Tuesday 6 November 2012

Student Project IV - Introduction

The fourth semester started about a month ago and my next student project is nearing its first prototype.

The idea is to have one of these remote controlled toy helicopters and be able to fly around in a kids room. Our target platform is Android, mostly tablets but maybe we might get it polished enough to get it to work on phones as well.

There is a game in the Google Play Store that features a toy helicopter but it is more like a simulation. Our goal is to have a game were the player is able to fly through predetermined routes inside our level, collect points or other pickups and will have a control scheme that is easy enough to handle by 12 year olds (or clumsy people like myself ;P ).

We are using Unity as our game engine and my tasks will be UI and code implementation for audio and particle effects, like I did for Hadron. Additionally, my assignments will be performance and asset integration as well as tutoring some of my team mates in Unity.

To avoid any confusion, each new semester project consists of a new idea and a new combination of students. Most of the students that worked on Hadron were in their last semester and have left the Games Academy by now, so most of the students I now work with have never worked with Unity before because it is not part of our regular classes. Some had minor experiences with it but not on a full (student) project.

My new Android Tablet

Some days ago, I got my first android tablet. It was quite a good deal coming with my mobile phone contract, otherwise I might not have bought it.

After installing some apps I also had installed on my phone, I made an android build of Hadron for my own and it runs like a charm :)

The tablet is a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 and I am quite impressed with it. Not only does it run games and programs like a charm, its Stylus starts to replace my paper notepad and I am able to send my notes to team mates via email or skype.

This isn't a sales pitch, I am just genially impressed with the tablet...