The battlefield is the battlefield: the AR shooting game "Father.io"

What is "Father.io"?

You walked down the street, and the people around you rushed over while looking at the phone.

Your phone vibrated a bit, very common.

But you know, this is the signal of the war.

There are still a few people around you who feel the vibration of the phone at the same time. After a brief view of the screen, they look up and look around.

Your eyes are in contact with each other. At this moment, you confirm the identity of each other in another world.

Check your weapon!

Aim! Dodge! Shoot!

"Father.io" is an AR real-life shooting game, and may be the best mobile game in the name of the AR game so far. You can understand it as a "real-life CS" that uses a mobile phone as a weapon.

In July of this year, "Father.io" began beta. Most people haven't played this game yet, and the picture that has been shown in the game video is deeply shocked. On Weibo, the promotional film "Father.io" was forwarded tens of thousands of times, and the video viewing volume was over 10 million. The attention can be compared with the "Pokémon GO" before the official release.

The biggest concern for most players about this game is that the final finished version can achieve a few points of its promotion. Just like the real game and promo of Pokémon GO is actually completely different, it is hard to believe that "Father.io" will end up as exciting and surreal as the promo. To achieve this effect, it has to solve too many problems.

At the TGPC Tencent Global Partner Conference held recently, the head of the game, Francesco Ferrazzino, took the event with Father.io. I also tried the game on the spot. As far as my experience is concerned, this game, which was announced in 2013 and has been developed for three years, has basically reached the level shown in the game video.

But the premise is that you have to install the game's dedicated peripheral - Inceptor.

â–  "Virtual Gun Battle"

"Father.io" stems from the dream of producers to restore childhood games.

Maybe every boy has ever had a toy gun, and there are also experiences of pretending to be "gun battles" with friends.

Many years ago, I was still a primary school student. I didn't have a computer without a mobile phone, and I didn't even have a "small bully learning machine" that works. So most of the long summer vacation, I was running around with my friends. There are a few toy guns that are very interesting to run.

I had an AWP-style toy gun. My best friend was holding an assault rifle marked "AK-557" and modeled as AK-47. So we two teams are close together, two long shots. Excessively powerful, I don’t know how many children with only a toy pistol are envious and envious.

However, the current toy guns are like this.

Because the firing parts of the plastic toy guns were extremely vulnerable, most of the guns of the people have lost the function of playing the BB bombs. When everyone "gun battles", they mainly rely on their own voices for the gunshots. After a burst of shots, they shouted: "Friend A You are dead! Don't run!" At this time, friend A will turn back and shout: "You were killed by me first!" Then, the two sides entered the link, even gave up "gun battle" and solved the dispute with fists. Finally, the parents of the two men came forward to pick up two crying children to go home.

Then, the question "Whoever hits first, who will fall first" is still a mystery.

This is a worldwide problem. It can even be said that the original intention of "Father.io" was probably to solve the problem of "no one wants to fall down in a virtual gun battle." I even suspect that "Father" in Father.io comes from the "father" who can be a referee in a children's game.

The host polygon in the TGPC2016 game roundtable forum also asked why Father.io used the word "Father" in the game name (we will call it "爹io"), but "Father.io" research and development company Proxy42 Craig Michael Allen, the chief creative strategy officer, only gave: "This is for viral transmission." This language is not explained in detail. So why is "Father.io" called "Father.io", it is still a mystery.

â–  What about Father.io?

"Father.io" is a shooting game that has been exposed in 2013. In this game, the combat unit is the player itself, the mobile phone in hand is the firearm, and the whole world is the battlefield.

To achieve these functions, you may only rely on AR and LBS technology before the holographic real-world technology is perfected. "Father.io" is a game that combines AR and LBS, but the AR and LBS here may not be known before. Too much. At least not the same as the last hot "AR+LBS" game "Pokémon GO".

As long as people who have played AR games, they will know that there is still a huge gap between the actual application of AR technology in the game and the AR technology that the player imagines. This gap may be as large as "the instant noodles on the packaging" and "I bubble out." The instant noodles are so big, so the AR shooting game is mentioned. For many players, the first is not excitement, but it is questionable.

I have experienced "Father.io". For those who have no experience with the game, I will focus on answering it here:

Q: How do I shoot? Use a camera to take pictures? How does the game know that I am a person rather than a poster?

A: The game will use an external device called "Inceptor" to achieve aiming and character contouring. The Inceptor's outer camera is responsible for locating the sight. The internal camera is responsible for determining the player's body part and location. Through the information exchange between the items, you can determine the relative position, distance, and hit position of each player in a game. It doesn't just use the shape to position the player, so waiting for a big poster can't be used to attract firepower.

"Father.io" peripheral Inceptor

Q: The shooting position? Is this game also hitting different settings for different parts of the game, can you shoot headshots?

A: Yes. The Inceptor's internal camera will be able to comprehensively determine where the player was hit based on the captured image and the signal sent by other players' Inceptor. It is also possible to hit the head and hit the spike.

Q: How high is the aiming accuracy of the game, will there be a phenomenon that hits my head but determines that I am headshot?

A: According to my actual experience, the aiming accuracy of the game is still quite good. The judgment of the attack will not deviate too far from the human body, but the judgment of the attack will also be affected by the fatness and thinness of the player.

Q: If I use the selfie stick to lift the phone, the inside camera of the Inceptor can't see me, is it invincible?

