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Pirates!
fm6 writes: "Worried that too much computer gaming stunts your social skills? Try Pirates! You simulate a voyage of discovery, trade, and plunder by walking around a physical gaming area carrying a PDA equipped with a proximity sensor. Encounters with other players (including naval battles) happen when the two players actually approach each other. Here's an article on Business 2.0."
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oh yes, and we all know how great lazer tag was.
somehow i think making it "geekier" and "tamer" are going to help.
Why not up the ante and make it global? Add a GPS to the palm and transmit your location around the globe, so you could meet ppl all over where your travel takes you and kill and plunder them.
Seriously, is this game really getting any adepts? i'd rather hone my social skills at a weekend long rave and blast the ppl i play with in Counter Strike.
Sounds like a cool party game!
I'm gonna have something like this arranged for my wedding!
- No tears, please! It's a waste of good suffering!
Fuckin' A, man, it's gettin' so you can't run a Carracho server in this town without gettin' bitched at by the self-appointed warez hounds. I tell ya...
--hongpong.com
The only Pirates! that will ever be is by Sid Meier. We want a sequal, Sid!
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
"In addition, each device is equipped with a custom-built sensor, which is used to infer the players relative proximity to each other, and to locations in the physical world."
No refrences to how much that's gonna cost ya, or where you can pick one up.
I guess this isn't going to be the same, from the article's description. The origional, Pirates! from Microprose was a 5.25" floppy game, later Pirates! Gold (which kinda sucked).
I played that game for years, but I can't stand the old games. New ones have all the nice graphics and dumb, horrible plots. The old ones had great plots, and of course now lousy graphics. If they model it around the origional, with land and see fights (which were pretty fun).. I'd love that. Might even buy one.. nah, to cheap...
From the article...
Upon arriving at an island, a player might find something valuable, such as tobacco.
I get the feeling that the people who will be playing this game might need something more valuable...soap!
I'm sure employers will love their employees playing this game around the office.
[ ]
WOOOO HOOOOO
Two-fold congratulations !
a) First thread i saw without the idiotic FIRST-POST
b) And an excellent one (err, two?) word summary of the game
I can see this being big for about two or three months and then fading out (all your base ring a bell). Its still a pretty cool concept and would be hella cool if wearable 'puters and virtual reality glasses were more comman place (and there was an app like this for them ofcourse.)
Carpe meam simiam!
the game IS pirated and everyone who plays it actually ARE pirates.
Haven't you ever had a really good game of steal the flag? If this is done right, it could be like that, but with a high geek quotient.
Donate background CPU time to fight cancer.
but because the rivals are standing right next to each other, they can talk trash
I've been on the net for quite some time, but I've never known proximity being a relevant factor in any visitors ability to talk trash. If there was some sort of factor inducing an inability to talk trash, now that would cheer me! Though I fear, that for some people that may result in an inability to talk at all, but that wouldn't bother me overmuch.
Stefan.
The truth shall make you fret. (Ankh-Morpork tImes motto)
hmm. "low-range radio" transmitter/receiver pairs in a PDA. now what existing technology might replace their custom hardware?
Seriously, I think there is an interesting new genre of games that integrate PDAs and real world locations and/or real world people. Its nice to see others working in this direction.
There is another game based on mobile positioning called BotFighters in action since a couple of months in Sweden. Basically, a player may shoot at another player or attempt to take his/her weapons, but only if they are close enough to eachother.
Anyone with an ordinary mobile phone can play the game, as it uses the positioning information available form the cellular network. Using WAP or text messages may not really be as exciting as having a full-screen PDA in a wireless LAN, though.
I'm still waiting for the Laser Tag infrared mod for my Palm.
Pirates are people with eyepatches who plunder on the high seas, not people with PDAs who simply beam information to each other.
I can't stand it when people use the term "Pirate" to refer to such innocent folk. Just because it's in the dictionary doesn't make it right! Stand up for what you believe in!
Dlugar
Computer Go: Writing Software to Play the Ancient Game of Go
I thought it's original name was "Napster"... :)
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
Are you a fan? Do you think they can win conference this year?
yes, as a matter of fact i DO. you got a problem with that, punk?
ok
I'm feeling generous, so here are some suggestions, free of charge:
AC's cheerfully ignored
I know that Scott said that we should 'Get over it', but anyway..
Anyone know the technical details on this stuff wrt 3rd parties getting hold of your location information?
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
Suck that is. I wouldn't exactly call this new news since this game has been around for quite some time. I even had the misfortune of seeing this thing in action and it really did suck.
God... we all know what happens when you mix real life with these games. People start losing reality and then they think their mom is a dragon and they slay her. Or they think they are ninja turtles and they get lost in NYC sewers. We better get some soccer mom's on this right away so it can be boycotted before it even takes off!!
