The Floor is lava

Use a VR helmet. Not everything has to be controlled by the computer or some sort of AI -- why change a childhood game that can be perfectly played without artificial assistance into another home timesink? Children stay much more indoors nowadays anyway

because I think it would be funny to watch a bunch of adults playing all day long to try to keep better scores than other people

Plus its a great excerise for adults. lol Watching the adults try to stay off the cement, grass etc. Platforms would be benches, tables, curbs, light pole blocks, etc.

For parkor people it would be way to easy. Their always up on the roofs. Haha.

Yeah that would be extremely boring. I wouldn't really play that. If I want to play the floor is lava, I just go play the floor is lava. Why does everything need to be digitalized?

Interesting idea. Not sure if it would really work though. With the kind of technology we have today it would be a tad awkward to implement not to mention the idea of trying to play something like this while holding a few £100 worth of equipment in your hand could go terribly wrong . I think the biggest problem you would encounter is the same one say a DS game that makes you use the mic has. Its fine when you're alone but the last thing you want to do is be screaming at your DS while on the bus. So ye shear embarrassment would probably be your biggest problem.

Yeah that would be extremely boring. I wouldn't really play that. If I want to play the floor is lava, I just go play the floor is lava. Why does everything need to be digitalized?

Adding the element of a computer keeping track you could set up a ranking board and then you'd have people being competitive...about not touching the floor.

Interesting idea. Not sure if it would really work though. With the kind of technology we have today it would be a tad awkward to implement not to mention the idea of trying to play something like this while holding a few £100 worth of equipment in your hand could go terribly wrong . I think the biggest problem you would encounter is the same one say a DS game that makes you use the mic has. Its fine when you're alone but the last thing you want to do is be screaming at your DS while on the bus. So ye shear embarrassment would probably be your biggest problem.

Indeed, but if you get one person in an area to do it and that person can get a second you'd have an awesome phenomenon because that second person starting to play will likely lead to other starting to play in rapid succession and the keep track engages our competitiveness and suddenly it becomes great fun both to play and watch

Also, since things can go wrong it leads to sturdier builds and we get better products ^.^

There was a neat Xbox Kinect hack where vr glasses and a Kinect (or two, I'm not sure) were used to allow a player's surroundings to be re-interpreted through the software. A room with a desk and a couch in it could become a cave with a treasure chest and a big rock, and the player could interact with it by moving around naturally, holodeck-style. I've seen apps and games that use a camera-equipped mobile screen to do this on a simpler level, either populating the real world with fictional objects or replacing real-world entities with fantastic ones. In order for the floor to become lava, you'd have to have a pretty sophisticated system, capable of recognizing floors as such. I'm not sure we're there yet.

One thing I was thinking about was a sort of fictional geocaching event, where participants could subscribe to a service that would alert them to game events. The events would be staged anomalies at random locations in the world, and they'd have access to three critical tools: A large-scale event report, that would tell them where things were happening in a very general way, a local "minimap", maybe a kilometer in diameter, that would provide more detailed information on the nearest content, and a sort of "viewfinder" app, using the compass and accelerometer technology that's in use today to allow them to scan for these little nuggets in the real world. So you'd be at lunch and your iPhone would buzz and it would be telling you that a class 3 anomaly had occurred in your vicinity, so you fire up the minimap and it shows your location, the anomaly's location and the location of the other people who have checked their maps in response to the anomaly. Then the race is on, as you all try to be the first to get the prize in your viewfinder and interact with it. Maybe you're shooting ghosts, maybe you're photographing UFOs, maybe you're gathering stardust, whatever. Scores are kept, flash mobs are formed, and people take special trips to find juicy targets that spawn in national parks or on large bodies of water. Maybe someone gets shot by a rancher when he tries to score a sweet hit on some pasture in the middle of the night. Awesome.

There was a neat Xbox Kinect hack where vr glasses and a Kinect (or two, I'm not sure) were used to allow a player's surroundings to be re-interpreted through the software. A room with a desk and a couch in it could become a cave with a treasure chest and a big rock, and the player could interact with it by moving around naturally, holodeck-style. I've seen apps and games that use a camera-equipped mobile screen to do this on a simpler level, either populating the real world with fictional objects or replacing real-world entities with fantastic ones. In order for the floor to become lava, you'd have to have a pretty sophisticated system, capable of recognizing floors as such. I'm not sure we're there yet.

