Learn Blackberry Games Development

"11 Chapter Fox and Hounds (p. 363-364)

As a formerly renowned Professor of Symbological Noetics, it was natural that I be asked to unravel the riddle, ‘‘7,000 Hollywood thanks to he who rests close to the leukodystrophies.’’ Little did I realize that it would lead to me being chased through the streets and vaulted archways of my hometown, Hat Yai. I’d become a wily fox tracked by four tenacious hounds:

- Sir Tetley Teabag: A scholar of BlackBerry lore and tea cozy semiotics. The sound of his aluminum crutches a welcome echo in any reverberant space.

- Silo Malarkey: The tattoo-covered, albino postman, a devotee of the Hopeless Day organization, and severe corporeal mortification.

- Max Caller: The wheelchair-bound director of HERN-IA; his wheeled mobility device containing a Sinclair ZX-81 supercomputer, surface-toair FIM-92 Stingers, and a toaster.

- Beau Jeste: The Gallic savoir-vivre and captain of the Central Region Armored Police. His dark eyes scorched the earth before him, radiating a fiery clarity that forecast his reputation for unblinking severity in all matters.

I’m staggering from street to street, learning the ropes in the trenches, aided by my Fox and Hounds GPS application, but for how much longer? And then suddenly it all became clear.

GPS Gaming

The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a network of US navigational satellites that broadcast signals worldwide containing latitude, longitude, altitude, and time data. Aside from its original role as a navigational aid, it’s at the heart of a growing collection of location-based services. These include such essential mobile applications as finding the nearest coffee shop, gathering shopping discount coupons based on the user’s current location, personalized weather services, and location-based games involving geocaching and hide-and-seek. Geocaching is a modern-day take on treasure hunts, played using handheld GPS receivers.

Unfortunately, the treasures (or caches) aren’t brimming kegs of doubloons and pieces of eight; they’re more likely to be plastic boxes containing notebooks and knickknacks (if you’re lucky). GPS-based hide-and-seek and chase games are growing in popularity, as typified by Fast Foot Challenge (www.fastfoot.mobi). Several runners try to catch the elusive player X within a specified outdoor playing area and time (e.g., a 1-kilometer radius circle in 30 minutes).

There’s also Catch&Run (www.catchandrun.com), based on David Vavra’s thesis, ‘‘GPS game for mobile framework Locify,’’ available at http://edux2.felk.cvut.cz/car/car_bachelors_thesis.pdf. Fox and Hounds is a simple chase game, inspired by the author’s enjoyment of Fast Foot Challenge."