Using Wireless Signals in Games

MetaByte writes "A swiss group has created a game for the Nintendo DS that utilizes the surrounding WiFi transmissions to set up the game world. By moving through the city, the game changes. Another game for the Nintendo DS creates an audible city from the wlan-waves. The Austrian artist Gordan Savicic takes the wlan landscape to a painful level. The density of the waves and strength of the encryption cause servos to tighten a corset. Moving lets you feel being disclosed of encrypted digital worlds that turns into useless electrosmog."

Comments

Just imagine

[Anonymous Coward]

how much fun these games must be in a Faraday cage!

Porn city

[Anonymous Coward]

Based on what I suspect all my neighbors are downloading, the game world should turn into a giant red-light district.

Re:Porn city

[Anonymous Coward]

I have Japanese neighbors, so I imagine my game would turn into an octopus city.

I Don't Understand?

[Soporific]

"Moving lets you feel being disclosed of encrypted digital worlds that turns into useless electrosmog."

Double You Tee Eff?

Re:I Don't Understand?

[Elledan]

That's how an artist says that he has not a clue what he is talking about, and ran out of practical ideas about ten years ago.

Modern art: learn it, love it~ :P

Re:I Don't Understand?

[reboot246]

If you're referring to Austrian artist Gordan Savicic, we can see in his video how smart he is. Who in their right mind would walk around town rigged up like a suicide bomber? He should try that in Tel Aviv or Baghdad if he wants to experience the pain of the world. :)

Re:I Don't Understand?

[cyphercell]

what about boston? Man I can't believe you forgot boston. Mooninite Invasion

A great innovation

[gowakuwa]

Try:
10 RANDOMIZE TIMER

Neat.

[solios]

Now the big question: How long until major developers (Square, Nintendo, Capcom, Konami, etc.) start integrating elements of this concept into their games? Picture a Castlevania that determines enemy strength or random drops based on ambient wifi traffic... or a Final Fantasy that uses wifi traffic as a random seed for enemy encounters, money drops, gambling odds, etc. Heck, even randomly generated enemies (imagine a wlan full of pr0n browsers - your sedate Animal Crossing-like environment would suddenly mutate into Urotsukidoji!) You could program a reasonably robust set of default variables in the event there's no wlan available, of course... ... but really, I'd like to see the DS wifi used for more than deathmatch, email and trading. And this, in my opinion, may well set a nice precedent.

Re:Neat.

[Eternauta3k]

I don't get what's so cool about using wifi for your random seeds, instead of anything else.

Re:Neat.

[solios]

The cool comes from the potential to make it less random. For example, taking the results of a portscan and feeding that into an enemy generator - if there's a lot of AIM traffic, you'd be able to deduce this from the fact that you're fighting a lot of trolls... if more people are using Yahoo IM, you'd run into more Orcs, etceteras. I probably misspoke when I said random "seed" - the attraction with something like this is using the traffic to generate enough variation in the game environment to make each play experience different.

Re:Neat.

[mauthbaux]

Imagine the Gamefaqs walkthrough on games like these: "If you're running into too many Orcs, try moving across the state, or hiding in the woods. No, not your in-game avatar. You physically. Oh, and never play in crowded cities or subways, that's just asking for hurt."

Re:Neat.

[grumbel]

I really don't see the point. What good is it to integrate data into your game that has no relation what so ever with your game? The only good use I can think of would be Dr. Kawashima making some witty comments when you are in a Wifi flooded area, but enemy formation and such? What would be the point in connecting that with random Wifi data?

Re:Neat.

[flowsnake]

Like Solios said, the point is to have less randomness, not more. The point is to make the game respond to the physical environment in which the gamer exists, unlike most games which are their own little universe. Mobile gaming platforms allow us to move our games through cities and public spaces, which are awash with life. Wireless network traffic is just one type of information with which a game designer can make the game dynamic to the gamer's surroundings, but it has the neat property that the necessary hardware is already available.
There was a game years back which used your computer's directory structure to generate game maps. I think the idea of this game was you were fighting viruses within your own computer or something like that, but it's unimportant. The point was that the game design was dynamic to factors beyond the 'game world'.

Re:Neat.

[XdevXnull]

The DS also has a built in mic. Mostly I've seen it utilized in-game such that the player has to talk or yell or blow on the mic (e.g. in the latest Zelda you blow on the mic to blow out a candle). There's also potential here to collect ambient (audio) noise from the environment and integrate that somehow into the game. Combined with the wifi sampling, and you could have a very interesting way to change the game in very populous / busy areas.

