Glossary

The technical words of these pages, in plain terms. The links in the text of every page lead here.

The game

Props: The electronic devices of a game: boxes to capture, bombs to arm and defuse, terminals to hack, targets to hit. In Atalaia any device can be one: a purpose-built box, a phone or a small board.
Field Box and Satellite: Atalaia's own prop designs, built from off-the-shelf parts around an ESP32. The Field Box is the main one, with big arcade buttons, a keypad, a screen, lights, a speaker and an NFC reader in a weatherproof case, for roughly €70–110 in parts; the Satellite is a smaller box for a secondary point, for about €30–40. The first Field Box prototypes come in phase 1.
Milsim: Short for military simulation: long games, often over a whole weekend, with missions, a chain of command and realistic rules. It is the biggest test for Atalaia: 10 to 20 boxes and satellites spread over a large area.
CQB: Close-quarters battle: games inside houses, palacetes, warehouses and other tight spaces, usually under about 150 m across. Everything is close and fast, so Atalaia's CQB profile uses shorter capture and bomb times, and places the boxes on a floor plan instead of using GPS.
Chrono and joules: A chrono (chronograph) measures how fast a replica fires a BB. From the speed and the BB's weight comes its energy in joules, which fields cap per type of replica: a 0.20 g BB at 100 m/s (about 328 fps) carries 1 joule. Atalaia will keep each replica's readings, so marshals can run spot checks during the day; a person always decides any penalty.

Hardware

Microcontroller: A complete, tiny computer on a single chip, made to run one program. It starts in a moment, uses very little battery and is cheap, which makes it the usual brain of an electronic prop. ESP32 and Arduino boards are microcontroller boards.
ESP32: A popular, cheap microcontroller with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth built in; many boards also carry a LoRa radio. It is the brain of the Field Box, the Satellite and the I/O pod, and keeps a prop going for one to three days on a battery. Boards people already own can join too, even without extra memory (PSRAM), with a few limits.
Arduino-class board, thin node: Simple, very cheap microcontroller boards in the Arduino style, such as those with AVR or RP2040 chips. They are too small to run game modes, so in Atalaia they act as thin nodes: they lend their buttons, lights or sensors to a nearby box or to the field controller, which runs the rules for them.
Raspberry Pi: A small, cheap computer about the size of a credit card, running Linux. With a LoRa radio board added, it will be the usual field controller (about €80–150 for the whole build), and it can also run props that need a big screen or a camera.
Android prop and I/O pod: The Atalaia app will turn an Android phone or tablet, new or a spare one from 2017 or later, into a prop: a hacking terminal, a map, a code scanner. Phones have no LoRa radio and touch screens are hard to use with gloves, so a small ESP32 box, the I/O (input/output) pod, will connect by cable or Bluetooth to add the radio, big buttons, lights and a siren. Both arrive in phase 3.
Firmware and flashing: Firmware is the program built into a device, which starts when you switch it on. Flashing means writing a new version of it onto the device, usually over a USB cable. Atalaia boxes are flashed by cable once; after that, new game modes arrive as scripts, and firmware updates come from the field controller over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, undoing themselves if a new version fails to start.

