The Interface

The Game

The game itself begins with a single infected player. It is their objective to spread the virus as far a possible by tweeting near other twitter geolocation users who in turn become 'infected'. The virus would then spread naturally, most unaware of the game. Those that are aware can attempt to avoid the virus by avoiding tweeting in areas they know to be infected and people with it can attempt to spread it.

We expect the game could run for weeks if not months and eventually involve most regular twitter geolocation users.

Interface Design

Our interface will be made using flash and will simply consist of a number of icons overlaying a zoomable map using the latitude and longitude from the data.

Specification

Our project must do several things.

• It must create queries for the Twitter Search API
• It must record the response in a useful format
• It must cycle through these records and update the data
• It must add nearby detected users to the data
• It must show visualise this data
• It must demonstrate the spread between people

Tweetflu

For this project we came up with the idea of using geolocated tweets in twitter to create a game on a huge scale. At the start a single user will be recorded in a database as ‘infected’. Their geotagged tweets provide a time and place which is then queried using Twitter’s search API for more people who were in the near at the time. These people also become ‘infected’ and the process is repeated for everyone in the database at regular intervals. The information stored in the database will allow us to visualise the spread of the ‘virus’. We predict that the spread will be exponential and with enough time and resources would reach most of the people that use geotagging. The game is based on Virus which is in turn based on hit/tag.

There are two halves to the project, the first is the data collection and the second is visualisation of this data. The biggest problem is the limitation on the number of queries to the twitter APIs a single client can make within an hour before being blocked and the potential for the number of accounts overwhelming the system.

The data collection portion of this project will be written in Java because we have some experience with it and it’s more appropriate than other languages we know. We started with a small experiment using php to get the location of a tweet then list the users near it at the time which appears to work fairly well, it is now a case of porting and expanding this. The application will have to be able to read JSON and manipulate a mySQL/SQLite database.

New Direction

We weren’t satisfied with our original idea based on connect 4 as we felt it was more of a limitation then a source of inspiration. We came up with a new idea that would allow us to apply game logic in an interesting way while visualising social behavior.

Our original research covering boardgames remains valuable as it allowed us to explore various applicable gameplay mechanisms and tactics.

Change of plans

Our idea of connect four was that there would be two players in different rooms with empty connect four boards. This would be done using Arduino boards with sensors to detect when the users drop their 1 counter into a column (which would then slide out the bottom for reuse), then the current gamestate would either be displayed using LEDs or on a computer screen. Yet again though this was "just a game" so we decided that before we give our idea presentation we should have a discussion with Simon about some other ideas.

John and Simon had a little chat with Simon and our game idea changed to tig/tag/hit to allow us to create a virus-type game using Twitter.

Research & Preperation

We began the research and preparation of our product design during the start of our 3rd session. We have just been grouped with our second years, through a system where they pick a board game from the list of first years that they like the sound of. After spending a lot of time discussing our idea of foosball we came to the conclusion that this did not suit our timeframe or the equipment we would be able to use. All our ideas included things like playing foosball online or using the webcam, which were both hard and were "just a game" which is what Simon said he didn't want. This left as back at square one; trying to think of a board game suitable for our project that would be more of an interactive experience and serve more of a purpose than just being a game.
Our next set of choices included monopoly, connect four and snakes & ladders. The complexity of monopoly ruled it out so we began thinking of ideas for the other two, although both were resulting in the same thing: they were just games. We though of playing snakes and ladders on a bigger scale with things like remote control cars or people representing things and we also thought of a robotics connect 4 allowing users to play other users online using sensors but ultimately, all of these were still just games.

After more discussion we leaned more towards connect four, as monopoly is a complex game and our potential idea for it would have been even more complex. Our idea for connect four seems doable, thought could be expensive, however it seems likely that this idea will be both technical using arduino boards but will also show creativity and understanding of the brief. As Simon has told us though, the idea is still "just a game".

Introduction

Our first week of term 2 of idat106 has involved us being divided into groups of 2 first years through an interesting, sophisticated grouping system, and been told we shall be paired with 2 seconds years in the near future. After this we are allowed to transfer or eject group members, before the groups are frozen at week 30. In the first session, we basically got set some rules for our so far mysterious project and arranged our groups.
Our second session we have been told for our assignment we have to create an interactive experience, through a medium of our choice but we have to base it upon a board game. However this interactive experience must NOT be a game, which is difficult to wrap our heads around. Anyway we need to think of potential initial ideas for board games and how we could convert them to an interactive form. To help choose a board game we looked on Amazon, Ebay and Wikipedia to think about what games we could potentially use. We also remembered back to our fondest childhood board games we played, discussed what we used to enjoy and played any versions of them we could, be it online, or our own paper-made versions. After the second session we seem pretty set on doing something involving table football, or foosball. Although this is only a basic framework and nothing is set by any means.

Dave playing foosball