Re:Neat.

[Glonoinha]

You are listening, but you're not hearing. That's the difference (obscure reference : white people can listen to Jimmy Hendrix, but they aren't hearing Jimmy.)

This is next-generation, it's evolution towards an integration of extended perception into an environment most people are only vaguely aware exists. You can see a rainbow right now, red orange yellow green blue purple - guess what, there are other colors of light on either edge that you don't know exist, because you can't see them and never thought to look for them - ultraviolet and infrared. They're there, and nobody knows it. The world through which you walk is CHOCK FULL of new and old information that wasn't even there (or just couldn't be seen) four decades ago, telling you dozens of things about the world you live in - but you don't even know they are there. Your exact location on the planet, plus or minus three meters, is something you can tell (with help of a GPS) just by seeing the relative strengths electromagnetic signals from three satellites in the sky. Also the speed and direction you are traveling. Your relative distance to a motion sensing device and the nature of that device (door that automagically opens when people walk up indicates commercial building, intermittent Ka band that increases in strength when you approach an overpass or large street sign but goes away when you pass it indicates a cop car behind you, etc.) Open / closed wifi stations. You can tell whether or not a vehicle is running by looking at a heat signature from hundreds of feet away using thermal imaging.

The DS implementation is simply proof of concept of a much larger picture, opening the door to people seeing into light spectrums that were previously closed.

You're listening to the story, and you don't see the benefit. When this makes sense to you - then you're hearing the story.

Re:Neat.

[Obyron]

I can see the directions for different difficulty modes. "Go to the North Woods to play Easy mode. For Normal mode, please play in a suburban residential area. For Hard mode play on the New York subway. To experience Nightmare mode, play the game in downtown Beirut wearing a t-shirt that says 'I Hate Arabs'. Are you a bad enough dude to slay orcs while dodging incoming mortars?"

Mapping where you are is nothing new...

[r_jensen11]

There was a game of "Monopoly" in London a while back that did this. I believe it's called Monopoly Live

How about this guy?

[ScrewMaster]

The Austrian artist Gordan Savicic takes the wlan landscape to a painful level. The density of the waves and strength of the encryption cause servos to tighten a corset.

I'd like to see this designed by H.R. Giger. Forget the corset: you'd be enclosed in a giant organic vagina, which would pulsate rhythmically to indicate encryption strength.

Re:How about this guy?

[Viceroy Potatohead]

Kevin Federline?

electrosmog

[Bombula]

Moving lets you feel being disclosed of encrypted digital worlds that turns into useless electrosmog.

If ever there was a perfect example of useless electrosmog, that sentence is it.

Virus

[Toonol]

David Braben's pc game Virus (several years old) had the contents of your hard drive popping up during gameplay. For instance, the contents of random text files might scroll by while playing. The game was aware of your disk structure, account settings, etc. At least, that's how it was described to me.

Seemed neat but dangerous. A certain amount of awareness of your environment can make games more interesting. Animal Crossing is another example; it's aware of the real time and date, and the passage of non-game time.

Random Seed

[Shritish]

Couldn't technology like this help with random number generators? If we can take useless "electrosmog" and use it to create structures within a game, I'm sure something like this could be used to generate something more towards 'true random'. If it has come down to things like the windows random number generator security problem http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/12/1528211 and attempts at simple methods of circumvention http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/09/10/147238, maybe it's time to look at elements outside of normal human control?

Re:Cool, will try out soon

[i.of.the.storm]

Wow, way to be an asshole. Considering that no one else here has even tried running it, or at least hasn't posted anything about it I thought that my offer to test it was worth something. At least it's worth more than some anonymous idiot complaining about how I haven't contributed anything. Anyway, tried running it but it's kind of boring, basically triangles fly toward your box depending on the strength of the wifi signal from each access point, and you click on them repeatedly to destroy them.

Dragons at the Police Station

[callinyouin]

As an avid RPG fan, IMHO this approach to enemy generation is very appealing. Let's look at it this way. If I have a reason to battle a specific foe (often generated by hotspot X) it would be fun to travel in the "Real World" to a specific location as opposed to some place within the game. This is just a simple example. I'm sure there are more intuitive ways to apply this. I'm not saying that all RPG's should adapt to this approach but it would be neat on some, or in certain aspects of the game.