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Tron Lightcycles, in Real Life
Digital_Quartz writes "This is a clever hack, using a laptop and GPS to play the classic Lightcycles game from Tron, using bicycles and a city. The page is a little light on details, but does give the essentials, including screen shots."
As I recall, the point to the Tron lightcycle game was to make your opponent crash.
Which means my opponent is trying to make me crash.
I don't need any help in that regard. I can get into accidents all by myself.
You don't derez, you spend two weeks in the hospital!
Any game that promotes physical activity is a great idea. This is a very clever adaptation that involves exercise, freedom and creativity.
Be thankful they didn't do a real life version of Joust.
you paint one of these little bikes red or blue, and ride around somewhere roomy.
Hummunah.
"I would say that 99 per cent of what my father has written about his own life is false." - L. Ron Hubbard Jr.
I'm sorry, but I don't know how one could squish the phrase "clever hack" enough to make it fit this activity.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
Slashdotted already. http://www.mirrordot.org/stories/5dcc252f0f43fc6f2 52db1df395c93a7/index.html
Totally cool. I mean if i was so inclined to get hit by a bus looking at a blue line.
w00t
I'm usually all in favor of life imitating art, but I don't see how this could get accurate enough to be truly entertaining.
By contrast, some 20 friends of mine were playing Laser Tag in a park after dark, and someone living in the area called the cops and said that there was a gang war going on, and something like 40 units descended on the park. They were ultimately let go that evening from the scene, but that had to be fun...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Gee, talking on a cell phone while driving is safe, so using a keyboard and mouse while staring at a display while riding a bicycle in city traffic must be really safe, eh?
...until your post. Granted, I've always wondered if they ever found someone with the kahunas to ride that thing flat-out!
I noticed that this is the second video game that has been retrofitted for outdoors. Pac man was the first one that I know of. I wonder how many of these games can actually be made for the outdoors.http://www.pacmanhattan.com/about.php
Ooo man the floppy drive is broken. No wait. The computer is just upside down.
One of these fools pull one of those ninety-degree turns like in the movie... End of line.
I tried doing real-life pac-man with a yellow highlighter and some altoids. Didn't go so well.
I tried Donkey Kong with a fake moustache, a mallet, and my local zoo. Didn't go so well either.
I tried yelling "hadouken" after throwing a bowling ball wrapped in a lit kerosene-doused rag. The neighbor kid thought it was pretty cool.
I pulled on the passenger door of a cop car, and as he tried to go after me, I went to the drivers' side to try to floor it. I yelled "It's CJ, foo!" I forget, I was either busted or wasted...and nobody thought it was cool.
I think next I'm going to re-create Hitman: Contracts by shaving my head, and getting good with a shotgun.
The green line player is just too scary for me. He can hack a live Tron device AND go all the way around town on a bicycle? That guy went around his 2 other friends, and the long way round at that.
/Welcome my new super intelligent, super fit overlord! I hope he is not the next nerd evolution.
My GPS (Garmin eTrex C) came loaded with several GPS-based games. One is a single-player lightcycles-esque game in which you run to spots to collect points whilst trying not to cross your own trail.
The other games feature a maze, a pair-matching game a la Concentration, a Whack-a-mole type game, and an asteroids clone. I've been a little leery of trying them, lest I be arrested for wacky behavior in a public area.
Don't blame me, I voted for Durga.
My god, with all that crap strapped to you, you'd be lucky to get the bike moving at all. It'd be like bumper cars for senior citizens. How.. uh, not exciting. :)
Need a image projector to project an augmented reality light wall for you to see so you can avoid crashing into them.
It wouldn't be a fast game if they players have to keep peeking inside their backpacks to avoid crashing.
Furthermore, you can't CRASH into COMPUTER-GENERATED GPS tracking lines.
Moron.
+++ATH0
Stick a huge engine on it. Don't bother thinking about whether you need a huge engine, just stick a huge engine on it.
The thing's probably not rideable.
they want you to stop ripping off their joke.
http://mnt.is-a-geek.org.nyud.net:8090/tron/
http://mirrordot.org/stories/5dcc252f0f43fc6f252d
It relies on human-powered vehicles. We all know that anyone who is cool/stupid (pick one) enough to play this game is not going to have the stamina it requires. They'll all pedal about 30 feet before they fall off their bikes and pass out on the sidewalk.
Hero of Allacrost, a FOSS RPG for *NIX/*BSD/OS X/Win
They are missing a VERY important part of Tron. You HAVE to wear the suits!
Just so long as I don't have to wear one of these suits
*shudder*
...but you played GTA:VC instead of the lightcycles game. Check google for details. If the link is dead, you might want to try again in 3 years when the guy gets out.
Now they just need to get this rig up on some Kawasaki Ninjas and equip the riders with katanas. In fact, forget the rig and just give people katanas and have 'em go at it.
A far more elegant version is available for cell phones, so you don't have to have a whole laptop setup.
http://datenmafia.org/gpstron/index-english.php
But you could have the equivilant of a dog's "bark collar". Hit the GPS line and get a couple hundred volts.
;)
Betcha that would make you take it seriously
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
I pulled on the passenger door of a cop car... and nobody thought it was cool.
Gee, and I thought I was crazy trying to climb skyscrapers a-la Prince of Persia...
Don't you have anything better to do with that laptop?
Don't you know there are kids starving for laptops in other countries?
Crunch!
If I can play light cycles in real life, then what is my virtual self doing? Sitting on the couch eating BBQ potato chips? This is all so confusing, won't the MCP set all of this straight?
What do you know I wrote a novel
No, but I can CRASH when trying to avoid COMPUTER-GENERATED GPS tracking lines.
