Team:Franconia/Project/Pathomon
Pathomon
A Social Augmented Reality Serious Game
Pathomon is a cooperative game with the goal of finding and defeating viruses. As players reach this goal, they are playfully provided with knowledge of viruses and diseases. The game is simple and easy to learn. You just have to follow these steps:
Find a Pathomon QR Code.
Scan the code to see what is hidden there. Collect components for antidote crafting!
Craft antidotes by combining the right components in your virtual lab.
Learn interesting facts and gain XP every time you find and destroy a new virus.
Collecting more and more XP you can level up from an undergraduate to a Nobel laureate.
Team up with other players to fight giant outbreaks and particularly strong viruses.
Compare yourself with the others or help each other by telling your friends where the QR Codes are.
'Augmented reality is the integration of
digital information with the user's environment in real time.
Unlike virtual reality, which creates a totally artificial environment, augmented reality uses the
existing
environment and overlays new information on top of it.'
Margaret Rouse
We used the following tools and software to create the application:
Unity Engine
We used the Unity Game Engine for developing our client-side cross-platform application.
Logo: Amazon.com Inc. - Amazon (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Amazon Web Services
Our API runs on an Elastic Cloud Computing instance and is connected to a Relational Database Service instance hosted by Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Logo: kudan.eu
Kudan Augmented Reality
The augmented reality (AR) aspects of our application use a marker-based approach powered by the Kudan Augmented Reality Framework.1st of November
We did it!
The title is obvious, but just to say it again because it feels so good: “We did it!” Pathomon got accepted by the App Store! On our very FIRST try! Since we expected one or more rejections and multiple days of bug fixing, this is a gigantic relief and may allow for some relaxation time before our flight to Boston. Now, there is only one thing left to say: Go download Pathomon and try it out. Its full potential will be unlocked at the Giant Jamboree, where the hunt for QR-Codes can begin, but downloading it now may provide you with a headstart and maybe you will be the first to achieve the final rank of Nobel laureate! We wish you a good virus hunting!
31st of October
Halloween App Submission
I’m sorry to announce the presumably last entry of this development blog. The website freeze is advancing rapidly and only a few hours are left to share the last status update of Pathomon with all our dear readers: And guys, we’ve done it! Well probably… When this post goes online, we will be right in the middle of the app store reviewing. If we pass it, Pathomon will published and open for all of you. If we fail… well let us not think about that! I’m just kidding, we expect to fail the first time, because this is basically part of the development process. But after fixing hopefully minor stuff, we plan to be available in the store before the first day of the giant Jamboree!
21st of October
Sleepless in Erlangen
The first field test for our app happened at the “long night of science” in Erlangen. We presented our App alongside all other results of the complete iGEM Team with several posters, a virtual reality video and a slideshow. We prepared 2 iPads and several QR-codes for visitors and for the very first time someone from outside our team laid his hands on a working version of Pathomon: The results were as expected: In the first 30 minutes or so, we already had one page filled with notes of bugs, errors and improvements. Although this may sound negative, we and everyone who played had a lot of fun and the following evaluation helped us immensely in reaching the next step: Publication.
October
Wake me up when september ends
Fully recovered after the semester break we continued our work on the project. And now it really started to turn into a fulltime job. Everyday meetings became a common occurrence and the app progression skyrocketed. Obviously compelled to fulfil the stereotypes about programmers, our progress oftentimes peaked well after normal people should be at home, enjoying their free time: Thanks to the continuing support of the chair of games engineering Würzburg we had a professional UI kit, which resulted in drastic visual improvements. The game logic was finalized and soon we had a working app and shifted our focus on fixing bugs, adding the last features and improving the user experience.
End of August
Semester Break
The semester break resulted in a lot of skype meetings and solo programming. But the work paid off! At the end of august, we had a small UI and the first working marker, displaying an ogre instead of a virus. But just one more month of hard work resulted in functioning user management, huge improvements in the UI and first interaction possibilities with the correct 3D models.
15th of August
Final concept
We experienced a setback in our project, when the iGEM organizers informed us about the strict no sticker policy at the Convention Center. This seemed problematic at first, since we planned to replace the GPS locations with QR-Codes. Scanning such a code would lead to an encounter with a virus or potential loot. This challenge turned into an opportunity for collaboration, albeit not an easy on: We had to find the contact data from every attending team, write a personalized e-mail to them and ask for their permission to pin one of our QR-Codes next to their poster. In the end, around twenty teams answered very enthusiastically (thank you guys!!!). And for the rest: Prepare for us at the Giant Jamboree. We will be coming for you, armed with lots of QR-Codes and candy bribes.
July
Support
Unfortunately, two out of our seven team members had to quit due to conflicting schedules. Their departure threatened our project severely, since both were recruited especially for programming purposes. But in July, our team was reinforced by not only two, but three new members! Daniel and Jonas, both studying human-interaction for their master degree and Tobias, who is an aerospace computer engineering student. Due to their programming experience they soon became a very important part of our team.
12th June
Getting to know each other
On the 9th of June the Erlangers invited us to go with them to the “Berg Kirchweih”, a traditional folk festival, showcasing one of the biggest german stereotypes: We like drinking beer! With a huge 1-liter german beermug (for each of us) and music all around us, we talked about our planned projects, the different ideas and how each of us ended up in our team.
June
First prototype / concept
Soon our first game concept and the first prototype was finished. We decided on a grid of 5 screens. One for every key aspect of the app. The augmented reality feature obviously ended up in the middle. Inventory and the Pathodex (our “virus dictionary”) ended up on opposite screens. The laboratory on the right side allowed for easy antidote crafting and the profile with achievements and a ladder got placed on the left side.
May
Reinventing the wheel
We soon settled on a gaming application, but ideas came plentiful: A quiz app about biology, a card game with viruses and several other ideas. In the end we settled for “Pathomon”. An augmented reality app in which you encounter and fight viruses at randomly chosen GPS coordinates. To do this, you need to find active ingredients and craft them into antidotes.
April
Can I interest you in an adventure?
Our journey started when the Erlanger iGEM Team decided to bring in some computer scientists to expand their capabilities in new areas. The chair for games engineering in Wuerzburg seemed like the perfect fit and they presented their project, as well as the iGEM conference in general. After that it was without question, that we wanted to participate and joined their team. We immediately started thinking about the exact part we wanted to take in the iGEM Team. Designing and managing the website was an obvious task, which we inherited from the Erlanger department, but additional goals had to be set, which resulted in a lot of brainstorming sessions.