It does sound pretty lame. Nothing wrong at all with saying so. The moderators shouldn't be so quick to jump the gun on a 'troll' moderation, just because it's negative.
(Or offtopic, for those who dare to continue to discuss it.)
Worried that too much computer gaming stunts your social skills? /. reader's social skills.
Somehow I suspect that interacting with the kind of people who would play this game would just further stunt
A fun game in which players are given PDA's with infrared transmitters, and MP3 copies of five popular songs, chosen randomly out of 100. Each person has to convince others to share copies of their songs, and whoever collects all 100 first, wins the game!
Sounds easy, right? But watch out! Hillary ®osen and her crack gang of ©opyright police are out in full force, posing as regular players, and whenever you try and share with them, they take all your songs and you have to start over!
It's loads of fun! And remember, sharing is stealing!
you stole that from undertroll you faggot. get your own ascii art.
The article neglected to mention that this was a.) a technology demonstration and b.) an exhibit at the recent SIGGRAPH show in Los Angeles. Probably a reason why Business 2.0 is rumored to follow The Industry Standard into the grave.
That said, the game's physical game area supposedly took place all over the "emerging technologies" showcase, with low-power, short-range (1 meter or so) 802.11 access points that represented "islands". At each island, there were several "?" scattered about, which you could explore. Each "?" was like drawing a card--a random even could wipe out some of your men, or you might strike gold, for example.
It was well done, although it didn't strike me as any more interesting than those Japanese gadgets that supposedly light up when someone "compatible" is in range. A year ago, these guys would have probably tried to promote this as the next hip party game, tried to go public, and flopped like the rest of 'em.
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That's only one word. You should have said "Lame ass" instead
That penis is way too thin dude.
Not in the WLAN, but in the WorldLAN. For years I experimented with real-time real space role-playing games, and in so doing I learned one absolute truth -- NOTHING IN THE GAME is more interesting to the players than the interaction with players and GM.
To walk up to a live person so you can interact moderated by a computer screen is the lamest, silliest idea possible. The human-human bandwidth is not for talking trash, but for making a real and dynamic story-telling occur -- let humans do what humans do well -- and get the machine out of the way as soon as the game mechanics permits.
I definitely think that there is much that can be done to enhance RTRSRPG using technology, but the trick is not to take a high-bandwidth situtation (human-human interaction) and cripple it to be mere color for the low-bandwidth moderated game interaction on a palm.
Nice use of the tools (Disney did this briefly a few years back with GPS-based palm-held machines running Squeak), but so far as I can tell, a lousy game design and story-telling concept.
Troll?
This guy is about to get a major endowment for his works of art and all you can say is Troll?
Besides, it's not really a troll. He's simply helping out CmdrTaco(of Dud Where's My Car fame) stress testing the new Slashdot. Didn't you know they were testing? Didn't you wonder why the sites down every 5 minutes?
Yaaaargh maties! Juar3z pirates off the poopdeck!!
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
So where can we pirate this game?
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
Is this based on the old Micro Prose game by the same name? That game could improve your social skills too, I mean how else would i learn to sweep a beautiful young heires off her feet with my pirate antics?
--aiee
There's a good reason they would like "500 words" on why you think it is lame. As it is now, you're just wasting everyone's time with a worthless post. There's nothing wrong with giving your opinion, but if you expect others to give a damn about it you might want to back it up a little.
(PS: Extol means to praise, so "extolling the lameness" really makes no sense.)
Didn't microprose release a game in '87 called "Pirates!" for the commadore 64, amiga, ibm compatible, etc? sid meier? Did these people bother looking to see if the name had been used? :)
-Erik <erik@smluc.org> [http://math.smsu.edu/~erik/]
So how in fuck is this gonna help me build a beowoulf cluster?
Anyway, stupid fucking article about a stupid fucking thing. I was looking forward to 3-d version of the real Pirates!
I know some old school gamers will back me up on this.
Worried that too much computer gaming stunts your social skills? Try Pirates!
Worried that too much computer gaming stunts your social skills? Try socializing!
Bush's education improvements were
I guess, if that's how you feel so be it. Slashdot was a lot more fun though when there weren't 500,000 users (well, 495,000 of them are troll accounts). Now Slashdot is basically no better off than the CNN talkbalk forums, never really breaking anything new.
This looks good: http://pirates.devolution.com/
:)
Not as offtopic as the topic I hope
Is thing any thing like Pox?
Its sort of a Pokemon type game that lets kids battle each other via short range Radio Frequency... but it only costs $30, which is a little more accessable than a $300 PDA.
There was recently a NYTimes article about it.
You need to get together with the two word guy. On average you'd be right, assuming that a contraction only counts as one word.
