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[OEP]

Nightly build

JMingle is a game for mobile phones or other Java J2ME enabled devices.

This is sort of an experiment in mixing social networking with gameplay. In JMingle, you are given a pet "Minglet" and are set with the task of keeping it social. You do this by scanning for bluetooth devices from your mobile.

Each mobile device has its own procedurally generated Minglet (colors, name, favorite thing).

Also, in this nonversioned copy I'm linking, it keeps track of your score (you get points by running into old friends). As well, you get bonus points if you guys happen to like talking about the same thing.

Web site if interested.

I have released formal versions of this, but that was last year sometime. I picked this project up again and want to see what you think of the changes.

Oh, I am a bad J2ME programmer. There is a chance it will crash on your phone. But do tell me about it and maybe I can fix it.

EDIT:
I should have provided controls:

Arrow keys = move around/cycle menus
Select key = open menu/select item in menu

[Guillaume]

Installed on my phone, really like the concept!

Looking forward to the futur versions !

[OEP]

Thanks

I had a future idea for JMingle to link up to an account system. E.G., you could register an account with your phone's Bluetooth MAC address, and the JMingle client would report the MACs it sees. Thereby you can see who you've walked into before.

[Guillaume]

Well sooner or later you're going to run into the problem that not many people use your app- so you should definitely stick to the idea of "bluetooth signal" rather than "JMingle user"

[OEP]

Oh yes. Ultimately it will all boil down to being just a Bluetooth MAC.

The idea is that the data being collected right now could all be reported to a central location one day. That way, if you report a MAC that does not have a user account attached to it, it's simply another MAC. However, you could see what other users have run into this MAC and several other fun things.

When you run into a MAC that has a user account registered to it, you'd find out later on the web site.

JMingle was conceived of being client-independent. At no point was I planning on making JMingle clients detect other JMingle clients. That seems to be where most the failing point of most applications of other types are. Take a look of the slew of iPhone apps that are very similar in idea to JMingle.

[Guillaume]

Question: what do the cake/anchor icons represent in the upper right corner?

[OEP]

That's your Minglet's topic/favorite thing for the day. If you mingle with another Minglet that talks about the same thing as you, you get a hefty bonus in your time. Right now, that bonus is close to 80%, though it will probably near something like 90% and will occur less often.

EDIT: When the game gets close to having all the features that it is going to have, I'm going to rewrite the Tutorial to be more up-to-date, and something other than just feeding text to you. I feel inspired by Kirby Superstar's excellent tutorial format.

[OEP]

I was wondering who had trouble running jmingle (phone doesn't support Java, errors, can't transfer to phone). If you had trouble, can you report your phone model and what you had trouble with?

[HybridMind]

This seems like a fun and interesting idea the way you've handled it.  I can't actually try it out but I enjoyed the look of the screen shots and the concepts you are messing around with.  You say there are a lot of other apps out there like this?  Are they all exploring the same aspects?  You mention that most seem focused on detecting other 'user' level entities on the same system versus general Bluetooth MAC hits in this wild. 

I know I have read about a few projects which detect various ambient data that is available and they all do seem kinda cool.  Of course they would be more fun to use if one was in an area that had a lot more devices of whatever type one is detecting.  Not so much fun if you live in the country..

EDIT: Do the characters proximity to each other represent relative signal strength / ping times / or none of the above? 

[OEP]

This seems like a fun and interesting idea the way you've handled it.  I can't actually try it out but I enjoyed the look of the screen shots and the concepts you are messing around with.

Thanks! Hopefully it will be on a platform you can try it out on one day.

You say there are a lot of other apps out there like this?  Are they all exploring the same aspects?  You mention that most seem focused on detecting other 'user' level entities on the same system versus general Bluetooth MAC hits in this wild.

Right. There are a lot of iPhone apps out there where you register for an account and it's more of a social networking thing. Kind of like Google Dodgeball used to be. One specific one that I know of tracks your GPS signal. Another will connect to wireless networks and will display the profiles of the people around you.

The problem with this is that even in fairly large college towns like where I live, you can't find other users. So when I was writing JMingle, I wrote it to be user account-agnostic. I wanted to focus on just how many people are around you in general, that'd way you wouldn't feel like it was such a lost cause to go out and start scanning!

If I ever do design a social networking backend for JMingle, it will work in a similar way. Like, you could tag someone that doesn't have an account yet, they might register for an account, and it will tell them who has seen them before. Even the social networking backend will be fairly account-agnostic.

To keep things less stalker-ish and to prevent JMingle for causing you to incur much data charges, it probably never will look up people's accounts.

It might register JMingle as a Bluetooth service sometime in the future so JMingle clients can communicate. This wasn't a huge goal for me though since I couldn't see any "fun" benefits to this.

I know I have read about a few projects which detect various ambient data that is available and they all do seem kinda cool.  Of course they would be more fun to use if one was in an area that had a lot more devices of whatever type one is detecting.  Not so much fun if you live in the country..

I think I'm very stuck on this idea. I really want to write an RPG app that generates a small RPG campaign (and Hero characters) when fed in different device addresses. And since stuff that relies upon Bluetooth signals is not fun for people who aren't around other Bluetooth devices. That's why it may be a fine idea to provide a number and it generates a campaign from that number.

EDIT: Do the characters proximity to each other represent relative signal strength / ping times / or none of the above?

Nope. Although, trust me, I considered very much how to do stuff like this. Unfortunately Java's API doesn't give me that kind of low-level access to the Bluetooth antenna. The minglets are governed by a simple randomized state-machine AI. However, the minglets are consistent across devices. E.G., your minglet looks the same on your phone as it does your friend Fred's phone.

On a related note, I thought it would be fun to keep a database of MAC addresses and give a breakdown to the user of the kinds of devices in the area. Although, I think that breaks the fluidity of the game a little.

[HybridMind]

Thanks for the clarifications and further information.

Nope. Although, trust me, I considered very much how to do stuff like this. Unfortunately Java's API doesn't give me that kind of low-level access to the Bluetooth antenna. The minglets are governed by a simple randomized state-machine AI. However, the minglets are consistent across devices. E.G., your minglet looks the same on your phone as it does your friend Fred's phone.

Ah ok.  That is too bad that that data is hidden.  It is neat that the PG causes all minglets to be consistent between devices.

On a related note, I thought it would be fun to keep a database of MAC addresses and give a breakdown to the user of the kinds of devices in the area. Although, I think that breaks the fluidity of the game a little.

One thing I just though of is if the device types are specific enough.. it might be fun to represent different types of minglets in your world.  Like.. a printer bluetooth might be a really large clunky minglet creature (still PG ... just grown in a different phenotype) etc.  All device types could have their basic gene structure and then you could still do all the PG stuff within those classes.  As it is right now all the minglets still look similar size / phenotype wise right?

[OEP]

Haha, I like these suggestions. Yes, the minglets really are drawn from the same animations... exactly. The PG as it is is really just a simple color replacement/name generation, and phones already take a performance hit from just this! If you walk into an area with several devices, you will spend a long while performing color replacements.

Having several records of devices also causes a performance hit while mingling.

That being said, I recognize that there is a performance shelf that JMingle will eventually run into. There is some optimizations I need to do as it stands.

I do love the idea of device recognition though and you've incorporated the idea quite well without breaking flow of the game.