Ingress | Hacker News Reader

Ingress

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+1 on the community aspects. There's a Resistance cell in South Bay (of San Francisco Bay Area) that's pretty highly organized and set us up meetups to go item and experience farming, posts "target" lists (high-value portals to be taken down) and the like. There are meetups for all kinds of things of course---Hacker News, Less Wrong, Reddit, whatnot, so this is just one more, but it's nice getting together with a bunch of strangers that you end up getting along with.

The game enforces this subtly; higher level players (I'm level 7) need high level items, but the way to get those is from (equally) high level portals. Players can't make a high level portal on their own---a Level 7 player can make a level 5 portal on her own, two can make a level 6 portal, and 8 are required to make a level 7 portal. Since a high level portal hands out excellent items, it's a target, and it makes sense to build it, exploit it immediately, and not try to hope that it stays up long. Community building!

Where is the cell, I am down in mtv?

I just came back from another 2-hour session of ingress in my local town (≈ 10 minute bus ride from my home to the area with lots of portals). That’s the third 2-hour session this weekend, after another one on Thursday :).

I definitely like the game, it’s fun to play, especially with friends. When playing together, you can achieve much more: set up stronger portals, bring down enemy portals quicker, etc.

I noticed that people are getting to know each other via the game.

Also, Ingress is the reason for the most time I’ve spent outside (apart from traveling) in the last decade. My friends share this experience.

Before anyone asks: unfortunately I don’t have any invites to hand out.

Also like how it doesn't reward obsessive / addictive behavior.

Burning additional hours and mileage won't get you that much further then a few well-timed hours a week. And staying up all night playing Ingress will cost you the way sitting awake in a chair all night won't.

I think this strongly depends on the area and the enemy faction. When they are quick to re-capture the portals, you have an incentive to immediately put in 2-3 hours again, depending on how many portals there are.

Is it just me, or is Ingress a rip-off of the Finnish Shadow Cities iOS-only game http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/16/arts/video-games/shadow-ci...

I thought the same thing when it came out, to be honest. Even the aesthetics are similar.

Shadow Cities has been out for over a year based on the NYT article, and still has no android client. Who can blame someone for developing a reality overlay for android, particularly when Shadow Cities is more fantasy-focused ("spells")? Is every reality overlay going to be called a Shadow Cities rip off? In that case both Shadow Cities and Ingress are a rip off of the reality overlay concept in Vinge's Rainbows End (which itself is a departure, but got some of its inspiration, from previous fictional virtual environments, like the one in Snowcrash).

Wait, people are driving to play this game? It doesn't seem right to burn gas to play an online game. If you walk or ride a bike it's a great way to get some exercise. But driving?

Disagree. There's nothing wrong with driving for enjoyment or to accomplish enjoyment.

People drive to movies, amusement parks, etc.

You drive to get to the area - then switch to foot. Compare it to the way people drive their bikes to mountain bike trails.

If I could ever score an invite, I'd like to hop on the motorcycle to get around and play--it's way more fun than driving, cheaper, and easier to find parking spaces.

There's no other option unless you live in a decently large city. There's exactly two points of interest in my town, and they're 4 miles apart. In order to actually do anything in this game, you need at least 3 portals, so I'm already stuck driving to a different town. There's very little point in me walking/riding a bike 4 miles down a fairly major road in my town.

I'm not going to bike for an hour through the dark and snow to get access to more than the dozen portals that my home town has.

My first thought: Could I put my phone in a radio-proof room, and externally synthesize the GPS signal to put my phone wherever I wanted, complete with robo-play as necessary?

My second thought: If it's possible at all, I have to assume this is already being done.

Or root your phone and replace the GPS library function with one that does what you want.

Or run an emulated Android instance with the hacked library. I've done this--not for Ingress, in fact they may check for it--so it's possible.

Yes, there's already some people cheating. I'm not sure if it's in this specific way but there's reports out there, for example I saw this one this morning: https://plus.google.com/106910446343644147596/posts/JYaepWnd...

As far as I can see, the only real way to prevent this kind of thing would be to have checks in the backend. E.g. if you've "travelled" hundreds of kilometers in a couple of minutes, that's a pretty strong indication that you're cheating.

As long as it's constantly recording and reporting on your GPS location, I think it should be possible to come up with heuristics for when you're actually moving and when you're faking. But it seems they're not doing anything like this at the moment.

