 |
Author |
Topic: mitSurfen - visualization of statistics in games (Read 1076 times) |
|
michael05
|
mitSurfen - visualization of statistics in games
« on: Feb 28th, 2004, 3:20pm » |
|
here is an extract of our project "visualization of statistics in computergames". the project deals with the impartment of statistical connections with the help of the mass medium computer game. it uses quake3arena to visualize the behaviour of internet users during surfing.
this piece of code gets the current queries from lycos livesearch. the results are up to 30 strings.
its just an extract. in the real project these queries are compared to big wordlists to get they category. for each cateory one player is spawned in quake3arena.
here is a detailed documentation of the project:
http://echtzeit.m05.de
code:
// °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
// mitsurfen
// part of the project "visualization of statistics in computergames"
// http://echtzeit.m05.de
//
// http://www.m05.de
//
// °°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
int cnt;
void setup()
{
size (640, 300);
background(255);
getURL(5);
}
// strips the tags and extracts the queries
void zerpflueckMal(String queries)
{
int counter = 0;
int queryCounter = 1;
queries.trim();
while (queries.indexOf(">", counter) != -1)
{
int start = queries.indexOf(">", counter);
try {
if (queries.charAt(start+1) != '<')
{
String query = queries.substring(start+1, queries.indexOf("<", start+1));
println(query);
//googleIT(query, "eins");//Integer.toString(queryCounter));
queryCounter++;
}
}
catch (Exception e){}
counter = start+1;
}
}
// gets the html-source of the live search
// analyzes the sourcecode
// and extracts the relevant parts
void getURL(int qNum)
{
String queries = null;
try
{
URL url = new URL( "http://www.lycos.de/inc/content/suche/includes/livesuche_iframe.htm?erge bnisse="+qNum+"&refresh=" );
BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(
new InputStreamReader( url.openStream() ) );
String s;
while ( ( s = in.readLine() ) != null )
{
line(0, cnt, s.length(), cnt);
if (s.indexOf("LText1") >= 0)
{
queries = s;
}
cnt++;
}
in.close();
// -> extract queries
zerpflueckMal(queries);
}
catch ( MalformedURLException e ) {
System.out.println( "MalformedURLException: " + e );
}
catch ( IOException e ) {
System.out.println( "IOException: " + e );
}
}
// take the query-string and try googles "i' feeling lucky"
// -> does not work due to security in browsers..
void googleIT(String query, String frame)
{
URL url = null;
try {
url = new URL("http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=ISO-8859-1&btnG=Google+Sea rch&btnI=true&q="+query);
} catch (MalformedURLException e) {
System.err.println("Malformed URL");
}
try {
getAppletContext().showDocument(url, frame);
} catch (Exception e){}
}
-> pde: http://dev.m05.de/p5/mitSurfen/
|
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
http://www.m05.de
|
|
|
kevinP
|
Re: mitSurfen - visualization of statistics in gam
« Reply #1 on: Feb 28th, 2004, 4:07pm » |
|
Wish I could have understood the concept... seems more like a computer game to me than visualisation of statistics (but even there I'm not so sure what kind of game).
|
Kevin Pfeiffer
|
|
|
michael05
|
Re: mitSurfen - visualization of statistics in gam
« Reply #2 on: Feb 28th, 2004, 10:21pm » |
|
sometimes its hard to dscribe the project. especially when you dont have the running game in front of you.
in short:
we try to put the queries of the live-search into categories: politics, economics, computer, sex, environment, etc. for each category there is a player model representing the category (nerd -> computer, business-guy -> economics, cow -> environment, and so on).
the more the people are searching words from one category the more representing models are spawned in the game. the population in this virtual world corresponds to the current interests of surfing people in the real world.
the result is a easy to understand infographic in motion. its not a very detailed information visualisation. but it speaks the native language of young people: computergames.. its an experiment to transport information in this popular medium.
there is a running quake3-mod simulation (recorded data) if you want to check it out.
|
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
http://www.m05.de
|
|
|
kevinP
|
Re: mitSurfen - visualization of statistics in gam
« Reply #3 on: Feb 29th, 2004, 2:33am » |
|
on Feb 28th, 2004, 10:21pm, michael05 wrote:
the more the people are searching words from one category the more representing models are spawned in the game. the population in this virtual world corresponds to the current interests of surfing people in the real world.
the result is a easy to understand infographic in motion. |
|
Maybe it's the motion part I don't follow. I watched the Quicktime; these representative avatars were running and jumping every which way. What does this movement convey I also found it difficult to get an overview of the numbers. The occasional cow or beach babe would run by, but at a distance they tended to all look the same.
|
Kevin Pfeiffer
|
|
|
michael05
|
Re: mitSurfen - visualization of statistics in gam
« Reply #4 on: Feb 29th, 2004, 11:41am » |
|
ok. this was just the first step of the experiment. its not finished and perfect yet.
but there is a lot of potential in this visualization. yet only the appearance of the characters and their quantity expresses the information in a playful way. its like a walk through a park. in the morning there are a lot of childrens and parents. at midday a lot of people are having lunch. and in the night there can be dubious people.
the live-search data works the same way. there are times when some categories are more present than others (ie sex and computer).
but there is still the behavior, the movement and the sound of the bots. and of course the whole virtual world of the game can express information in a way like peter molyneux's games. take black&white (http://www.bwgame.com).
its really hard to influence the quake3 ai. there are a lot of uncontrolled movements now. with a kind of magnet you can influence their path. the behavior of the bots should express information, too. but thats not implemented now. you have to use ansi-c to modify the quake3 source code. thats really annoying.
|
°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°
http://www.m05.de
|
|
|
benelek
 
|
Re: mitSurfen - visualization of statistics in gam
« Reply #5 on: Mar 2nd, 2004, 3:20am » |
|
i think this sounds like it could be really cool.
let us know when you've got more of it working together.
|
|
|
|
|
|
