Playing by public transit

Muni was free yesterday because it was their 100th anniversary, so the bus was a convenient mode of transportation.  I got 2000 points on Ingress during the brief bus trip.  Who knew that playing by public transit was such a viable option.

We picked up our friend's rental car and took the Great Highway home, where I discovered my zoo and Doggy Diner Head portals had been taken over by the Enlightened.  Oh well.  

Return to Ingress

For the first time in over a week, it wasn't pouring rain and I wasn't overly exhausted or stuck at work after quitting time.  I decided to try my luck once again in the Book of Mormon lottery and played Ingress through parts of the Financial District and Chinatown along the way.  I made some links at the so-called bankers heart statue and got some resonators hacking other portals, but not much love from the sea of green that has surrounded San Francisco since the departure of josh when he hit Level 8.  

I passed by a cable car being attached to a tow truck on the way past the Powell Cable Car turnaround portal.
I lost the lottery and decided to try my luck at Union Square.  I got distracted and traded control back and forth for a while with Enlightened fighter Daravinne for the fountain on the stairs next to the Levi's building.  I placed some resonators on a building where Robert Louis Stevenson once rested and was about to call it a night when
Latrix, a Resistance ally visiting from Minneapolis, announced in the faction chat that they were going to attack Union Square.

I circled back and claimed two portals, assisting Latrix in their cause.  I ran out of resonators and was super hungry, so I gave up for the evening at just over 100,000AP.  

The location services have definitely improved with the latest Ingress build and they added a ton of new portals, including the much needed Millbrae BART/Caltrain station.  I sadly don't have portal keys for my SF Zoo/Doggy Diner portals any longer, so I will need to visit there soon to reclaim them.

Using Ingress as an excuse to go exploring is awesome.  I am around 50,000AP away from Level 5 at this point and getting points and experience is certainly not getting easier.  I kind of like the challenge though and hope the game continues to be fun once I can spend a smidgen more time playing.

Liberated Square (Level 4)

Today's Ingress adventure lead to Level 4 with a lot of high stakes drama in between.  

This morning, I witnessed in person the Enlightened agent Majestic12 attacking our train car.  I thwarted her attack but she took over the portal later this evening.

I spent all of my XMP bursters to get a cool looking statue, got portal keys from such awesome places as the Transamerica Pyramid and the SF Fire Department and leveled up in a nice sea of blue in Union Square.  Overall not as awesome as yesterday but still an amazing experience. 

I once again lost the Book of Mormon lottery along the way as well.

Today's photo is the statue I fought so valiantly to acquire.

Guided by Portals

I played Ingress from 4-6pm and a little bit before work that included a pit stop at the Nutella USA truck for samples, a photo op and a free tee shirt.  I played for a few more minutes when leaving work around 8pm and discovering a mostly dismantled set of defenses on the train car.  I built it back up and ended the day 25,000 points ahead of where I was yesterday.

I took a different path than normal and headed out toward the Transamerica Pyramid this evening.  I discovered some cool art and some really well hidden in plain sight historical markers.

Playing for two hours straight made me start to view streets not by their names but by the portals that they contained.  Without even realizing it, I was in Chinatown and had to head over to the Curran to once again lose the Book of Mormon lottery.

I did my normal portal route on the way to the theater but had captured six others for the Resistance from territory I hadn't charted before.  I got my first media drop file as well.  I really enjoyed the experience and had a nice walk through an awesome city as well.

I have started to picture the portals as I walk, as I imagine Neo saw code in the matrix.  This game experience is a lot more immersive than I anticipated.

One of my favorite portal captures of the night was the Site of Ship Niantic which I have shared here. 

The Path of Resistance (Level 3)

Back on November 20, I became a member, somewhat unexpectedly, of the Resistance faction in Niantic Labs @ Google's new project, Ingress.

Ingress started around a week prior, and when a coworker got an invite and a friend retweeted a link about the game on the morning of the 20th, despite my awareness and having already signed up on the 16th for an invite on Ingress.com, I still made the Ingress symbol out of crackers and snapped a photo with my Windows Phone to post to Google+ as artwork inspired by the game in hopes of gaining an invite code from the developers.

That night, I also joined the Ingress IRC channel and waited for one of the Googlers to show up with trivia questions where correct answers could earn me an invitation into the game.  I answered the first question right and got in.  I installed the app, activated it and was about to go outside to start my training missions when it started to pour rain.

The next morning, before I'd even had time to start my training, my official invite from signing up on ingress.com showed up in my inbox.  Oops.  I later gave that code to another coworker.

I had my heart set on being a member of the Enlightened faction.  The dev that invited me was Resistance, so I became Resistance.  I'm playing Muse's album The Resistance as I type this, that's how much I resist.

On November 21, I wrote this post on Google+:

"Last week, I started seeing posts in my Google+ feed from those in my circles that had either started playing or signed up for invitations to play a new ARG called #Ingress. 

I have participated in several Alternate Reality Games in the past, including ilovebees, Year Zero and Flynn Lives ARGs done well and right by 42 Entertainment and some not done so well by others for Lost's Dharma Initiative and The Avengers' SHIELD.

I like ARGs that immerse the player in the game. I like when the puzzles or activities feel necessary to complete and not just tacked on layers of advertising.

What I had seen of Ingress in my Google+ feed intrigued me. When I visited the http://ingress.com homepage and saw The Mechanics statue that is across the street from where I spend my working days, I immediately submitted my email address to request an invitation.

