Pinger: game rules

Pinger is an outdoor search game for any number of players, without signing in. You play with your phone in your hand and your ear on the speaker.

Goal of the game

When a game is created, the server picks a random point in the search area. Nobody knows it, not even the player who created the game. Whoever first gets within 25 metres of this point wins. The only aid is a sound whose rhythm tells you how far away the point still is.

Creating and joining a game

1. One player creates the game: name, password and start time, plus the search area. The search area is a circle around a starting point. The starting point defaults to your own location and can be moved on the map. The radius ranges from 250 metres to 10 kilometres.
2. With the switch "Target on a street" the point lies on a publicly walkable way from OpenStreetMap: a street, an alley, a footpath, a field or forest track. Without the switch it can lie anywhere inside the circle.
3. The other players join with the password and pick a name. Each name can be used once per game, and every player gets a colour. Joining also works after the search has started.
4. Playing requires location access. The browser asks for it when you join. Without a location there is no sound and no game.

How a game runs

1. Before the start, the game view shows the search area and a countdown. "Get device ready" turns on the sound, keeps the screen awake and starts positioning.
2. At the start time the search begins. There is no fixed end: the search goes on until someone has found the point.
3. Your phone reports its location to the server every few seconds. All that comes back is the rhythm of the sound and later the compass direction. The server only reveals where the point is after the end.
4. How close you are is never shown as a number: you can only tell by the sound and the colour. The radar shows every ping as a ring running from the centre outwards. Its colour moves with your closeness from cool turquoise via amber to red. With every ping a coloured glow also fades in from the edge of the screen and out again, with the continuous tone it pulses without pause. Anyone who cannot or does not want to hear the sound plays with this light signal, the rings or the vibration.
5. The "Map" view shows the search area, your location and the way you have walked so far. It does not show the point.
6. The player list shows who is online and who wants to abort. Where the others are, you cannot see.

The sound

• The yardstick is the starting distance: the straight line from the starting point to the hidden point. If you are exactly that far from the point, a ping comes every 6 seconds.
• The closer you get, the faster the pings follow each other, and evenly so: half the distance gives half the interval. If you move away, they slow down.
• There is no upper limit: at three times the starting distance a ping comes about every 18 seconds, at ten times about once a minute.
• Just before the target the pings blur into a continuous tone. Then you are only a few metres away.
• The server does the maths as soon as your location arrives. Until the next answer your phone keeps ticking in the last rhythm, even in a dead spot.

The compass direction

Once you are only a fifth of the starting distance away from the point (20 percent), the compass direction appears as text, one of eight: north, north-east, east, south-east, south, south-west, west or north-west. On the radar the matching sector lights up. The direction is seen from your location and changes if you walk past the point.

Found

The point counts as found as soon as your phone reports a location at most 25 metres away from it. Whoever manages this first wins, and the game ends for everyone. If your GPS is less precise than 40 metres at that moment, the reading does not count yet: stand still for a moment until the signal improves.

When a game ends

• A player has found the point.
• All present players have voted to abort. Present means having sent a signal in the last ten minutes. That way nobody who has already gone home holds the game hostage for the others.
• No player was in the game for 24 hours. Then it ends by itself.

What is allowed and what is not

• On foot, by bike, by bus and train: how you move is up to you.
• Arrangements and teams are allowed. The winner is still the player whose phone reaches the point first.
• Do not enter anything you are not allowed to enter: no private property, no railway tracks, no closed areas. Without the street switch the point may lie there, in which case nobody wins there.
• In traffic, watch the traffic and not the radar.
• Faking a location is not playing, it is cheating.

Technology

• Keep the page open and in the foreground. In the background most browsers stop positioning and sound.
• The screen stays on during the search if your browser supports it. A fully charged battery or a power bank helps in long games.
• Indoors, between tall buildings and under dense trees GPS is less precise. If it is too imprecise for a find, the game view says so.
• If there is no sound, check the silent switch of your phone and the "Sound on" button in the game view.
• Vibration can be switched on, on many Android phones you then feel every ping.

Tips

• Walk a bit in one direction and listen whether the rhythm speeds up or slows down. A few hundred metres tell you more than turning on the spot.
• Compare two directions at right angles and you quickly know which quarter the point lies in.
• The starting distance is your yardstick: at 6 seconds you are as far away as at the starting point.
• Once the compass direction appears you are in the last fifth. From here the text helps more than the sound.
• With the continuous tone, walk slowly and stop briefly so the GPS can catch up.
• In the result, look at the routes: they show who took the wrong turn where.

Location and data

• Your location only goes to the server of this site and only while the game view is open. The points of your route are stored while the search runs, not before.
• After the end, the result with all routes and player names is visible to everyone via the game list, as with JetLagAux. Choose your name accordingly.
• Anyone with the password can delete the game including all routes at any time. Details are in the privacy policy.