The Tangible MUD project set out to create means for computer game mechanisms to move into and reside in physical objects. Firstly, borrowing from work in the field of context-aware computing, I designed sensors that gave the computer game engine and awareness of the player's activities in the real world, and secondly, borrowing from work on tangible user interfaces, I created interfaces that literally moved the game into the real world.
The Tangible MUD project used a Multi-User Dungeon (MUD) as underlying technology. A MUD is a text-based game world that allows players to navigate and explore interconnected virtual locations, manipulate objects in the environment like doors or personal equipment and interact with other players or non-player characters like monsters.. Although often exhibiting very complex game mechanics, these environments present, in comparison to graphical game engines, a very “low-key” interface. In the Tangible MUD Project, the idea was to create means for MUD events and controls to be embodied in physical items, and thereby extend the virtual game world into the physical. Two tangible interfaces were created; a desk-lamp and a book.
The Tangible MUD project used a Multi-User Dungeon (MUD) as underlying technology. A MUD is a text-based game world that allows players to navigate and explore interconnected virtual locations, manipulate objects in the environment like doors or personal equipment and interact with other players or non-player characters like monsters.. Although often exhibiting very complex game mechanics, these environments present, in comparison to graphical game engines, a very “low-key” interface. In the Tangible MUD Project, the idea was to create means for MUD events and controls to be embodied in physical items, and thereby extend the virtual game world into the physical. Two tangible interfaces were created; a desk-lamp and a book.
The desk-lamp was re-wired and connected serially to the MUD server in such a way that it can be toggled on an off from within the MUD. Players could interact with the physical lamp by manipulating a virtual representation of it inside the MUD environment. The "room" in the MUD, where the lamp lived its virtual life, would also be dark or lit depending on the status of the physical lamp. The book, designed to be as a wizard’s book of spells, contained circuitry that allowed the player to invoke the “Formula of Light” and the "Formula of Darkness", which turned the lamp on and off. This functionality intended to illustrate networked tangible objects that affected not only the MUD environment, but also each other.
1. Falk Jennica: Tangible Computer Games. In Abstracts of Computer-Human Interaction (CHI), ACM Press, 2002.
1. Falk Jennica: Tangible Computer Games. In Abstracts of Computer-Human Interaction (CHI), ACM Press, 2002.
