fear of fog presentation for geo ignite
DESCRIPTION
I presented this talk at Geo Ignite in San Francisco. It's about an experimental video game that I developed while an art student in San Francisco. It's sort of Zelda-meets-Geocaching: you have to explore a virtual game world to talk to people and learn a bunch of stuff, but the game uses your GPS to move you around the virtual world. It also uses realtime weather services from wunderground.com to overlay the real-world weather & fog conditions onto the virtual map.TRANSCRIPT
Fear of FogGeo Ignite
16 May 2013
Thursday, May 16, 13
About Me
• Originally from the Bay Area
• Worked as a developer/hacker until 2011
• Graduating with an MFA in Fine Arts this week
• Graduate Show is up at the Old Mint right now
Thursday, May 16, 13
Fear of Fog
• Free iPhone Video Game
• Artisanal / Indie - I did everything myself. Code, design, art.
• Experimental Video Game/Art Project
Thursday, May 16, 13
Richard Garriott’s UltimaThursday, May 16, 13
Ultimate San Francisco16 Color Silkscreen Print
Thursday, May 16, 13
Geolocative Gaming
• Fear of Fog is an RPG based in San Francisco
• The game uses the player’s GPS coordinates to move the character around the virtual map
Thursday, May 16, 13
Fear of Fog
Thursday, May 16, 13
Technical Details - Geo
• Inside the game, there’s a1024x1024 grid of location tiles
• Geo data, as it arrives from the iPhone, is translated into this 1024x1024 grid
• Allows the engine to be potentially independent of geolocation
Thursday, May 16, 13
Storytelling
• Urban Legends
• Fantastical Histories of San Francisco
• No killing, no competition
• All about exploration and conversation
Thursday, May 16, 13
Fear of FogConversation
Thursday, May 16, 13
More Real-World Data
• Visualizes the fog on the in-game map
• Realtime weather data from wunderground.com
• Updated every 15 minutes, surprisingly accurate
Thursday, May 16, 13
Fear of FogFog layer visualized
Thursday, May 16, 13
Technical Details - Fog• wunderground.com
• Crowd-sourced weather data
• Provides temp, humidity, wind directions, not fog
• Fog caching layer on my own server
• Bay fog is hard to measure using weather instruments
• Instead, measuring likelihood of fog
• Generates a weather map in static JSON format
• Easy on the iOS side, scales well server side
Thursday, May 16, 13
Art: Ultima Sprite Map - detailThursday, May 16, 13
Art: Hand-Drawn TilesThursday, May 16, 13
What I Mean When I Say Experimental
• Not a game that many people will play
• Fewer people will finish it
• Remember Zelda quests?
• Back and forth and back and forth
• Imagine doing this on a bicycle in SF
• Making something unusual for a small audience
Thursday, May 16, 13
Avoiding Commerce: Tech & Art
• The Art World
• Alternative source of funding
• Rhizome.org - art & technology grants
• Awesome Foundation (@awesomesfo)
• Side-stepping the demands and expectations of the market
Thursday, May 16, 13
Future Developments: Calendaring
• Integration of San Francisco Calendar
• Bay to Breakers
• Tidal Charts
• Critical Mass
Thursday, May 16, 13
Future Developments: Beyond the Bay
• Proposed Sequel in Williamsburg/New York
• Applied for a grant from Rhizome.org
Thursday, May 16, 13
More Information
• http://www.fearoffog.com/
• 206.255.1028
Thursday, May 16, 13