it I decided to have a look at prototyping some of the concepts to make Walkie-Stalkie work.

So here we are 1 month later and after 4 weekends of very long hours I have a rough prototype that is close to putting on Kickstarter.  The Core Location features and storyboard are done.  The virtual augmentation algorithms are all that is left before I can say with confidence that the game play will be both possible and accurate.

As we get closer to where I can start telling people about the final weeks of development I notice articles on how to have successful Kickstarter campaigns.  One requirement is to have a blog so you can communicate progress to backers and fans.  Voila ...

In the next installment I'll cover a little of what Walkie-Stalkie is and what features are implemented.  I'll also start putting together a description of myself and the "team".  These are all things that are needed for the Kickstarter write-up so it'll be killing the metaphorical both birds with the one stone.