node.js ko
Global Pacman System
Global Pacman System
by Pacman ate my childhood
GPS is the Global Pacman system, a multiplayer online pacman game that you play on the streets using a smartphone. In the game your phone’s gps tells us where you are and as you walk (or run!) your character moves in the game.
Judging Instructions
Game only works on mobile browsers (Android 2.2+, iPhone, maybe others but untested)
You can use a regular web browser (we were developing with chrome and firefox) and click on the game map to simulate moving to those coordinates.
Making a map
Before you can start, you’re going to have to create a map. Go to “create a new game” and choose “create a new map”. The map editor doesn’t really work on mobile so you’re going to need to go to your desktop for this bit.
On the Google map, find the streets you want to play in. The arena should be a few blocks so zoom into steet level. The map is made up of vertices and edges joining them. Click the Google map to get a marker, then click “add vertex” to add the vertex to your map. To join the vertices, select two in the muliple select and click “join vertices”.
Now you need a pacman home and a ghost home. The ghost home is where the ghosts go to respawn. Remember to give your map a name and click “create map” to go.
Invite your friends
When the game has started, you will be pacman. Text the url to your friends and they will join the game as ghosts
Playing
In the game, ghosts can only see things nearby, but pacman can see everything. The shaded circle on the map is the ghost home. If you are a ghost, you need to run here when pacman eats you!
ENJOY!
Who
How
Express Redback Underscore Everyauth EJS Socket.io
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dustinsmith1024
contestant
chrismatthieujudge
therazorbladejudgeCouldn’t really test it because I could not figure out how to create a map. The idea is really cool.
ericbiellerjudgeThe concept for the game got me excited. Sadly I could not get past the create map section. I tried to follow the instructions carefully but had an extremely hard time trying to figure out what to do to make a map.
izsjudgeSeems like it would be a fun game, but hard to get started playing if a map isn’t already created. Couldn’t really work out how to do that on Chrome.
dylang
contestantGood explanation, i was excited to play it after reading all that, but I couldn’t figure out how to join vertices. The streets where I live (Washington DC) are a perfect grid for Pacman, I wish it just used them instead of requiring a map to be made.
jimhigson
contestantAdmitedly the map editor isn’t the strongest bit of our app (it could be worse, the prior iteration had you POSTing json to create a map).
We considered automatically generating a map but we couldn’t find a free API to give a street graph. One alternative might be to ask the Google Maps API for lots and lots of walking directions in an area then try to join them together (because you get the walking directions in descrete steps with positions). But in 48 hours with 2 people we concentrated on getting someting playable.
Watch this space, a better editor will be coming!
mperham
judgeNice old school design. Interesting technology but ultimately not really fun.
foxxtrotjudgeReally awesome idea, and it works reasonably well. My biggest problem was that the map creator was incomprehensible to me.
oddacon
contestantInteresting idea. It would be cool if you just let a person from their browser make mini game maps based on current location and then let them play naturally.
Nice idea. Good way to involve others I couldn’t really test the full idea.