A: Yes, but to do this you need to make sure that you can aim in this position and then determine the firing and reloading buttons that can be clicked on the touch screen. If you feel that the first two are not difficult and insist on continuing, then you may lose friends.

Q: I watched the video of Farther.io. Can I use drones to join the battle?

A: Not at the moment, and this is almost the only unrealized feature in the promo. The reason is not technical. It is not yet decided whether to cooperate with a drone manufacturer or a virtual unmanned game. machine.

Q: My friends are few, what should I do?

A: The game supports LBS-based random matching, which will pull nearby players into the same battle, just like FPS online games. In addition, the game also has PVE content.

Q: When it comes to FPS, the most important thing is that the delay is low. There is no WIFI in the outdoor. What should I do if the signal is not good?

A: The main data intercommunication in game battles is based on Inceptor. Similar to LAN, real-time battles will not have much impact due to poor signal. According to the official instructions, only 30 to 50 milliseconds of latency will be experienced in Inceptor-based games.

LBS matching based on Inceptor

Q: This sounds really Coooool! So if I don't have an Inceptor, how should I play?

A: If you don't have an Inceptor, you can't play Father.io. In the early versions of Father.io, there was a way to play without using external devices, but it was not technically possible to achieve the desired effect of the producer. Therefore, there is no game in the current "Father.io" that does not use peripherals. Method, and in future development plans, there is no plan to redevelop the version that does not use Inceptor.

Q: A group of people are running around with their mobile phones, taking photos of each other, hiding from the squats, and wondering if the people in this game will look silly.

A: The most important thing is to be happy. And once you play it, you don't have to worry about other people's eyes.

Q: The matching teammates hang up! What to do!

A: This kind of question depends on the official punishment policy after the official release of the game.

We can see that many difficult problems in AR games such as distance, relative position, etc., "Father.io" still can not be solved by a single mobile phone. "Father.io" chose to develop a dedicated peripheral to achieve the functions that shooting games must have, but difficult to achieve due to technical bottlenecks. Through Inceptor, "Father.io" really made an AR shooting game into what the player imagined. But "buy a peripheral that can only be used for one game", which only dared to do in a series of games that had a lot of diehardness in the past (such as "Taiko Daren"), "Father.io" is in the first A game is done, not so much Proxy42 has absolute confidence in its own products, I think there may be a lot of gambling ingredients.

â–  "Tiancha Raiders"

Foreign R&D background, real-life shooting AR games, LBS, and online games with these elements are basically not directly logged in at home.

Can "Father.io" enter China?

There may be a lot of people with this question, but it seems that "Father.io" is almost a matter of course in China.

In this TGCP2016, Proxy42 participated in the implementation of the "Father.io" peripheral Inceptor, which is the first experience of the world's "Father.io" in the world, and in the interview that day, "Father. Io" future development strategy in the Chinese market.

Francis, CEO of Proxy42, said: "Father.io is very valued in the Chinese market. I hope to find a game that is strong enough to promote "Father.io" and to solve the problem of using maps in China. China will be The first or second batch of the market of Father.io."

At present, it seems that in TGCP2016, the exhibition area of ​​"Father.io" may have hinted at who will be responsible for the introduction and promotion of games in mainland China in the future. The partner chosen by Proxy42 is likely to be Tencent.

â–  What kind of mobile AR games do we need?

"Before the success of Pokémon GO, the AR game was considered impossible by everyone, and the market did not exist," Francis said.

After the success of "Pokémon GO", the AR game suddenly broke into everyone's field of vision, but in fact, in the "Pokémon GO" gameplay, LBS is more than the AR core, and the treasures presented by AR are not satisfied by many players. The success of Pokémon GO depends more on the appeal of the original and the fit of LBS to the original worldview.

Every generation of "Pokémon Dream" game opening Dr. Bao Kemeng will mention: "There are elves in the world." This original world view is the key to the recognition of "Pokémon GO" by players. Compared to the LBS technology in which the world is full of elves, AR technology can only be counted as a head.

An old player who lives in a foreign country and does not play Pokémon GO, said to me: "What I want to see is that when my mobile phone camera is shot to the surface, I can see the waves breaking." When you take the dragon and shoot into the sky, you can see the carved eagle, and when you shoot it in the grass, you can find the looming hornworm. Instead of the three hamsters I photographed on land now, change it from another angle. It’s on the water, it’s not the world I want to dream.”

Perhaps the biggest problem facing AR games is that people want AR images to give people a feeling of “reality.” It makes people feel that AR images are indeed hidden in the real world, but not visible to the naked eye. Only rely on the modeling that appears on the screen.

At present, there are only two ways to solve this problem. One is to fix the image appearance position by using a realistic interface such as a two-dimensional code, and the other is to use Hololens. The former affects the game experience and is very restrictive; the latter is my personal Hololens experience, Holoens gestures are not smooth, and the weight is not suitable for long-term use, it is not very convenient to play games, not to It is used outdoors, and the most important point is that it is extremely costly.

"Father.io" may be the current "most like AR game" AR game, it can meet all of your most basic ideas for the AR class shooting game, and may also be able to realize some of the imaginative ideas in subsequent updates, but The price is that Father.io is not a pure mobile game. Your phone and the Inceptor of Father.io together form a new AR game-specific device.

Countless people are advocating the AR technology is the future of the game industry, AR technology may not really belong to the present, at least purely relying on mobile phones to play, AR games with satisfactory results, probably only in the future I do not know .

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