Ingress: Real Augmented Reality in Real Life. Really.

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Ingress: Real Augmented Reality in Real Life. Really.

Red Robin Hood: Jun 24, 2008; Buglord

Ingress is OPEN FOR ALL (And I will no longer be updating the OP) :siren:

The old thread is here (I will take a lot of content from there): http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3521708

Ingress is difficult to explain, moderately easy to learn, and extremely easy to get consumed by. I will be extracting most data from Ingress Field Guide to help explain Ingress, how to play it, and some story line (The title image of each section will link to the appropriate page on IFG).

e: this is a pretty cool YouTube video I found that helpfully explains Ingress in a shortened form http://youtu.be/Irk7kFPg1k4

Ingress on Google Play

quote:

This is an important question, as many people are confused as to what Ingress or Niantic Project even are. The short answer, is they are all apart of an Augmented Reality Game (ARG) that is the output of a division of Google, Inc. called Niantic Labs. Ingress is the name of the game and application hosted on the Google Play Market. The Niantic Project is a top secret project commissioned by the National Intelligence Agency (NIA).

Ingress is (currently) an Android-exclusive, augmented reality game developed by Google's Niantic Labs (they also created Field Trip). In its most basic form it is a social experiment, and has been compared to a mix between virtual tag and geocaching. Your task as an Agent is to travel around your city, claiming "portals" (usually interesting architecture, statues, churches, libraries, museums) for your faction. Portals are completed by deploying 8 resonators on each portal.

What actually ends up happening is that you walk around your town/ city/ hobbit hole and look for geotagged locations ("portals") that you 'hack' for goodies. You expend energy doing this, which you can recharge by picking up 'XM' which is scattered around the world. It's sparse in the country, thicker in denser areas, and thickest near portals.

Once a portal has been sufficiently dominated by a faction, they may claim it. If a faction links 3 portals, it creates a triangular area in which 'Mental Units' are harvested. MUs appear to be the raw population data for that area, so the denser the population and larger the area the better. It's from this that the grand total for the sides are determined.

It is a battle between two factions. The Enlightened and the Resistance:

quote:

Joining The Enlightened
The Enlightened are interested in the Portals and the mysterious energy that has begun to spread across the planet. They want to research the energy and find a way to utilize it to advance our society.

quote:

Joining The Resistance
The Resistance is scared of this new energy and they want to control it to prevent others from knocking down a domino that could be the end of our existence. They see fear in P.A.Chapeau's findings and want to shut it down as soon as possible.

Ultimately you should choose which side you will take based on the activity in your area. Once you have been accepted into Ingress (or invited) you can look at a map of your local area by visiting http://www.ingress.com/intel

(These items are all acquired by "hacking" a portal)

Resonators:
Deploying a Resonator on a Portal allows you to claim the Portal for your Faction. Resonators come in varying levels from L1 up to L8. Using a higher level resonator on a portal will increase the power of the portal. Higher level portals can link with other portals at further distances and yield higher level items when hacked. It is important to note that the distance you place a resonator is how far it will be placed from that portal. XMP Bursters (bombs, basically) do AoE damage so resonators should be placed as far away from each other as possible.

XMP Bursters:
Fires off in moving wave of 360 radius. As the weapon is upgraded, the energy wave�s power and radius of effect grow larger. Like Resonators, XMPs come in varying levels from L1 up to L8. Used to destroy resonators and mods on portals.

Portal Keys:
A Portal key is a signature that can be used to link one portal to another and allow you to recharge a portal's resonators remotely. The destination portal key is consumed in the linking process.

Media:
Media items like emails, letters, pictures and videos can be uncovered through hacking portals which provide clues to truly understanding the Niantic Project. (Story items)

Shields:
A type of MOD that can be installed on a Portal to increase its defense against attacks. You can deploy up to 4 shields per portal, but each shield has diminished effect after the first one. Can be found in Common, Rare, and Very Rare forms.

Jarvis Virus / ADA Refactor:
These items can be used to flip the faction of a portal. Change a portal's control from Enlightened to Resistance or visa versa.

