During my PhD studies, I have been heavily involved with research and development in the area of pervasive games, mostly in the IPerG-project (European Integrated Project on Pervasive Gaming).
Various tools of the IPerG project have been publicly released – the tools on this page originally at the Europython Conference 2006 at CERN (c.f. here for talk and materials on Pre-Mapping a GSM Network Environment for a Pervasive Game using Python for Series 60 Phones). The accompanying software release website at Nottingham Uni is lost in time, so I put the content up here for archival purposes.
Currently (2021) working sites about the IPerg-project include:
- Original website (via archive.org)
- IPerG-site at partner Blast Theory
- IPerG-site at partner Fraunhofer FIT (that’s me, over there)
- Funding information at CORDIS
- IASLonline NetArt Tipp in-depth reviews of pervasive gaming projects
- A Wikipedia entry about the final year demonstrator Rider Spoke
- The official book “Pervasive Games – Theory and Design” by Montola, Stenros and Waern.
Below follows 2006 content, partly with links to archive.org. I will restore the original software and update some links when I find the time.
Public IPerG Software
Pervasive games are a radically new game form that extends gaming experiences out into the physical world. To achieve a high quality interactive experience for these games, new technologies to support the creation of new compelling forms of content will be explored by this consortium. [Read more on the IPerG web-site]
Software
This website is a first step to release some of our tools to the public. They are released here for download but come with no warranty of any kind, not even fit for a particular purpose.
Pre-Mapping of the ubiquitous environment is often the first step in preparing a pervasive game. We currently offer a small suite of 2 programs for download that can help to do the pre-mapping.
Pystumbler
This is a GPS and GSM cell ID data-collection software for Nokia Series 60 phones (1st and 2nd Edition) written in Python. Pystumbler requires a Bluetooth GPS device to get position readings. These readings, together with the current GSM network cell ID are stored in log-files on the memory card of the phone. These log-files can later be post-processed on a desktop machine using the parse program.
IPerG Parser (parse)
Parse converts the Pystumbler (and general Placelab Stumbler) log-files into various other formats after they have been transferred to a Windows computer.
For example it outputs to the KML format and thus allows you to look at your GPS trails and GSM data through the interface of Google Earth.
Links
ContextPhone Python interface by Mika Raento
Pys60gps by Aapo Rista
Python for S60 by Nokia
Placelab by Intel Research Seattle
Mixed Reality Lab at the University of Nottingham
IPerG Integrated Project on Pervasive Gaming
last update: 30th of june 2006