New feature - Overclock
PkmnTrainerJ
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At GDC 2023, the Game Developers Conference which took place last week in San Francisco, CA, USA, Niantic hosted a panel dedicated to Ingress.
A new exciting feature, which is planned to be released this summer, was announced at the event: Overclock!
Overclock is a new way to hack an Ingress Portal using AR, leveraging Lightship's VPS (Visual Positioning System) which was introduced to the Niantic Lightship platform a while back with the help of the data collected by Agents with Portal Scans!
An Overclock hack is performed by deploying a Glyph Terminal and transcribing the 3D glyphs which will be presented to you into 2D glyphs before time runs out.
The aim of this feature is to "close the loop" around VPS, showing Ingress Players what their Portal Scans are useful for, but also to finally be able to test the AR positioning in-game so that Ingress Developers will be able to experiment with it and make this new feature fun.
Hence, this feature will only be available on VPS-enabled Portals, but fret not! If a Portal nearby isn't VPS-enabled, you will be able to scan it several times to enable VPS and to unlock Overclock. After enough scans have been collected and Niantic has processed them, Overclock will become available. If you want to prepare for this new feature, you should start scanning portals during various times of the day to ensure that VPS will be enabled in time!
We are eager to hear and see more about this feature but, for now, we are going to share with you the talk given by Michael Romero (Agent micromero), Engineering Director for Ingress, where he explains the basics of this new feature.
Source: IUENG
Comments
Great, another way to add latency to the game.
The Overclock feature looks interesting.
And is definitely a better idea than finding hidden caches, that Brian Rose initially pitched a couple of years ago.
And same as how Machina didn't add much additional lag, this feature I expect will have negligible affect on game lag.
@NianticThia @NianticBrian @NianticMicromero
There are a few questions about it
1) Those of us like myself play Ingress one-handed, how reliable is the feature one-handed?
2) There will inevitably be haters and whingers. Will the classic or, how would Overclock behave differently to Classic 2D glyphing be?
3) As Overclock has definitely been shortlisted for further development from other prototype VPS features, can you please share the list of prototypes that didn't work out?
Unless there is more gear or such per overclocked glyph, why would agents do it?
Also, the fact it has to be a VPS enabled portal for it to work, is going to be off putting to many agents who don't live near such a portal.
It almost seems like a veiled attempt to get more agents, to scan more portals, in hopes they can have VPS portals near them, so they can do this "new" type of hack/glyph.
Maybe it’ll be the only way of getting the KCaps from hacks in future?
If it gives more things than normal glyph, agent will use it.
if it's the same, it will be like pokemon go AR pokemon capture. useless time loss that is just gonna be deactivated.
it will always be efficiency before cuteness.
Majority of the local VPS portals near me, all appear to be Pogo Gyms. Portals that I know were scanned by Ingress agents don't appear to be VPS portals. More on site research will be required to fully verify, but so far, that seems to be the case (locally at least)
I believe the Pokémon GO gyms always give scan tasks in that game, so are more likely to be scanned.
I’ve scanned a bunch locally which are VPS enabled. Maybe someone just needs to get them activated on the app? Happy to send a request for them for activation if you ping me.
Perhaps we'll soon hack scan tasks to be fulfilled via Agent Ops.
I will not scan one single portal (and recommend other agents follow suit) until portal scan data update is released and available to all agents.
And, as previously mentioned, it must be "worth it" with AR-specific gear.
Otherwise, you will simply be building out lightship (and niantic's other games) for no added benefit.
What about if you also play the other games and want to see the benefit there? Or just want another new badge on Ingress for the scans?
Am I the only person in the world that doesn't know what VPS portals are? I feel a little clueless about this.
Likely not, no.
VPS = Virtual Positioning System. It means that there’s enough scans of a Wayspot that your device knows where you are in relation to it, and can also know if it’s sunny/snowing etc.
So if a Lightship dev wanted a flower to sprout from the head of a statue, then they can make sure it looks good in AR when you’re there and make it look right from the various angles.
Ingress: we want to do cool things but you have help us,
Players: I'm not doing that until you give us cool things
Ingress: shrug...
New features are exciting but I feel that some attention should be given to existing features as well. Things like kinetic capsules, adventure summary and QOL improvement (lag fix/loading interface) can be improved upon for a better gaming experience.
It's not always the new stuff that keep agents playing. Having a better user experience helps for retention as well.
My personal concern is that it seems that niantic are always coming out with new features while their existing features improvements are just pushed into the backlog and only improved upon at a later date.
Take the current kinetic capsule interface for example: agents will want to choose what items they will want to use for crafting rather than keeping the items in the capsule so as the kinetic capsule will pick up the correct items to use for crafting. And kinetic capsules should not be using a certain level item just to craft items. (Eg. 40 R8 to craft 5 R8?)
Wayspots have to be nominated to be VPS enabled if the minimum amount of QUALITY scans have been uploaded. minimum is like 10
Nominations for VPS enabled wayspots us currently through the Wayfarer App. With a developer account.
Unknown if a wayspot automatically becomes VPS enabled when it has dozens or hundreds of quality scans uploaded.
We do not have normal optimization of the game client, we do not have a well-thought-out plot, we do not have innovations that would diversify the game. But we are adding another way to draw glyphs. For what?
Real time 2-way 2FLA
And thereby making spoofing a distant memory.
Given it requires AR, and so probably requires scans, and all those phones who can't scan... it'll be as likely as "Make people scan the portal to prove they're there."
Game features should not be stealth verification checks.