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:
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!
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