Interactive Text Adventure Boxes

[cefn]

The Milecastles project created an interactive text adventure, in which players carried their 'game state' on RFID cards between multiple stations in a museum.

The text pages prompted players to choose their next destination in the museum, with each destination corresponding to an action within the game.

Each game box was driven by an ESP8266 running a customised Micropython image, using a forked version of pfalcon's utemplate templating engine ( https://github.com/pfalcon/utemplate ), and writing game state using a forked version of wendlers' mfrc522 RFID library ( https://github.com/cefn/micropython-mfrc522/ ).

For outdoor boxes, the system would boot to full function within around 4 seconds, triggered by the lifting of the lid with a magnet, RFID switch and Polulu latching power circuit to minimise the discharging of the solar-charged USB battery.

[ARTaylor]

Sorry that I am late to this post - but I just wanted to drop in and say THIS IS COOL!

Are you based in the UK cefn?

[cefn]

Yeah, based in the UK. These were installed in museums along Hadrian's wall from Cumbria to Tyneside. It's all open source if you had an interest in replicating it. Would be substantially easier with more recent hardware (ESP32 with 4 Meg PSRAM and a newer RFID reader would eliminate 90% of the engineering challenges).

[fos]

What a great idea!

This should be shared on the IF Forum: https://www.intfiction.org/forum/

I can do it with permission.

Thank you,
v/r
Jeff

[cefn]

Thanks, yes please share. An example story is at https://github.com/cefn/avatap/blob/mas ... rbridge.py

[ARTaylor]

Yes, the wireless possibilities of the ESP32 (and cost!) Could bring a lot to something like this. I live right next to Caerleon where we have Roman Baths an ampitheatre and barracks, so yeah I think there could be a continuation of your work at some point!