Another milestone in HBWW's insane(ly stupid) ideas
Posted: Sun Aug 19, 2012 4:12 pm
As you all know, I come up with way more big/crazy ideas than I actually ever do anything with. Like Project Soaking Trident, the water warfare FPS game that I would blab more about than work on, and make excuses for being unable to progress on. (And I still am.) Well here's another one for you guys. I'll skip all the crap on how I came up with it, other than the fact that I was having a conversation with M4 about water war footage, cameras, laptops, gopro's, etc. and thought of it during that time.
Here it is. Sit back and imagine to yourself a water war, but not just any water war...
"The clock finally hit 3:00pm, and it was time for the new game to begin. Each warrior nervously awaited for their phone to vibrate to signify the beginning of the game. Finally, everyone dashed away from their spawn points as soon as the alert came on to go. Sprinting away towards the next objective, one of the warriors finally got within bluetooth range of the laptop running the objective and watched the bar fill up on his phone to be ready to dash out as soon as it was captured. He picked a good objective to take: it would allow him to spawn at a strategic position overlooking the most contested area of the playing field: the center.
Suddenly, an opponent came up behind him and blasted him with a HydroCannon. Disappointed, he marked the death on his phone and left to get in range of the previous spawn point. The objective he just captured would be lost by the time he was able to spawn.
Meanwhile, his teammate found the elusive secret code lying on a piece of laminated paper behind the enemy lines. He had to sneak into the enemy's primary spawn point and enter this code in order to win the game for his team instantly instead of winning the hard way: scoring points from holding objectives. It wouldn't be easy, as one of the enemy patrols equipted a radar gadget on his phone that would seek out nearby devices. The cameras around also weren't just there to film the war for YouTube, they also had facial recognition and would detect him and alert the enemy team.
Fortunately, he knew his way around. Upon returning to an outpost, he was able to switch out his Max-D 6000 for something a bit stealthier, and thanks to the kills he made earlier, he had the points to buy a stealth gadget to evade detection on enemy radar. He also picked up the "bomber" gadget, which would allow him to eliminate everyone in range of a selected spawn point. It was time to go in and enter the code.
The battle waged on. According to the computer system, the enemy was clearly winning in kills as well as conquest points for capturing outposts. He was the last hope as the enemy went up and surrounded his team's spawn. Upon sneaking in to the enemy base, he quietly eliminated two of the guards. There was no time to capture the control point though, so he snuck back and went to the enemy's lifeline.
'3GE6dcXdek192Kx' was the code. An opponent guarding found him and aimed the nozzle of a 2500 at him. His pinky was faster though, and hit the laptop's enter key just as a 10x stream soaked his back. The resulting droplets from the splash hit the saran wrap covering on the laptop's camera, making for an awesome video ending when the video was edited and uploaded to the YouTube Water Warfare channel 3 days later. "
So what was all of that? It was a vision of the magic of modern software and hardware. A series of laptops strewn throughout the playing area connected via ad hoc wifi network, relaying stats to each other or to a central server. Each player has an Android phone running the Water Warfare app, which uses the gyro, wifi, and bluetooth to figure out what's going on in the game. When players are hit, they identify who got the kill over the phone, which sits in an underwater-capable case mounted on a wristband. The objectives are simple: stand within bluetooth range of a control point and wait for the laptop to show it as captured. The system detects whether you are in a valid spawn area. Oh, and it has a timer too. Each phone and each laptop can also be simultaneously recording video footage of the war.
What do you think about digitally enhanced water warfare? The closest we have to this today is AppTag, but that's still not water warfare. =p
Flaws/problems:
- Ton of programming needed, obviously.
- Laptops don't have great battery life, though 1-2 hours should be enough for a game. (The alternative is to rely entirely on smartphones or something.)
- Saran wraps won't stop laptops from breaking if hit by a water balloon.
- Not everyone has a smartphone yet.
- More crap to setup and worry about.
- May be difficult to detect range of devices. Wifi might not be able to cover a large playing area.
Perhaps this is better off for Nerf lol.
Here it is. Sit back and imagine to yourself a water war, but not just any water war...
"The clock finally hit 3:00pm, and it was time for the new game to begin. Each warrior nervously awaited for their phone to vibrate to signify the beginning of the game. Finally, everyone dashed away from their spawn points as soon as the alert came on to go. Sprinting away towards the next objective, one of the warriors finally got within bluetooth range of the laptop running the objective and watched the bar fill up on his phone to be ready to dash out as soon as it was captured. He picked a good objective to take: it would allow him to spawn at a strategic position overlooking the most contested area of the playing field: the center.
Suddenly, an opponent came up behind him and blasted him with a HydroCannon. Disappointed, he marked the death on his phone and left to get in range of the previous spawn point. The objective he just captured would be lost by the time he was able to spawn.
Meanwhile, his teammate found the elusive secret code lying on a piece of laminated paper behind the enemy lines. He had to sneak into the enemy's primary spawn point and enter this code in order to win the game for his team instantly instead of winning the hard way: scoring points from holding objectives. It wouldn't be easy, as one of the enemy patrols equipted a radar gadget on his phone that would seek out nearby devices. The cameras around also weren't just there to film the war for YouTube, they also had facial recognition and would detect him and alert the enemy team.
Fortunately, he knew his way around. Upon returning to an outpost, he was able to switch out his Max-D 6000 for something a bit stealthier, and thanks to the kills he made earlier, he had the points to buy a stealth gadget to evade detection on enemy radar. He also picked up the "bomber" gadget, which would allow him to eliminate everyone in range of a selected spawn point. It was time to go in and enter the code.
The battle waged on. According to the computer system, the enemy was clearly winning in kills as well as conquest points for capturing outposts. He was the last hope as the enemy went up and surrounded his team's spawn. Upon sneaking in to the enemy base, he quietly eliminated two of the guards. There was no time to capture the control point though, so he snuck back and went to the enemy's lifeline.
'3GE6dcXdek192Kx' was the code. An opponent guarding found him and aimed the nozzle of a 2500 at him. His pinky was faster though, and hit the laptop's enter key just as a 10x stream soaked his back. The resulting droplets from the splash hit the saran wrap covering on the laptop's camera, making for an awesome video ending when the video was edited and uploaded to the YouTube Water Warfare channel 3 days later. "
So what was all of that? It was a vision of the magic of modern software and hardware. A series of laptops strewn throughout the playing area connected via ad hoc wifi network, relaying stats to each other or to a central server. Each player has an Android phone running the Water Warfare app, which uses the gyro, wifi, and bluetooth to figure out what's going on in the game. When players are hit, they identify who got the kill over the phone, which sits in an underwater-capable case mounted on a wristband. The objectives are simple: stand within bluetooth range of a control point and wait for the laptop to show it as captured. The system detects whether you are in a valid spawn area. Oh, and it has a timer too. Each phone and each laptop can also be simultaneously recording video footage of the war.
What do you think about digitally enhanced water warfare? The closest we have to this today is AppTag, but that's still not water warfare. =p
Flaws/problems:
- Ton of programming needed, obviously.
- Laptops don't have great battery life, though 1-2 hours should be enough for a game. (The alternative is to rely entirely on smartphones or something.)
- Saran wraps won't stop laptops from breaking if hit by a water balloon.
- Not everyone has a smartphone yet.
- More crap to setup and worry about.
- May be difficult to detect range of devices. Wifi might not be able to cover a large playing area.
Perhaps this is better off for Nerf lol.