Power Cubes:
Power Cubes are items that contain a large amount of XM (energy used to do anything. Think mana for a Wizard) to recharge your XM reserves. They have levels from 1 to 8 and increase in capacity 1000 XM per level. Great for players in rural areas.
L1 Power Cube = 1000 XM
L2 Power Cube = 2000 XM
L3 Power Cube = 3000 XM
L4 Power Cube = 4000 XM
L5 Power Cube = 5000 XM
L6 Power Cube = 6000 XM
L7 Power Cube = 7000 XM
L8 Power Cube = 8000 XM

quote:

As you dive into the game, there are two terms that will become very important to you, Action Points (AP) and Exotic Matter (XM).

AP is earned through performing actions and is pretty much the same as Experience (XP) earned in many other games. AP is cumulative and when you earn AP, it should flash at the top of your Ingress Scanner. As you earn AP, you will pass milestones which will designate you with a higher level. A higher level is needed to use higher level items, e.g. you need to have a Access Level of 2 in order to use a L2 Resonator.

XM is collected as you travel. While looking at your scanner you will see little blue particle looking balls. As you travel towards them and they enter within range (blue circle), you will collect them to your reserves. XM is important, because it costs XM to perform actions, e.g. it costs a certain amount of XM to hack a portal.

Below are two tables that should explain these items and levels:

Ingress Global Control is a cool little chart that shows the control of each faction around the world.
Intel Map (must have an Ingress account to view)
Niantic website
IITC is an Ingress Intel Total Conversion that is not sanctioned by Niantic, was DMCA'd at one point, taken down, and now it is back up. You won't be able to download it in the play store so you'll have to get it directly from that site. [thanks cheese-cube!] (This is an unofficial modification. Don't talk about it in comms and you won't get banned for using it. Kind of like Diablo 2 Map Hack: most people use it but just don't talk about it)

Reddit Guide Pretty in-depth. Should cover anything that is not covered in this OP.
Ingress Field Guide Similar to the Reddit Guide.

This OP will remain to be a WIP.

Red Robin Hood fucked around with this message at 15:59 on Oct 31, 2013

# ¿ Jul 3, 2013 06:46

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# ¿ Apr 23, 2024 15:57

Red Robin Hood: Jun 24, 2008; Buglord

Version 1.30.2 - July 2, 2013
+ New Inventory sorting controls
+ New Portal Hack animations and results view
+ New Fire mode
+ Improved Health display on Portal Keys
+ New player welcome messages
+ Better support for high density displays
+ Portal Key count shown in Linking view
+ Bug fixes

# ¿ Jul 3, 2013 06:46

Red Robin Hood: Jun 24, 2008; Buglord

FrickenMoron posted:

I actually find the "Improved" health display sort of hard to read. I'm glad they let you sort keys by title again though.

Hard to read? What kind of phone are you using?

# ¿ Jul 3, 2013 06:51

Red Robin Hood: Jun 24, 2008; Buglord

Meatsicle posted:

Having a blast with this so far. My usual 15 minute walk to the gym turned into a 30 minute walk each way. Ended up taking a couple detours on the way to work to hit up some portals. Submitted 10 new portals around my apartment (surprisingly a whole city park across the street had 0 portals). I'm a cop and my partner thought I was crazy when I told him why I was taking pics of an MTA building. gently caress it, yolo. Gonna turn my whole precinct green.

I always thought it would be awesome to play Ingress as a police officer, taxi driver, etc!

# ¿ Jul 4, 2013 05:50

Red Robin Hood: Jun 24, 2008; Buglord

cheese-cube posted:

Nice OP. Would be good to have some info on the new portal mods in it. Also a link to IITC would be useful: http://iitc.jonatkins.com/

Thanks! If you could write something up on those I'd slap them in there, unfortunately I don't really know much about them yet...

Added IITC!

# ¿ Jul 5, 2013 15:57

Red Robin Hood: Jun 24, 2008; Buglord

SalTheBard posted:

Why is it banned?