One thing I was thinking about was a sort of fictional geocaching event, where participants could subscribe to a service that would alert them to game events. The events would be staged anomalies at random locations in the world, and they'd have access to three critical tools: A large-scale event report, that would tell them where things were happening in a very general way, a local "minimap", maybe a kilometer in diameter, that would provide more detailed information on the nearest content, and a sort of "viewfinder" app, using the compass and accelerometer technology that's in use today to allow them to scan for these little nuggets in the real world. So you'd be at lunch and your iPhone would buzz and it would be telling you that a class 3 anomaly had occurred in your vicinity, so you fire up the minimap and it shows your location, the anomaly's location and the location of the other people who have checked their maps in response to the anomaly. Then the race is on, as you all try to be the first to get the prize in your viewfinder and interact with it. Maybe you're shooting ghosts, maybe you're photographing UFOs, maybe you're gathering stardust, whatever. Scores are kept, flash mobs are formed, and people take special trips to find juicy targets that spawn in national parks or on large bodies of water. Maybe someone gets shot by a rancher when he tries to score a sweet hit on some pasture in the middle of the night. Awesome.

I was thinking a few weeks back that it would be awesome to create a full on alternate reality by way of camera phones, tablets, and other such devices, where in you take a map of the earth and you make a completely new world map. You then would be able to look into this world by having a gps program telling the alternate reality where the tablet/phone is and what to display... From there you could create a Pokemon/monster hunter type game where you could get pets... a minecraft type game where you could through pets build things... or create a RPG type thing where you could detect other "viewers" and attack them.

It doesn't need to be digitalized...However.

When I was a kid we found some stucks in the garage and started sword fighting.

After a few too many misses and whacks it got old, but I remember thinking at the time, wouldn't it be cool if you had some VR goggles and a handle (like a lightsabre) and the goggles overlaid a glowy sword?

And you could swing it around and play with another person.

That doesn't really need to be digitized either, of course, but I dunno. Maybe all "augmented reality" is a little base station with a 360 degree LIDAR that can get the physical structure of your environment down, plus some goggles, and maybe one of those mind reading headsets mention in the other thread. And while we're at it, a message with a happy ending.

With a cellphone and a good map of your city you could add monsters and lava into your way to work. Monsters will track your location and if they catch you, you gotta fight them by shaking the phone. When you get to the office (if you don't die) you get a resume of the battles and the streets in which they took place along with your score. Then you can compare it with your coworkers.

How'bout that huh?

Owl, that would be cool.

[font=arial, verdana, tahoma, sans-serif][size=2]Search: Augmented reality.

From the Wikipedia page:[/font]

[font=sans-serif][size=2]Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or an indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are augmented by computer-generated sensory input, such as sound or graphics. It is related to a more general concept called mediated reality, in which a view of reality is modified (possibly even diminished rather than augmented) by a computer. As a result, the technology functions by enhancing one’s current perception of reality. By contrast, virtual reality replaces the real world with a simulated one.[/font][/quote]
I'm not sure how fun "the floor is lava" would be -- at least for any extended period of time -- but I think there's definitely some potential for fun games using an AR approach and/or inserting game-play into the everyday world with things like owl mentioned.


Another thing that comes to mind -- although no computer or electronic aid is currently used -- is a zombie game played in my local area: The game is played constantly over a week or so, although for safety and sensibility reasons work-places and educational classes are exempt from play. Players identify themselves by a bandanna loosely fixed to the upper arm, and may use weapons such as un-modified Nerf guns and thrown marshmallows to defend themselves from zombies. A few small number of players are designated as zombies from the beginning and have the goal of non-violently obtaining "human" player's bandannas, at which point that player joins the ranks of the zombies. A zombie hit by a human players weapon is "stunned" and may not participate in the game for the next 20 minutes. Simple but effective game-play in a wide outside area, and anyone around you could potentially be a player.