Radio and connections

LoRa: Short for long range: a radio that sends small messages far on very little power, with no SIM card, mobile coverage or subscription. On a typical field it reaches roughly 0.5–2 km, and gets through thick walls better than Wi-Fi. The catch: messages must be short, and each device may transmit only a small share of the time. Atalaia uses 869.525 MHz by default, in the only EU868 sub-band that allows a 10% duty cycle and 500 mW, giving each box up to 6 minutes of airtime per hour — enough for events, scores and time-sync beacons with headroom to spare. A field can choose another channel, which allows 1% of the time or less and 25 mW. Boxes send only what changes, such as “red captured B”.
Mesh: A network in which devices pass messages on for each other, so a box too far from the base is heard through the boxes in between. Atalaia repeats each message only a couple of times, so the radio does not clog, and organisers can place extra boxes as repeaters on difficult ground.
Skirmesh-RF: Atalaia's own radio protocol: the agreed format in which boxes, the controller and apps exchange messages, over LoRa, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth. It is documented in public, so anyone can build a device that joins in, and every message is signed with a key for that game, so a player with a radio cannot simply fake a capture. The code that packs and checks these messages, the codec, exists today.
Wi-Fi, BLE, NFC and QR codes: Everyday short-range links, each with its own job. Wi-Fi (about 50–150 m) carries the bulky things: the organisers' console, the player app, new modes and updates; BLE, or Bluetooth Low Energy (10–30 m), links a phone to its pod and pairs devices. NFC is tap-to-read, like a contactless card, for team tags, wristbands and join cards, and QR codes are scanned with a phone camera to join a game or enter a code.
API: MQTT, REST and WebSocket: An API is a documented way for other programs to read a game and, with permission, control it. With it a club will be able to drive a big LED scoreboard, a live score overlay on a stream, Discord or Telegram alerts, or a relay that sets off smoke and sirens when the bomb goes off. MQTT, REST and WebSocket are three standard ways in, so ordinary tools work with it. The field controller has it since phase 2, with a ready-made scoreboard page; it has been tested on a computer and not yet on a field.
ATAK: The Android Team Awareness Kit: a map app made for the military, with a free civilian version that many milsim teams use to see their team mates on a shared map. Atalaia's field controller will be able to show the boxes on those maps, and which team holds each one (phase 4).

Software

Local-first: Everything a game needs runs on the field itself, on the boxes and the field controller, so it works with no internet or mobile coverage at all. When the internet is there, it only adds extras, such as accounts and game history. A box that loses contact keeps playing and keeping score, and catches up when the link returns.
Shared core (C11): The heart of Atalaia: one program, written in the C programming language (its 2011 version, hence C11), that every device running game modes uses. It handles events, scores and radio messages and runs the game modes safely; each kind of hardware only adds a thin layer with the drivers that work its buttons, screen and radio. It exists today.
Lua and game-mode scripts: A game mode is a script: a short text file of rules, such as “hold for 5 seconds to capture”, written in Lua, a small programming language well known from video-game modding. Scripts run in a sandbox, a sealed space with no access to files or the network, so a shared mode cannot harm a device. Organisers never need to touch Lua: they pick a mode and fill in its settings, and a visual, block-based editor will follow in phase 5.
Simulator: A program that plays a game mode with virtual boxes in your web browser: you press the team buttons on screen and watch each box's display and the event log. It runs on an ordinary computer and exists today, so anyone can try Domination and Bomb before any hardware is built.
Field controller: The base station of a game: a small computer, usually a Raspberry Pi or an Android device, that hears every box over the radio, runs the rules that span several boxes, keeps the official score and serves the organisers' console to their phones. If it fails, the boxes keep playing and another capable device takes over, and a single box can run a game without one. It is built (phase 2) and tested on a computer, not yet on a field.
Site server: An optional computer, at the field or rented online, that keeps what lasts beyond one game: player accounts, game history, the chrono registry and the services behind the player app. Games never wait for it. It comes in phase 4, and the community hub plans hosted ones, at cost, for clubs without IT support.

Licences

Open source and free software: The source code, the human-readable recipe of a program, is public, and anyone may use, study, change and share it, even commercially. “Free” here means freedom, not price: fields may charge entry and makers may sell boxes.
Copyleft: GPL and AGPL: The rule that keeps Atalaia open: using it as it is asks nothing of you, but passing on a changed version means sharing its source code under the same licence. The GPL, for the core, firmware, app and modes, applies when you give or sell copies; the AGPL, for the field controller and site server, also applies when you run a changed version for other people over a network. Hardware designs (CERN-OHL-S) and documentation (CC BY-SA) work the same way.