Interactive Text Adventure Boxes

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cefn
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Joined: Tue Aug 09, 2016 10:58 am

Interactive Text Adventure Boxes

Post by cefn » Tue Jan 30, 2018 7:58 pm

Image
Image

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
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Re: Interactive Text Adventure Boxes

Post by ARTaylor » Sun Mar 25, 2018 10:39 am

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
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Re: Interactive Text Adventure Boxes

Post by cefn » Sun Mar 25, 2018 4:15 pm

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).

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fos
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Re: Interactive Text Adventure Boxes

Post by fos » Sun Mar 25, 2018 4:32 pm

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
Posts: 230
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Re: Interactive Text Adventure Boxes

Post by cefn » Sun Mar 25, 2018 5:59 pm

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

ARTaylor
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Re: Interactive Text Adventure Boxes

Post by ARTaylor » Mon Mar 26, 2018 6:40 am

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!
Grow something!

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