Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Built-in devices
We begin our tour with the features of a smartphone which are the built-in features.
Modern smartphones include a variety of built-in sensors that can be accessible for
mobile games, and we encourage you to exploit these whenever you can in your
games.
There is more than one reason for this. The successful built-in features of one device
tend to be adopted by competitors over a period of time. In fact, the most popular
smartphones tend to share relevant and appreciated features, such as the accelero-
meter. The accelerometer is featured by any smartphone we can think of today, and it
is a piece of hardware that any smartphone owner expects to have on his device.
If you design a game mechanic around the accelerometer, you can be pretty sure that
your game can reach the largest audience possible, which is a good start for any indie
game.
GPS
The
Global Positioning System
(
GPS
) is a space-based satellite navigation system
that requires an unobstructed line of sight to four or more GPS satellites. The GPS
can provide very accurate location information to the device, for itself and its sur-
roundings. For example, it is possible to search for nearby restaurants, landmarks,
and so on.
GPS games usually include an element of
Augmented Reality
(
AR
). One example of
a GPS game is Shadow Cities by Grey Area. Players team up to conquer their neigh-
borhood, street by street, using magic spells. One of the few
MMORPGs
(
Massively
Multiplayer Role Playing Games
) on mobile devices, Shadow Cities is free to play
and is available on the App Store on
www.shadowcities.com
.
