Project type: Master Project

University: University of Bremen 

Term: April 2005 - April 2006

Supervisors: Prof. Dr. Friedrich, Matthias Krauß

Students: Ricardo Bullan, Mihail Dimitrov, Julia Heinbockel, David Henkensiefken, Nicole Herzlieb, Silke Jahn, Frank Jesgarz, Götz Kessemeyer, Vladimir Kirilov, Simon Krose, Aihzen Liu, Michail Mazo, Atike Dicle Pekel, Ilham Abiyasa Suhardi, Joost van Eupen, Katrin Warda

Web-Link: http://www.exnemo.informatik.uni-bremen.de/

Abstract:

The game is a massive multiplayer online, location based game, played upon a mobile phone technology. The key concept is to provide the player with sophisticated mixed reality experiences, using location tracking technology, story narration and virtual characters, which are the interface between virtual and real world.

Description:

The best stories that have been written are those which offer the reader fantastic worlds, over-the-top characters and impossible situations – only to finally bring up and discuss problems we are just too familiar with.

The game developed by this project team follows this awareness. By merging real and virtual worlds, those well known spaces and locations are going to be re-experienced and re-filled with conscious, not by re-inventing them but by adding meaning and, most importantly, some spice. We hope, that new experiences can be made by actively exploring known locations and that new areas will be discovered, aside well-known paths. Virtual additions to reality will be used to finally enable us take in a position of seeing our every-day world from a new angle. The place we live in is, after all, most adventurous - both in virtual and real world!

The game was designed to be a companion that is or can be with the gamer all the time. It has online as well as offline components, so some actions can be performed without having a connection to the central game control, but for most it is necessary to update the client and / or the server to complete them. The actual physical location of the user has a strong impact on the game play, some actions strongly relay on the user's ability to move and to reach certain places in the (real world) playground.

The main objective in the game is maintaining and raising a cimo and exploring the game world. The gamer´s goal is to customize the cimo and to level-up its attributes. This is done by collecting things (items and cimos), interaction (between other players like trading, competition and communication, between the real and the virtual world, between the player and non-player-characters) and raise (upgrading the attributes of the cimo, customizing the look).