I read up on http://nianticproject.com and discovered Tycho and his posters and PAC and the rabbit hole they pulled me into.

Curiosity made my patience wear thin waiting on my invitation. I decided to attempt to skip the queue after more friends were talking about the game yesterday. I joined the Niantic Invites channel on IRC and spent an hour or so discussing with others whether I should be enlightened or join the resistance.

Within that hour, an operator named monkeychicken joined the server, asked a trivia question that I responded to correctly and I soon had an invitation to join the game in my gmail box.

I liked that I had played and won a round of a game to gain access to a bigger game.

I installed the Ingress app on my HTC Rezound and proceeded to start the first training mission. The fates conspired against me and it started raining as I went to step outside.

The exploration with the app would have to wait for morning. Instead I discovered that the codes I had deciphered from the Niantic Project corkboard could be entered as passcodes on ingress.com/intel and I could map out where to find portals from there as well.

This morning I used some precommute time to gather exotic matter and my lunch break to hack my first portal and resonate and link two others. The link was near The Mechanics statue and behind two yellow cones with a chain almost blocking my path. I have to assume that was intentional. It was perfectly in line with the training portal onscreen. One of the factions must wash windows in the San Francisco financial district.

I never understood Foursquare. With Ingress I understand the obsession with checking in. Except I am deploying resonators or hacking enemy portals instead of trying to become mayor.

I can see Ingress leading me down new paths I haven't explored in the Bay Area I have called home for the last decade. I love that many early portals are connected to historical and architectural landmarks.

The game has a ton of possibilities. There are things that could break it. An example would be adding microtransactions. I would abandon the game in a heartbeat if they add monetization in situations like "to attach a resonator please pay 99 cents".

But Google and Niantic Labs don't seem to be evil. That is one of the reasons I have decided to follow the #Enlightened path."

On Thanksgiving Day, we went downtown to Old Navy to hang out with Mario and Luigi at the Nintendo Wii U display.  I decided to play some Ingress while we were there.  I quickly learned that Level 1 means you can't really do anything in the game.  Oopsie.

From Google+:

""We spent around an hour in the city. I planned to enlighten some Resistance portals, only to discover that Ingress had made me a part of The Resistance without asking.

Oh well. I figured I would kill some enlightened portals instead. I unleashed some XMP and got... Nothing.

All of the things that I could do in training I couldn't do in the real world. Suddenly, the game wasn't fun anymore."

I didn't play the game for six days.  It was raining and I was highly stressed at work.  I didn't have any time to play at all and I was still dealing with what felt like a never ending sinus infection.

On November 29, I went to Berkeley to see Charming Hostess in concert and ended up finding some low level portals in the area.  I was finally playing the game.  It quickly sucked me in.  I started with the Tuning Fork sculpture, then some historic buildings and other sculptures and I was well on my way to leveling up.

On November 30, I gave that extra invite code to a coworker and collected some XMP bursters from the nice blue-shaded portals near where I work in the city.

Again, I didn't have the ability to play for a full week.  

On December 7, I got 1100 AP just by walking up Market Street from work to the Curran Theater where I attempted to get Book of Mormon tickets from their lottery and failed.  That night, after a late dinner at Denny's we dropped off a friend and I got my first three portals and also leveled up to Level 2.

Yesterday, I spent half an hour helping my coworker that got in back on November 20 to level up at a sculpture garden on Mission Street in the morning.  At lunch time, I took possession of the portal in the Bechtel train car museum near where I work.

After work, I spent around another hour playing the game in the financial district.  The Ingress website and trailer video featured the statue "The Mechanics" that is in front of a Jamba Juice about a block from where I work and that train car I captured sits.

Yesterday afternoon, I captured that very same portal for myself.

I didn't hold that portal for very long, but in the meantime, I also captured another and built a field between the train car, the statue and the historical marker that I had captured throughout the day.

Suddenly, I was almost halfway to Level 3.

Today was a big day in the game.  I created a control field from the train car to the sculpture garden, linking to yet another portal in the trailer video and the Liberty Bell Slot Machine before heading in to work.

I walked up to the Curran again and failed once more to get Book of Mormon tickets.  I did get utterly destroyed by the huge Enlightened presence at Union Square and recharge at a Resistance portal at Nordstrom after work though, getting even closer to Level 3.

On the way home, I added some protection to the Daly City Post Office which is currently controlled by fellow Resistance members.  We tried to stop by a portal at a vista point but my GPS wasn't cooperating in my phone.  We ended up at the site where I moved up to Level 2 at the Doggy Diner Head.  I upgraded all three of my portals there, created a larger control field linking those three with the post office and suddenly, I'm a Level 3 Resistance member.

I've walked a lot and stopped off in places I never would have without this game... and this is only the beginning.  It has been a great deal of fun for me and I can't wait to play some more in the city before and after work tomorrow.  Next stop is Level 4 after all.

Recreation (Level 2)

On Friday night after leaving work on time for once, I went to the Curran Theatre and attempted the Book of Mormon lottery for $29 seats.  I lost.  We ended up visiting Denny's with a friend instead.  I did get 1,100 AP in Ingress while walking up Market Street though, which had me just three thousand points away from Level 2 finally.

After Denny's we dropped off our friend and discovered five unclaimed portals in her area.  I am now the proud portal owner of the Doggy Diner Head, the Zoo entrance and a second Zoo portal.  I connected the Doggy Diner Head and Zoo entrance and that was enough to make me a Level 2 player!