Since it's Google, they have a lot of photos with location IDs. I wonder if there's something they can do along those lines. But then anything they have an algorithm to score on the back end could be faked with an algorithm on the front end.

Hmmm.

What if they built into the game a mechanism that uses bluetooth to verify proximity when two players should be close to each other?

Google collects a lot of data for mobile devices; they should be able to avoid using, for mutual location verification, devices that are suspected of belonging to the same person.

I think it'd be reasonable -- for more than just cheating reasons -- to make your scanner move at, say, a maximum of 25mph. So if your "actual" location is, say, 50 miles from your last location, but it's only been an hour, your scanner is disabled for an hour.

That would probably disable most "war-driving" strategies, while making most (but not all) legitimate strategies still available. And, I think that war-drivers probably detract from the game overall.

Or you could choose a higher maximum speed if you wanted to -- 40mph (as the crow flies) would probably only disallow cheaters for the most part, though it might disable your scanner for several hours after a plane flight.

And you'd make the game completely unplayable for everyone that doesn't live in a big city. A lot of people don't seem to realize that unless you're in a densely populated area with a lot of history, there is really no choice but to drive.

Not that easy. Android location also works (to a degree) without GPS. You'd also have to fake the BTS logins or at least switch off the cellular network and pretend you're switching WiFi networks.

For anyone playing it: is there any real-money attribute to the game? That seriously kills e.g. Shadow Cities for me, and will probably kill qonqr as well. For Shadow Cities for example, it's not necessary, but it is extremely important for owning locations, which progressively increases in cost (some > 500 'potions', which is roughly equivalent to $30 [1]), or you spend many many hours earning small numbers of them. Yeah, it helps hosting costs, but it ruins the game.

[1]: http://shadowcities.wikia.com/wiki/Potions

You don’t have to spend any real money on the game directly. The closest thing that comes to mind is travel cost.

But 8 of you could get together and charge real money to create a Level 7 portal apparently :-)

Google doesn't seem to plan on making money from the game directly. The leading theories are that either they're trying to build momentum for Android with a high-profile exclusive title, or they're using data from the game to populate some geolocation database.

Either way, I expect the game to be completely free for the foreseeable future.

My guess is that they have made this into a fun way to get us to send them maps data. We are giving them route data in places that street-view cars cannot access. Players can also submit new portals with geotagged photos, which could help maps/street view/Field Trip/places. Indoor mapping of public buildings might benefit as well. They might also be able to use XM (energy orbs placed around town) to lure players to areas that need mapping info.

I played Ingress for a bit. Love the concept - seems to be the Pong of AR games (not a dig, just the first of its kind that I've played and the potential for future games in this genre is exciting). After a few days I quit playing because IMO it seems better suited for concentrated urban cities. My city is a sprawl and I don't have the time to drive all day looking for the different components/interactions of the game.

Just one guy's opinion.

As experiences like Ingress arrive, Vernor Vinge's 2006 novel "Rainbows End" looks more and more like a checklist of inevitabilities.

For a relevant sampling, the short story 'Synthetic Serendipity' is online at:

http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/networks/synthetic-serend...

Some of the guys at work are raving about this, but.. I guess it depends on your priorities. I'm unable to get excited about yet another online thing that wants to claim my time (or rather, might claim my time if I had an Android phone).. Kids/Family-life and other projects take up time too, aside from work.. Where's the incentive?

It is a game. Fun is the incentive.

Damn smart idea of Google to get infinite GPS track point data.

it may turn out to be the biggest gamification success until now.

it's amazing how much it even changes my daily routine and how I walk around....no longer is it the fastest route; it's now the route where I can hit the most portals haha

Yeah, it's been pretty successful at driving additional walking for me. I'd been meaning to get more exercise, but finding difficulty getting motivated -- now I pretty routinely walk a couple extra miles per day.

Now the GPS dataset is something I had not considered. A good point! Thanks.

Not everyone wants or has kids. Makes more time for things like this. Like you said, it depends on your priorities...

Did you read the post? For him, Ingress is kids/family time. He's not the only one I know playing with his kids. Running around outside, hunting locations, competing against a shadowy opposition? That sounds like excellent quality time with the kids!