Moron indeed.
The computer game prepares for version 0.2.8, featuring support for non-square arenas.
Luke-Jr
If it could be combined with something like this http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4607449.stm then it would be much more like the real thing.
"Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses." - Arthur C. Clarke.
What's the nutritional value of a Latitude? :P
Karma: Excellent, but still won't get you laid.
7h15 15 5u(h 4 |4m3 4r71(|3, 7h15 15n'7 n3w5 17'5 (r4pp1n6 4r0und.
Then you lose. :)
kurzweil_freak
5th Kyu Genbukan Ninpo/KJJR student
Be the darkness that allows the light to shine.
you paint one of these little bikes [dodgetomohawk.com] red or blue, and ride around somewhere roomy [www.saltflats.com].
Back in my day, we used to call that:
Going to Burning Man
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Like with a motor. ;(
perhaps a golf cart.
Or a motorcycle.
Or a scooter.
oh, wait.
My scooter was stolen
The kids in the project said it was painted to stupidly to steal too....
...where's the explosives to give that neat blowing-up effect like in the movie?
At the very least, if you hit the wall does it punch a hole in whatever wall you hit and then remove your own from the playing field?
Girls only like guys with bad karma.
Or guys in bad brains.
on a bicycle?
The only individual that could do that kinda thing was AUTOMAN!
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Cop #1: "Hey, did you see that guy on a bike rushing towards that crowd with wires hanging out of his backpack?"
*POP*
Cop #2: "Got 'im"
We need better mirrors http://xbmodder.us/mnt.is-a-geek.org/tron/
I wonder if one could improve on this using maps.google.com for the mapping part.
Thats right, Frogger in real life. I'd love to see the look on people's faces that come across a real life game of frogger.
With Cosstumes.
The city of the Illuminates, the LinuxTag, the first german Internet connection, the highest server-per-person-rate in Germany and almost geometric street-map - and my homecity. Sorry, it's spam, but that had to been done :D
1111111111111
While your post was cute, it's obvious that you didn't read the article.
:)
Cross the other person's path, and you lose. The path is defined by the GPS. In the movie (and the game) it was a tad more dramatic when a player lost.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
The viewfinder is below and off to the right of your major line of sight. It doesn't obstruct your vision, and most of the time you're going to be concentrating on building out your own lines anyway until you get down to the end of the game when everyone will be riding very slowly so as to avoid each other's trails.
The system is self-regulating.
s/moron/maroon/
+++ATH0
The best part of this is to imagine the conversation that might take place with a cop after you completely annihilate some 80 year old bat in a crosswalk.
I thought I had finally burned that picture out of my mind.
Your post brought it back.
Ghaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Sark to conscripts: "You will each receive.. an identity disk! .. and a keyboard
and an LCD screen
and a mobile phone
GPS
err and a RS232 cable
Oh fuck and a backpack to carry it all in
Where was I? Oh yeah...
Every thing you do, or learn will be imprinted on this disk!"
nonsig. unsig. desig.
An alternative to the Virtual Keyboard shown in the article is Cambridge University's Dasher:
http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/
Predictive text for your mouse, very cool. Could be disorientating on the move though.
And install the Mirrordot and CoralCache extensions. Automatic linkage.
+++
My last.fm page
Ingredients:
1.Abandoned warehouse or industrial complex
2.Guns...Lots of guns
3.A few "friends"
The advantage with this method is you can only be fragged once - or is that a disadvantage?
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?
I'm a geek and I snowboard, bike (road and mountain), run, and did a couple of adventure races. So there nyah. :D
Maybe this thing could become like DDR - nerdy combined with physical exercise. Depends on how accurate the GPS is - you could in theory do this in a large parking lot or field, instead of a whole town...
"People" using "unnecessary" quotes should be "shot".
http://sourceforge.net/projects/armagetronad/ Have a look, it could always use more players.
... police motorbikes are gonna play Tron with you !
Bonjour !
It reminds me playing pacman at Burning Man two years ago. It was rather fun running through a maze being chased by ghosts.. consuming pills was optional though.
Hey, that's Karlsruhe on the map! What a coincidence. I'm writing my master's thesis here, and I actually live in a building clearly visible on the map they're using.
By the way, one of my favorite scenes from Family Guy is when it turns out that Peter Griffin used to be the red guy. Hilarious.
Someone has too much time on their hands.
Who cares about the ozone layer?...thanks to CFC's I can write my name......IN CHEESE!!!
Mix in a military satelite trying to "tag" players from an orbit!
Add in this new concept motorcycle by Dodge (which, incidently, not only looks a lot like a lightcycle, but has a 8.3L V10 engine, so would probably go about as fast);
http://www.dodge.com/tomahawk/flash.html
This is ofcause exceedingly cool! Nokia should really implement this in their telephones. Wonder if GPS is really needed for this...
Remember what we said about GTAIII, that "noone would deam of acting out a computergame on the streets of a real city"?
so lame, I'd expect a less lame article from /. but i guess I had my hopes up soo high. Btw, that was lame.
Looking at the one screenshot showing the routes, it says the game lasted 14 minutes. That's a heck of a long route the one guy made (outer track) for only 14 minutes! LOL. I'm probably missing something, though...wutever.
That reminds me of the time the local LUG I belong to decided to see how far we could stretch a wireless mesh network in the business complex. Someone working in one of the warehouses saw a bunch of people walking around with laptops at night and got nervous.
:)
Two cop cars showed up about halfway into it. You could see it in their faces when they pulled up. "Oh, this is just some geek meeting, nothing to worry about here."
"You're older than you've ever been, and now you're even older."