How the game works

Handheld Devices means (1) a GPS receiver; and (2) a PDA/SmartPhone capable of accessing the WWW via GPRS or 3-G technology, and which could have GPS capability itself.

Avatar:- The word ‘avatar’ is used by the Virtual Reality and computer gaming community to mean a "representation of the user", a character selected to stand in for and represent a user-player in a computer game. It originated from Hindu philosophy where the word avatar commonly refers to the bodily manifestation of a higher being or God onto planet Earth: in other words, a representation of a God.

The game should operate like a video computer game.

The game takes place in a territory pre-determined by the game designers (Nida in the case of the Summer School), probably the teachers. It could be in a local town, park or other geographical location, and can be ‘real’ (the players actually go out into the field) or virtual (all actions taking place on a computer simulation). It is played using the eMapps platform as provided to each participating school by eMapps.com.

The game is played by teams of children., in Nida it was played by the Teachers in the double role as game controllers an dplaying in the field. Each team has a ‘team manager(s)’ at a home-base PC, and players out in the field using handheld devices. There are several teams in any one game. Each team has their own ‘desktop’ - their view of the game platform - which is available on the team manager’s PC.

Picture Gallery
The following are illustrations of the work carries out at Nida

Estonian Team: Nida map retrieved on PC & phone

The teacher adopts the role of ‘game controller’, remaining at the home-base along with team managers. The game controller has access to each team’s desktop on the platform.

The controller, the managers, and the players in the field can all add objects to the desktop. The controller is likely to add clues and information (for use by the teams), the team manager might add solutions to clues (as evidence to the controller), and the players in the field will upload evidence of having achieved something.

Czech and Slovak teams: Local maps and web content search

The team manager uses the team players in the field as ‘avatars’, guiding them in accordance with information or clues received. These can be received either directly to the desktop from the game controller; from the solution to clues; from an internet search; etc, etc. Sometimes that information is passed by the game controller to the team manager in response to the avatars having achieved something in the field, and provided evidence of that achievement by uploading something (a video or audio clip, a photograph) to the team desktop from their hand-held device. GPS is used (1) by the managers passing coordinates to the avatars; and (2) by the avatars to provide location information for their uploaded video/audio/photo so that site can be marked with a ‘pin’ on the vector map on the desktop.

The Polish team at work and part of the Lithuanian team

• See more images on the Control base gallery

Sometimes information or clues are given to the teams by characters they meet in the field. The characters the avatars “meet” could be a pre-recorded video (or audio or text or photo) of the character, made available to the team manager on the desktop and transmitted by the manager to the avatars. Thus the characters are not necessarily real at all and do not have a physical meeting, and therefore the message or clue given by that character is consistent for all teams. The real-life characters do not have to be hanging around in the field waiting for each team to contact them. (There was an intentioned misleading aspect of the Nida game where the dialogue between characters and teams was inconsistent and sometimes incorrect).

The Polish team and the Slovenian team

The Latvian team and the Slovakian team

The video, audio, photo or other clue provided to each team might differ depending on the ‘solution’ or option chosen by that team - ie the game controller will give each team the appropriate clue to the desktop. In this way the game may have branches - i.e. alternative routes - the branch taken being regulated by the option or answer chosen by the team. Thus not all teams follow and identical route. It may be that one route is correct or better than another; it may be that the wrong route leads to dead-end; equally it may be that no route is the correct one and all routes lead to the goal or result in a different way. Also, it could be that each chosen route leads to a different goal or result, all being equally valid.

The Czech team and the Hungarian team

The Lithuanian team checking PDA and the Estonian team

• See more images on the territory gallery

Equipment for the game.

The project recommended schools to acquire the following equipment:

for preparing the game:- laptop computer; photo camera; video camera; and software for editing video, audio, photos and text; and QuickTime Professional /Macromedia Flash converter for converting files to Flash. (The laptop and/or a PC is also required as the home-base PC during the game.)

for playing the game (one of each for each team - i.e. several per school)

GPS receivers for getting and using UTM coordinates;

Handheld Computers or Smartphones. They should be capable of creating short videos (60 seconds), photographs, audio recordings and text, all created during the game for direct uploading to the desktop. The camera should be minimum 2 megapixels, with video in Mpeg4. The uploading will require the handheld to connect to the internet/web with an HTML browser (WAP alone is not good enough) using GPRS 10 or 3G (UMTS, Edge). The preferred operating system is Symbian with an Opera browser: Windows Mobile 5 may be suitable but not earlier versions - i.e. not 2003.