This such a game-changing experience that will have forever affected the way I intend to interact with massive multiplayer gaming.

wow

Can you elaborate on that? In what ways do you (or anyone else who has played Ingress) think it will change MM games?

For example, is there a possibility it will affect future MMORPG design?

A friend and I have really been enjoying this game. There is a good bit of strategy in active cities with how links are made and blocked for other teams. The community is certainly a huge portion, because you really do have to coordinate with people around the city. Many portals are too strong to take out alone, so it is great to bring a buddy or group along.

I have discovered so many cool things around the city that I never knew about. The game leads you out on a site-seeing adventure into pockets of the city that you may no frequent. Many of the portals are real places of interest that deserve a little attention. Furthermore, some portals aren't accessible in a car, so you are forced to do a bit of walking or cycling. My bike has seen plenty of use in the past 2 weeks and today I was walking around town with friends for about 7 hours.

Conversely, I have been pretty disappointed by portal locations. Near me, there is one sports store, one tyre store, one butt-ugly highrise apartment bulding, a view from the top of that highrise, and a featureless sunset.

At the city center, on the other hand there are at least 5 portals based on pictures of the cathedral from different perspectives...

Is that because of the city you live in? I'm not familiar with Ingress, but can't players also create portals?

You can submit new portals (I have done so), but that takes time to get reviewed (4 to 6 weeks according to the FAQ). To kickstart the game, they obviously just used pictures scraped off flickr or something - how else could they get a good coverage of the whole world (or at least the major cities), which requires at least tens of thousands of portals.

Still very very heavy on battery though.

This is an understatement.

"Ingress is causing a surge in mobile power pack sales." Might hit closer to the mark. A majority of the high-level players I know are tethering a Nexus 7 to their phone, and attaching their phone to a mobile power pack. My phone gets slightly less than 1 hour on it's own.

I recently lost my extended backup battery and have certainly had battery drain issues. I was thinking that I might steal this guys idea: http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc6/201097_1015128278... from this post:http://www.reddit.com/r/Ingress/comments/14f4xw/power_for_ye...

This sounds ripe for playing on Project Glass, if/when those come out.

The glasses will be running Android according to the Wikipedia page, and I'm pretty sure they'd work to make the game run will on them.

Sometimes the future is so close to being here! :)

I was really excited, and played avidly for a few days, but quickly grew tired of it. It sounds like its a lot more fun in more densely populated areas so that could be my problem.

I like the idea of games that involve getting out of the house and meeting new people.

That said, how do the makers of games like this prevent location spoofing?

The most obvious thing would be to sanity check each player's location data. Someone who moves 100 miles in less than a minute is obviously cheating.

Any idea when people down under might be able to try it out? Any other regions apart from Australia that are not supported as of yet, as well?

If you have an invite you're able to play in Australia. I don't own an Android but a couple of my friends are playing already. There was an article in the Sydney Morning Herald about the game too but I can't seem to locate the link at the moment.

I just took a look using the intel map. There seems to be plenty of portals and activity in Australia, at least where I looked (in Sydney and Melbourne).

I am in New Zealand, and ingress is not available in store. Had to Google for the apk, and allow unknown sources. I had an invite from entering my email to ingress.com.

Runs fine (battery hog) but unfortunately there are hardly any portals in Christchurch, and the ones in the centre of the city are inside the red zone cordon and can't be got to o_O

Very cool. Another noteworthy AR game: http://qonqr.com/

Full disclosure, I'm not affiliated with the company but I knew the team that started it at a Startup Weekend a little over a year ago. Great guys, cool game.

Does anyone know a way to get a quick invitation to Ingress?

Don't know about quick. It took me about two weeks to get an invite. Just submitted my email address.

Brandon Badger (https://plus.google.com/114800310452543164210) is the Project Manager. He's been running contests on Google+; submit artwork relating to ingress, stories, etc. hashtag them #ingress, and if he like it he'll reshare it and give you some invites.

I didn't even know about the contest when I wrote https://plus.google.com/110847385311561387629/posts/ePGPdJCS..., but apparently it got to him anyway and he gave me some.

Check out his feed for examples of the things he's reshared.

You may be a misguided pawn interfering with the advancement of humanity, but that was awesome.

Man, now I really want an invite code. Definite marketing ploy by google

I have an invitation.

I do not have an Android phone, yet :)

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