Exploring tradeoffs in location-aware gaming using smartphones
The summer of 2004 was sufficient full of procrastination that the members of the SN17 collective in the Computer Lab decided to build a computer game. But it wasn't enough to just play the game on our phones -- instead, we combined all the public displays in the corridors, and then added in a cutting-edge 5cm-accurate ActiveBAT, and built a Symbian-based Capture The Flag game where we all had to run around and tag each other physically while tracking the flag virtually.
Was it mad? Yes. Was it fun? Yes. Did it get us a paper into the SIGCOMM NetGames workshop? Yes!
Our novel contributions include: (i) creating a fast-paced, close quarters, location-aware game, (ii) exploring the tradeoffs between the accuracy of a location system, the I/O capabilities of current mobile hardware, and the latency of user feedback, and (iii) investigating the viability of Bluetooth as a component in a low-latency location-aware gaming infrastructure.
papers