Lane Department of Computer Science Engineering
Background Research Paper
Ghost Vision (Group 3)
Brian Thi
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Table of Contents
Abstract
Problem Statement
Review of State of the Art
Significant Technologies Relevant to Project
Expected Outcomes of Project
Conclusion
Works Cited
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Abstract
As of 2012, there are 54.9% of mobile phone users that own a smartphone,
an increase from 45.3% of the previous year. What do smartphone users do with
their devices? It turns out that people are using smartphones less for making
phone calls and more for other activities. Internet, social media, music, and
games make up the majority of time spent using a smartphone above phone calls.
We want to look at the game aspect and identify what smartphone users
want as a source of entertainment. There are casual single player games that
don’t require a large time investment but are pleasantly addicting like Angry Birds
for example which entails destroying a pig fortress by throwing birds with a
slingshot. This game and ones similar are best played during short periods of
spare time. We also see cooperative games that allow people to interact with
friends in a turn based manner like Words with Friends, a word matching game.
Again, a similarity is the casual style and minimal time consumption.
Our goal is to create a game that is different than the rest on the app store
but incorporating the familiar elements of being addictive and enjoyable alone or
with friends. Something that is still casual at its core but utilizing the tools
onboard the device. Namely, we will be using the camera and GPS as key features
to make our game function. Our design involves a user holding the phone’s
camera overlooking his environment and incorporating game elements overlaying
a live action view. The GPS is used for cooperative purposes to interact with
friends in a real world setting. For example, we will use image processing to
overlay an entity for a user to interact with on his smartphone touch screen. The
entity we plan to be a hostile creature (ghost or zombie) and the user’s goal in the
game is to eliminate as many entities through the aforementioned interactions to
obtain points. It’s possible to coordinate or compete with multiple users. This
type of augmented reality game is few and far in between. We expect
stakeholders to be interested in this project to obviously be smartphone users
who enjoy playing games. This is targeted at young adults.
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Problem Statement
Our problem is to create a mobile phone application game with its most
complex element being augmented reality. It also needs to be fun and innovative,
something that has not been seen in popular mainstream games for mobile
phone platforms today.
The difficulties we’ll face is designing and building the game itself which will
require research into how image processing works and what libraries are out
there for use. Although the idea started as a small scale game, the grand scheme
is much bigger. With the multiplayer functionality in mind, we need to have a way
to handle all of the data coming to and from mobile devices. To alleviate stress on
the devices, we plan to have a server that sends packets of information
periodically to coordinates given by GPS data from the mobile phones that have
downloaded the game. The phones will then have player information, location,
and direction.
The game design is as follows. You own a device that can see the ghosts
(what we’ll call them) and only you can see them through the special camera filter
on your smartphone. Other non-users will be oblivious, but the user is charged
with the responsibility of eliminating the ghost invasion, so to speak, with guns
that shoot by tapping the center of the screen. It’s a very simple control scheme.
A heads-up-display overlay will show an ammunition count and number of ghosts
eviscerated.
Our objective had been to program for both Android and iOS. The majority
of smartphone users however are Android, so it would be advantageous enough
to program for just that platform alone. iOS is developed using objective C
languages which our group will have difficulty learning.
Other indirect objectives would be to promote the use of augmented
reality technology in main stream games. Right now, we don’t see much of it
because the games simply aren’t exciting or fun. We want to impact the way
game developers think.
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Review of State of the Art
As far as we know, augmented reality is nothing new, but there are not
many similar products out there that utilize the onboard camera on the
aforementioned devices to process images for the purpose of gaming
entertainment. The Nintendo 3DS is a strong example that uses augmented
reality applications. Face Raiders for the 3DS allows you to
“Paste your face onto an army of floating monsters. You then use the 3DS
to target these ugly beasts and shoot them down. The game calls on you to move
your entire viewpoint around the room, and as the challenge progresses you’ll see
enemies smashing through the scenery, which creates an awesome 3D effect.”
Augmented reality is not limited to games. Another example is a map
application called Nokia Maps deemed “the most intuitive way to explore the
world around you.” To use it, a user holds up his device to the world around him,
perhaps a city scape, and instantly he gets immediate visual overlays that show
points of interest and routes to those areas. Information about those areas will be
displayed on the screen and users can choose to view additional information like
contact details and phone numbers. All this information is taken just from a
picture.
As it turns out, our idea is not entirely unique. Recent research into
augmented reality showed us that a mobile app game with the same theme is
already in the works for the iOS. Urban Zombie is an augmented reality shooter
for the iPhone where zombies appear at real world locations that you check into.
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To play, you look through the camera on your phone and zombies come out of
the ground. Move the phone to center, touch to shoot, or thrust your phone
forward to push the zombies away.
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Significant Technologies
We’ll have to learn how to use the Android SDK to program the game.
Although we expect a learning curve, there are plenty of tutorials and help tools
on how to begin programming. The language is Java based which all of our group
members have experience with.
For a while, smartphone application games had the user interact with an
object on the screen by tapping, dragging, or otherwise touching the screen to do
something to it. It used to be such a revolutionary concept, a step forward from
the conventional games for console or PC that involved a peripheral device like a
keyboard/mouse or controller. On a touchscreen, controls got simpler and more
interactive; control came at the touch of a finger.
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Expected Outcomes
Our expected outcome is to have a game published on the android app
store free for download and we expect to receive feedback and potential bug
reports while in the beta phase of the release. We hope to have a popular game
product that is enjoyable to smartphone users.
When users are out in open areas walking around with their phones raised
high playing the game, we imagine that other people who haven’t experienced it
will be curious and ask what it is they are doing. We envision this as the
springboard, effortless advertisement to get more users to want to try it
themselves.
Conclusion
Smart phone users are growing in number by the year. We see this as a
great opportunity to build in an area where we believe will have a large amount
of growth and popularity. At the beginning of this project’s conception, we
already identified that the goals are very large, too aspiring to complete in a short
amount of time. Games tend to take much longer time to develop, so realistically,
we can probably expect a crude version of the real game to emerge at the end of
the 6 months. After that period, we may choose to stick with further
development.
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Works Cited
McFerran, Damien. (9 March 2011) “Hands On: Nintendo 3DS Augmented Reality Games”
<http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2011/03/hands_on_nintendo_3ds_augmented_reality_games>
(1 Oct 2012) “Urban Zombie – The Infection is Coming to the Neighborhood”
< http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1821693041/urban-zombie?ref=justinp>
(6 Sept 2012) “Nokia City Lens Augmented Reality App For Windows Phone
Available Now in Beta” <http://www.redmondpie.com/nokia-city-lens-augmented-reality-appfor-windows-phone-available-now-in-beta-video/>
(Oct 2012) “Smartphone statistics and market share” <http://www.email-marketingreports.com/wireless-mobile/smartphone-statistics.htm>
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