Really now. I don't recall needing a PDA to play "Ghost in the Graveyard" or "Capture the Flag".
K.I.S.S. applies in this situation.
It breaks my pluginses, my precious!
My Mom always said "Sharing was Caring...." Now...all this time I was just stealing...silly me.
If they had an implementation on the Palm over IR, this could take off...
Is there any way that a PDA can have its location determined accurately within a wireless network?
If the position could be triangulated or something there would be a complete new genre of games for wireless PDAs.
Perhaps instead of interacting with people who have expensive electronics in their pants, how about geeks just get over it and play by normal social rules? This "Pirates" is pretty much the bottom of the ladder
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
slow down cowboy!
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Yes, boy, it sure took a good chunk out of my day to read his one word post. What a waste of time!! And if he had written 500 words, how would that be less a waste of my time? Look at the subject at hand, a game where adults pretend to be pirates. If you're reading about this, and taking it with any bit of seriousness, then obviously you've got too much time that needs to be wasted in the first place.
Obviously you haven't seen the original picture. To me, the superthin penis was the scariest thing about it.
Man back in the day Pirates! Gold owned all on the mac...glad to see it has come back in some form.
-Psyiode
Is there going to be a conflict concerning the naming of this game?
Hmmm...I guess this isn't the same as this Pirates...
FreeBSD - the power to serve.
geek meets goth, the world is saved
First, I'm pretty surprised this took such a long time to show up at Slashdot. It's been there a long time. Next, about the game itself. I spoke to one of the staff at SigGraph and he said though the aim was to bring people together, you could also have several wireless LANs separated by hundreds of miles that constitute the same playing area..so what do you think a geek would do? Wake up his neighbours because he has a new game? No way! He'd rather play it over the net and rave about this new game he has where you actually have to walk through real space.
It's the player who's responsible for setting up the group. How many comp addicts do u know who would do that? Don't forget each player needs a handheld and what eventually happens is a group of people haggling about the price of tobacco on an island (ok...it is exaggerating, but you get the idea)
I personally feel the only way to get geeks to socialize is to convince them that the computer is a tool, not a life-style and that people are more important.
Nice try anyway.
I myself never really got into computers or video games until I hit 13 or 14. I use to go outside and play like regular kids and I always felt great afterwards. It was only until I moved from a rural area to a suburb when I played games and got into computers because there was nothing to do. Play is essential in brain development and frontal lobe stimulation and helps children learn social and spacial skills when they become adults. There was an author (forgot the name)who did some research on this subject and it turns out engineering graduates from suburbs who only played video games for play were great in mathmatics and science but had trouble applying them when designing things. Graduates from area's like Montanna, Alaska, and Idaho who lived in rural area's and played outside regularly when they were children did alot better in designing and actual applying spacial skills. Auto repair shops notice a difference in young mechanics from those who played outside vs those who played video games inside.
My point is nothing beats learning social skills and eye-hand cordination then going outside and playing or hanging out with friends. Even as an adult I love games like UT or QuakeIII but I still prefer to find a few good buddies and some paint ball guns and head into the woods for a real fight. I also notice parents think the problem is kids have too much free time so they encourage their children to enroll in accelerated classes with hours upon hours of homework a night so they have no social life expect maybe an hour or two of video gaming. THis is bad and is causing more harm then good. For high school students its a little bit different because they are quite mature and might need extra education for college prep. Anyway their is a link between constant video gaming and lower social skills and frontal lobe stimulation and this game is not going to help. I think paint balling or sports with other peers is the only way to increase it. Its also alot more fun.
http://saveie6.com/
I was at SIGGRAPH (www.siggraph.org) this year where they were showing this off, very cool. I talked to the people there, and they can't actually use bluetooth because the bluetooth specs have some lowlevel protocol that prevents them from using bluetooth for what they wanted, so they had to go with shortrange FM transmitters.
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
paintball of course is just a tamer version of war
Eeeeek!
This is a reminder of the game i have around here called 'Pirates!' (within quotes) from about the mid-1980s, that was released my Microprose (that's right, exclamation mark and all), along with a version of Gunship and Airborne Ranger, of the same vintage.
Ah, the game was rather interesting to start, I mean boot, up. Nice touch for days when HDDs were expensive.
(BTW: There's no references to the old versions of these three games at their support site, so I suppose I am showing my age. :)
Now, where the heck did I put those 3.5-inch and 5.25-inch original discs? ...and the copy protection code books? Drat! I've lost those! :(
Jonathan Ah Kit - Lower Hutt, New Zealand - jonathan@metalab.unc.edu
Sail to small island. Go to coconut tree. Turn right. Walk 10 paces. Climb out window. AAAAAHH........**SPLAT**.
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