A creative authoring tool and social network where anyone can build, play and share mobile games.
CipherCities was publicly launched in December 2008.
Members can search for games to play in their local area or around the world. Games are predominantly location-based, thus are played in real physical locations. Though it is encouraged that games are location-based, games can also be designed to be played entirely online. The style of game is left up to the game’s builder to determine.
Games are created in a few simple steps. A game may involve maps, simple SMS storyboards and links to other web resources.
Games can be played via SMS or through a mobile web browser. This ensures that nearly any mobile device is compatible for play.
DEVELOPMENT SUMMARY
Team: Deb Polson, Yang Wong, Sherwin Huang, David Wallace, Shu-Min Heng, Colleen Morgan
As a small team we were all involved in the overall concept and design of CipherCities.
Yang Wong
My role as the Technical Lead involved:
- Design/Development of the back end systems (excluding forum, blog)
- Design/Development of the game/messaging logic engine
- Design/Development of the front end systems (excluding mobile front end)
- Design/Development of the administration and moderation interfaces
- Integrating SMS services and Google Maps
- Server administration
Technology: PHP, MySQL, Apache, AJAX, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, and a variety of open source packages and public APIs.
Shu-Min Heng
My role was as Graphic Designer and Interface Designer and Programmer. This included:
- Ensuring a consistent art direction across all internally produced material
- Design/Development of the front end interfaces for early prototypes and project websites
- Design/Development of the CipherCities visual branding (excluding the logo)
- Design of the front end interfaces for mobile devices (excluding the iPhone interface)
- Design of a variety of web and print-based marketing materials (posters, postcards, business cards, web banners, etc.)
Technology: Flash (ActionScript 2), Photoshop, Illustrator, PHP, HTML, CSS.
LINKS
CipherCities was developed by a small team based in Brisbane, Australia, and funded by ACID The Australasian CRC for Interaction Design.
Home – http://ciphercities.com
Mobile Home – http://m.ciphercities.com
Blog – http://blog.ciphercities.com
Developer Websites – Newish Media, Sherwinpedia