Designing location based quests in an online persistent world brings new challenges and opportunities for game designers. I expose some of the insights about my development in LUA of quests and AI for the location-based game Gbanga:Famiglia.

1. Designing and Scripting
Location Based Games
Robin Di Capua
Game Designer
www.gbanga.com

2. « I’ve
Gamification played
many video
games, but I
never thought
that a game will
make me walk
outside in the
rain...»
Image courtesy of http://www.navidbaraty.com
– a 29 years old Gbanga player
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3. Collect animals and
save the world
Automated NPC animals
AI behaviour 3

4. Take over real-world locations
to become the top family
Real-world data feed
Geo-fences

5. Gbanga Famiglia
ca. 150m
Item from Actual
the Police Weather
Car
sidequest
Gift box item
Establishment Valuable item Phonebooth to
from Santa
to take over to collect call
sidequest
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6. Sidequests at
Phonebooths
Our sidequests are
integrated in Gbanga
Famiglia as location-
based mini-missions for
players to get cool items
and rewards.
Phonebooths can be
found around the world.
Players receive a
random sidequest. 6

7. Technology overview
Public (and internal) tools Internally hosted
Quest
Game/
Developer Gbanga User
API
quest
Kit server Interface
logic
(QDK)
LAMP, Low- Location/GPS,
REST Web traffic/
Scripting Java, Lua Memcache, efficient iPhone, Java,
API / HTTP
ORM, Java, LBS protocol Symbian
DB
Quest design
takes < 2 days
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8. Unlimited Possibilities
• Event-Listeners: «Geofences»/Arrivals,
Game interactions, Timers
• Spawning items, characters/NPC, ghost
players
• Interact with players: chat, trade, give, notify
• Create highscores, reward players with points
• Communication with third party APIs
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9. Spawn establishments
For example in
Gbanga Famiglia
we listen to player
movements and
then create
establishments
dynamically by
using external APIs
for local searches.
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10. Dynamic creation on arrival
GTool:registerForEvent(session, “RELOCATION”, “”, “onArrival”)
function onArrival(player, cell)
local playerName = player:getName()
local cellName = cell:getName()
GTool:pl(playerName.." arrived in cell "..cellName)
–- call ext. API and return bars, clubs, shops etc.
local establishments = getMyEstablishments(cell)
for _,e in ipairs(establishments) do
if e[“type”] == “bar” then
createBarInfrastructure(e)
else if
[…]
end
end
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11. QDK Puppetmaster API
• Fast development
• Main script < 10 000 lines
of code
• Quests take less than 2
days to be implemented
• LUA based scripting
• the whole game logic
is implemented in LUA
• Allows rapid iterations
• Dynamic and flexible
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12. Quest economy
• Our game is free and has purchasable items, but how to
tackle the B2B?
• We also sell customized quests to clients that want to
promote their product, business or generate walk-in
customers.
• We approached some businesses with ideas and
budgets and here are some of our successful examples.
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13. • Goal: generate awareness and walk in customers
• Quest: find and collect Hotel Stoos symbols around
Germany, Switzerland and Austria and trade them with
the family boss.
• Visit gbanga.com/stoos to check the leaderboard of the
best collecting players
• WIN a one night for two at the Stoos Hotel in a superior
room or a wellness package including a champagne
apéro and a 3-course dinner.
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14. • Geofences to trigger item spawning only in
Switzerland, Germany and Austria
• Scripts set in players memory the total
points achieved
• The website retrieve player stats from our
database and shows leaderboard and help
section
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15. Gbanga Promo Quest
15

16. • A quest for the Apple reseller Dataquest
• Players can get discounts and the top players can win an
iMac
• Similarly to the Hotel Stoos quest players collect this
time iMac parts and have to assemble an iMac object
• The iMac item will contain a link to redeem a discount
voucher
• A website will show the leaderboard of the players that
collected most items
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17. Find all computer
parts
Collect and
assemble computers
Get voucher link
Go to Dataquest
shop for discount
Increase your score
on the leaderboard

18. • Capture-the-flag: this quest saw
students from two universities
of Zurich fight to take-over cells
around the two campus
• The quest was developed for
the users of the student social
network Spocal, a swiss startup
located also in Zurich.
18

19. • Implementation: we created two new mafia families
representing the respective universities.
• Players could then take over areas of the rival university
to score more points
• A leaderboard was showing the points of each team
(red/blue) depending on how many establishments were
taken over
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20. Our quests…
• …generally use our game Famiglia as a backbone to
have a context and motivate our existing users to
engage in such quests
• …have different scale (city, country, worldwide)
• …can fit all types of budgets
• …are very fast to implement with our API
• …more examples: Xmas Quest, Easter Quest, Maya
Quest etc.
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21. The future
• Currently working on
– mobile HTML5
– an Erlang server
– WYSIWYG script editor
• Currently talking to publishers for different regions
• Looking for talented geeks and gurus
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22. THANK YOU
http://www.gbanga.com
robin@ gbanga.com
Twitter: @gbanga
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23. Backup Slides
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24. How does Gbanga Famiglia work
INTERACTION
RELOCATION
Create
establishments
SCRIPT
STARTS
TRADE Trade Challenge
items
IF WIN
Increase Take over
power of location
family 24

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26. 26

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28. 28

29. Purchasable Items
• Police Megaphone: The Police Megaphone enables you to take-over the Mafia establishments at that location with 100%
success. Pocket.
• Respec' Da Bass: Increase street cred and intimidate rivals. Drop the Respec' Da Bass at any location to challenge the Mafia
establishments there and in 10 additional neighbouring Cells.
• G-Bolt: The G-Bolt power-up gives you the amazing ability to take-over every Cell you visit within a period of 10 minutes. Additionally
you'll automatically collect valuable items located at each location visited. Drop it in a Cell to activate and start running!
• Bouncer: Drop the bouncer in a Cell you own to defend it against 99% of rival Famiglia attacks! Can be dropped and collected repeatedly
at different locations. The bouncer's weakness are special attack items.
• Mafia Villa: Own your private Splendid Mafia Villa! Drop it at your favourite location to show everyone who's the top Mafioso in the
neighbourhood!
• Shady Fabrics Factory: Placed in an empty Cell the Shady Fabrics Factory creates 5 Warehouse establishments which will initially join
your Famiglia. Factories cannot be taken from you. But the Warehouses might be taken over by rivals.
• Weekly Candy Lab: Drop a Weekly Candy Lab in a CELL, the Lab then produces one "Precious Candy Item" (500,000 CASH), which
appear in the Cell every Friday. You must go back to the lab to collect your Candy!
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