SPOnG loves freejacking. There’s little we like more than finding ourselves out in the wild and realising that we can unsuspectingly "borrow" someone’s unsecured WiFi connection to check our email or head for the forums.
With this in mind, we were more than impressed to read about a new homebrew PSP project known as ‘ColleTic’, put together by graduate student Jonas Hielscher for his masters program in Media Technology at Leiden University.
With this inspired game, you get to wander about your neighbourhood looking for WiFi access points with your PSP. Based on its unique MAC address and signal strength, the access point is given a distinct colour, sound and geometric shape, which you then have to organise into a little puzzle game.
From Hielscher’s website, ColleTic is described as follows:
If you happen to hit paydirt (i.e. find an unsecured wireless access point) then you get a black or a white star which can “have either a positive or negative effect, unknown for the player before selecting it.”
Basically a black star will throw all your collected figures out of the puzzle, whilst a white star “works as a joker. It helps to complete a row. Metaphorically speaking, the stars create an awareness of the amount of wireless networks in our surrounding and makes a link to the advantages and disadvantages of unsecured wireless networks.”
Check out pics right here showing the outdoor action, or even the quick video taster over at the developer's website, which shows how the thing works.
The game will be available to download from Hielscher’s website pretty soon, so we'll bring you an update when it’s ready.
In future, if you see some bloke loitering around outside your house waving a PSP around above his head, you’ll know that he’s probably playing ColleTic and scoping the WiFi access points in your area. You'll know he's up to no good if the local scallies don't rob him for his shiny gamedeck.
And should you have foolishly not secured your personal WAP you basically deserve to have a load of freejacking PSP homebrew freaks on your doorstep.
(source: www.pixelsix.org/collectic/)
With this in mind, we were more than impressed to read about a new homebrew PSP project known as ‘ColleTic’, put together by graduate student Jonas Hielscher for his masters program in Media Technology at Leiden University.
With this inspired game, you get to wander about your neighbourhood looking for WiFi access points with your PSP. Based on its unique MAC address and signal strength, the access point is given a distinct colour, sound and geometric shape, which you then have to organise into a little puzzle game.
From Hielscher’s website, ColleTic is described as follows:
“CollecTic can be played anywhere, where WLAN access points can be found by a PSP. The objective of the game is to search for different access points, to collect them and to combine them in a puzzle in order to get points. In the game, the player has to move around in her/his local surrounding, using her/his PSP as a sensor device in order to find access points. By doing this, the player is able to discover the hidden infrastructure of wireless network coverage through auditive and visual feedback. The game is designed as a single player game, but it can be easily played competitive after each other or at the same time with two PSPs.”
“The length of time a figure blinks, depends on the strength of the signal. The kind of sound depends on the form and color: the form determines the waveform of the sound (sine, triangle or square wave); the color determines the note (frequency) of the sound. If the player presses the button corresponding to the figure that lightens up, s/he collects the figure, meaning the access point. The collected shapes will be placed in the big black square on the screen. During the game, an access point can only be collected once. So, in order to find new access points the player has to move around.”
“The length of time a figure blinks, depends on the strength of the signal. The kind of sound depends on the form and color: the form determines the waveform of the sound (sine, triangle or square wave); the color determines the note (frequency) of the sound. If the player presses the button corresponding to the figure that lightens up, s/he collects the figure, meaning the access point. The collected shapes will be placed in the big black square on the screen. During the game, an access point can only be collected once. So, in order to find new access points the player has to move around.”
If you happen to hit paydirt (i.e. find an unsecured wireless access point) then you get a black or a white star which can “have either a positive or negative effect, unknown for the player before selecting it.”
Basically a black star will throw all your collected figures out of the puzzle, whilst a white star “works as a joker. It helps to complete a row. Metaphorically speaking, the stars create an awareness of the amount of wireless networks in our surrounding and makes a link to the advantages and disadvantages of unsecured wireless networks.”
Check out pics right here showing the outdoor action, or even the quick video taster over at the developer's website, which shows how the thing works.
The game will be available to download from Hielscher’s website pretty soon, so we'll bring you an update when it’s ready.
In future, if you see some bloke loitering around outside your house waving a PSP around above his head, you’ll know that he’s probably playing ColleTic and scoping the WiFi access points in your area. You'll know he's up to no good if the local scallies don't rob him for his shiny gamedeck.
And should you have foolishly not secured your personal WAP you basically deserve to have a load of freejacking PSP homebrew freaks on your doorstep.
(source: www.pixelsix.org/collectic/)
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