MT_Samuel_Oey

MUDs, Moods, Moves, and Mobile Media

Description

The latest developments in mobile technologies with its different technologies of localisation and increased computing power call for new types of information and entertainment systems. Especially in the area of heritage tourism there is a need to combine information with entertainment. The aim of this thesis is the development of a location-based multiplayer-adventure framework for mobile devices.

Technical
The system works as follows: Computer generated visual codes (Semacodes), containing encoded URLs, are placed in public space. These codes are photographed and analysed with the free semacode software on a smartphone. A GPRS connection is then established to connect the smartphone with the game server which delivers the game data for the given URL referring to a defined place. All the game logic and data is implemented on the web server. Flash Lite is used as the game front-end on the mobile device. A simple server-based authoring system will be developed, to combine interactive-story-telling possibilities with automatic generation of the corresponding visual codes. This prototypical framework will then be used to develop some game content in a local historical context.

The final user interface is done in Macromedia Flash MX 2004. With the ability to integrate video content, a new Component Architecture and advanced Webservice features it is now a powerfull frontend to controll media based webcontent. The server backend is running a modified version of the open-code project Antville - an easy to maintain and use weblog hosting system. The integrated Blogger and MetaWeblog API allows you to access elementary functionalities like story-management and image upload via XML-RPC. Extending these standards with a own FrameDropsAPI make it possible to completely handle all entries, files, topics and search requests out of Flash.

Current status

Finished on July 19, 2005

Links

• Semacodes: http://www.semacode.org/
• Flash Lite games: http://www.macromedia.com/devnet/devices/articles/flashlite_games.html?pss=rss_flash_dc_flashlite_games

People

Jens Geelhaar, Supervisor
Tom Gross, Supervisor
Samuel Oey, Master's candidate