Game Idea: Minefield

append delete 30 May ’11 · 23:50 jamesmiller5

Synopsis:
Location based game that allows you to lay various mines at your current GPS coordinates in a virtual battlefield for opponents to activate and earn you cash. It's a casual, light-hearted take on trying to blow up your friends (or enemies) at their most visited places with a cartoony feel similar to Team Fortress.

Mechanics:
Sync - To access the virtual battlefield you must first Synchronize (Sync) by having a GPS signal accurate to ~4-5m. Once your Sync is locked you can start playing and earning cash.

Drift - Drift is the opposite of Sync and causes you to fade from the battlefield which temporarily pauses game play. When your GPS signal strength is lower than whats required to Sync, you start to Drift. If you Drift too much your player will exit the battlefield until your Drift is low enough to automatically re-Sync, eg. walking out of a building.

Mines - Various types of mines will be available for different cash costs. The mine types range from the most basic mine, "bargain mine", to specialty mines such as "The Sleeper", which gives cash proportional to the length of time since it was set when activated.

Cash - Cash is earned in 3 different ways
Mining Cash - Earn cash when an opponent steps on your mine. The type of mine and other factors deiced your pay-out.
Roaming Cash - While in Sync, roaming to new *real* areas gives cash! Moving around the battlefield always gives small amounts of cash, but re-visiting the same area gives diminishing returns. Exploring new ways to your favorite places leads to the biggest pay-out.
Bonus Cash - Sometimes you will find briefcases & other containers full of money hidden around the battlefield! The pay-outs will greatly vary and depend on many factors such as base amount, player velocity when found, altitude, etc.

Game Play:
After creating a profile via Google, Facebook Connect or email & password you can start playing. While playing the application updates your position even in the background so you can play all day and earn cash while roaming without constantly staring at your device. If you are unlucky enough to activate a mine your device will alert you of your misfortune and de-Sync you for a one minute to recuperate. To stop playing you can simply logout.

Platforms & Author's Notes:
Android & iPhone/iPad compatible GPS devices that meet Sync requirements.

Minefield is my current Summer project and is under active development. The first virtual battlefield will be the Purdue, West Lafayette campus (http://goo.gl/nprU4). I've been active in game design for quite some time but my CS schooling has kept me (happily) occupied, except during the Summer. I promised myself to do a difficult and challenging project if I didn't land a Summer internship, so here I am :) . After version 0.1 has been released to the campus and I get feed back I'll consider growing the game in new directions and I'm always open for suggestions & ideas.

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append delete 31 May ’11 · 07:24 #1. Kroc

Difficult, certainly! Where would one begin. Are we talking dogbucks or real cash here? What sort of distance does the game limit itself to?

Am I understanding this right that the aim of the game is to place mines that other players cannot see and get them to walk into them in order to earn a score from the mine. You could put one in a place where nobody can avoid, like the toilet.

Is there an activation delay when placing mines? What if you put a mine down when you were standing next to each other, they’d get hit immediately.

Could be quite interesting the more I think of it. Interesting that you’re actually implementing this, so will have been forced to think through a number of the implementation details inherit to the idea.

append delete 31 May ’11 · 16:00 #2. jamesmiller5

“Where would one begin.”

I'm writing the game server in Go. My first priority is getting an a device to connect to the server and start sending GPS data (over TLS of course :P). Then I will do primitive shape collisions with lines and points, just like a normal 2D game. In fact, the entire game engine is designed like a simple 2D top down game, with the GPS coordinates as player input.

“Are we talking dogbucks or real cash here?”

Virtual cash, for sure. Just for use in-game and maybe to get a t-shirt from me. I'm still thinking of allowing the purchase of points with micro-payments but seeing as how this a resume builder & fun project I'm not sure I want to.

“Am I understanding this right that the aim of the game is to place mines that other players cannot see and get them to walk into them in order to earn a score from the mine. You could put one in a place where nobody can avoid, like the toilet.”

Absolutely. If your Drift is low enough and its in-bounds of the battlefield, anywhere is fair game. I think cross-walks will be great as well, to catch people ridding the bus :) .

“Is there an activation delay when placing mines? What if you put a mine down when you were standing next to each other, they’d get hit immediately.”

That depends on the mine, but the bargain mines will explode even if your in their blast radius! Oh what fun that would be, if both of your phones go off at the same time so you can see your opponent. I was also thinking of using the accelerometer & compass to allow for directed claymores.

“Could be quite interesting the more I think of it. Interesting that you’re actually implementing this, so will have been forced to think through a number of the implementation details inherit to the idea.”

I've thought about this for quite awhile. Basically, this is for casual fun playing, but I could use it as a framework to build a real-time FPS for more hard-core gamers. It's a very fun project to think about.

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Game Idea: Minefield

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