They don't allow modifications of any kind. I read an interview with one of the Niantic guys where he said that they don't actively seek out TOS breaking mods or anything like that unless they are reported or become a serious hacking problem.

e: Just don't blab about it. I think a majority of the high-level players and groups use IITC without issue.

# ¿ Jul 5, 2013 17:04

Red Robin Hood: Jun 24, 2008; Buglord

kitten smoothie posted:

Chicago (well, and a good size chunk of Wisconsin, too) has just gone green:

The combined score for all the fields involved is apparently around 23 million MU.

It's good to be green!

# ¿ Jul 8, 2013 05:57

Red Robin Hood: Jun 24, 2008; Buglord

Nexus 4, running really well.

# ¿ Jul 16, 2013 21:33

Red Robin Hood: Jun 24, 2008; Buglord

Exit Strategy posted:

e: In re the "I carry a pistol" thing, that's just been part of my life since I was 21. Every day, all day. Wake up, get dressed, check for wallet, keys, phone, glasses, gun. Check gun to make sure it's loaded and secure in holster, go to work.

I know that makes some people deeply uncomfortable, but there it is.

I don't want to get into a gun debate in this thread but I also carry when I play Ingress. I don't necessarily carry every day (in fact most days I don't), but I almost always do while playing Ingress, especially at night or in places I'm uncomfortable with. I think if I had something smaller I would carry it more often. (Currently carrying a 4" XD9)

# ¿ Jul 17, 2013 21:23

Red Robin Hood: Jun 24, 2008; Buglord

I don't know, I guess I didn't think it was a big deal to carry while I walk around playing this game. v :confused:

v

But I don't want the thread to get closed so lets wrap this up, folks!

# ¿ Jul 18, 2013 07:04

Red Robin Hood: Jun 24, 2008; Buglord

I can't believe they've gone through so many updates without introducing a mass drop feature. I have to assume it is because people could shut down servers with the amount of items being dropped. v :confused:

PerrineClostermann posted:

Oh god, even an S4 chugs on this thing? My poor Droid Pro would probably just explode.

By the way, how does everyone feel about modded apps? Not ones that let you automate actions or drop a million XMPs at once or anything, but ones that optimize for low resolutions, reduce graphical load, provide a better organized inventory, and the like? They're all against the EULA, but so is IITC.

It is like the military... don't ask, don't tell! :gay:

# ¿ Jul 31, 2013 03:54

Red Robin Hood: Jun 24, 2008; Buglord

cheese-cube posted:

I'm not being offered the update via the Play store on my handset so I assume that they're doing a phased release like with v3.31.

Edit: so I was looking around on the Play store and I've found that another app called Field Trip has been published by NianticLabs@Google. I reckon Google started Ingress as a way to seed this Field Trip app prior to releasing it.

FieldTrip is a lot like Ingress. It will also alert you to portals in your area, which is kind of cool.

# ¿ Jul 31, 2013 16:15

Red Robin Hood: Jun 24, 2008; Buglord

Baofu posted:

I just signed up with Blue because that was the dominant color in my area.

Did I just join the fuckwit team?

Yes I'm Enlightened.

Also, joining the dominant team will probably make things pretty boring for you.

# ¿ Aug 2, 2013 03:33

Red Robin Hood: Jun 24, 2008; Buglord

I trust you all to know not to create them but it seems they get created when two or more people create a link or field at the same time. My group of players used to do this so we could maximize the amount of AP we got but quickly found out it greats ghost links and fields.

# ¿ Aug 3, 2013 23:22

Red Robin Hood: Jun 24, 2008; Buglord

cheese-cube posted:

Who was at fault in the accident (I'm leaning towards the pedestrians, staring at their phones when they should have been checking for oncoming traffic).

Depends on what kind of crosswalk I supposed but I'd assume the driver would get nailed.

# ¿ Oct 28, 2013 18:33

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# ¿ Apr 23, 2024 15:57

Red Robin Hood: Jun 24, 2008; Buglord

Cool that this thread is still providing people with a place to chat but somebody might want to make a new OP. Mine is way out of date!

# ¿ Aug 1, 2014 05:20

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Ingress: Real Augmented Reality in Real Life. Really.