Thunderbolt


Description:

Having knowledge of how things talk, especially with iPhone. I decided why don’t I use iPhone like a controller? I never liked playing serious games on iPhone. Infact iPhone as a small ubiquitous device is just not fit for serious games.

Therefore, I thought why don’t I project level design game we make onto a big screen and use iPhone just like a controller. We decided to use two main features of iPhone during interaction 1) Accelerometer and 2) GPS functionality.

The game concept was like Sonic meets Flight Simulator meets Harry Potter wonderlandish type of maze.

In this game, player was an arrow flying through the wind and big buildings. Players objectives was to find the target and hit it. On the way there were boosters and enemies. Enemies were arrows trying to follow the player, whenever player entered enemies zone. In a sense, enemies were acting like sensors. Boosters were in the form of rings, which gave velocity+missiles. Yes player can also shoot missiles :)


Technical Details:

SOFTWARE

Unity iPhone – Game Engine
Unity remote on iPhone/iPod
Adobe photoshop – Graphics Design

HARDWARE

iPod/iPhoneTouch

Role:

I was in-charge of the design and implementation of the complete level design project. I took sole responsibility for implementing tangbile interactivity through iPhone/iPod.

Apart from this, I also made the level in 3d using Unity3d. I scripted the AI of the enemies, power ups and player behaviour.

Challenges:

BIG CHALLENGE WAS TIME, and we wanted it to run through iPhone!

Outcome:

One day while I was testing the game, Jeannette who is one of our loving staff members at Center for Digital Media was giving tour to some industry guests.

One of the industry guests was very interested while I was testing the project. According to him, the system should be used at Canadian Army for the training purposes.

His further comments on the system were, “Its an excellent example of the hand-eye coordination that can help people at army camps. Especially the software is well communicated with the hardware”

Video:

Testing the system from Dhruv Adhia on Vimeo.