2012-2013-Spectropolaris

Spectropolaris

by Stephan Groenewold and Klaas Winter

The problem

Smartphones are more and more used to play games on. Unfortunately smartphones have some limitations with screen size, amount of inputs and processing power. With this project we looked for a solution to especially the screen problem and the processing power problem.

The idea

To solve these problems we designed a top-down multiplayer shooter for the Android OS which is played in combination with a computer with a big screen. By combining the smartphone with a big screen we get access to a bigger screenspace and we can offset difficult calculations, like AI computations, to the pc connected to the big screen. The big screen contains an overview of the map, the enemies and the players in the game, while the smartphone gives a more detailed view of your direct surroundings. We tried to design both components of the system in such a way that both were necessary to play the game succesfully, and to do this we tried to find a perfect balance between the big screen information and the smartphone information.

The game

Our game, Spectropolaris, is centered around gettings points by capturing the hill, while staying alive during the constant attack of enemies. The hill is an area marked on the big screen map. To capture it, a player needs to be within the area, while there are no enemies within it. To defend yourself against the enemies, we give the player two different weapons to use. A pistol and a shotgun. Swapping between them can be done by using the volume buttons, saving precious screenspace. Ammo and health pickups are spread out over the map, making the use of the big screen even more crucial. The player is controlled by tapping the left or right side of the screen and dragging, respectively controlling shooting and moving.

Results

The game we created managed to make both the devices that were used important aspects of the gameplay. We consider the game fun to play and both the smartphone and the big screen are needed to succesfully play it. The constant switching between smartphone screen and big screen is a pretty natural thing to do. All in all we think we have been succesfull in showing that an interaction can and does work properly, and makes it possible to play games like top-down shooters on the android, without sacrificing mapsize and AI computations.