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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."
how much fun these games must be in a Faraday cage!
"Moving lets you feel being disclosed of encrypted digital worlds that turns into useless electrosmog."
Double You Tee Eff?
I have Japanese neighbors, so I imagine my game would turn into an octopus city.
Try:
10 RANDOMIZE TIMER
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.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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.
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."
"Operating systems suck: you're better off using only the BIOS" --trainsaw.com
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'.