Andreas Jakl's Forum Nokia Blog

Accelerometers Redefine the Game Experience

Thu, 19 Mar 2009 19:25:13 +0200

Accelerometers fully integrated into the game design - turn your phone to change the gravity of the environment!

Nearly nobody noticed the Nokia 5500 Sports, most likely the first phone equipped with an accelerometer that was accessible for 3rd party developers. gBoarder (application for recording snowboarding statistics like the number of crashes or jumps) and CarMeter (measures g forces when driving a car) were one of the few applications that made use of it - already released in February 2007.

When Nokia finally released the R&D API for the N95, the boom began and many acceleration sensor-based applications appeared. Many of them are useful (pyPozentica), others are just for fun (Light Sabre). And of course, there are some entertaining games as well (Groove Labyrinth, pyWuzzler).

Especially with the iPhone lacking any keyboard, many game concepts simply were not really possible – as an effect, the accelerometer got to be an accepted control method for commercial games. Racing games are a good example, where the tilt of the phone simulates a steering wheel. Much like in ShakerRacer, which uses the same concept for controlling a real car.

However, most of the games just use the acceleration sensor as an input method that fits to the game (up to some degree). Only very few games completely base the whole game concept on the use of the accelerometer. One of those few games has been developed by the Mobile Computing students David Berger and Stefan Poremba from the Hagenberg University o.a.S.

SlideEscape / SlidersEdge

On the first sight, the game SlideEscape / SlidersEdge could be seen as a normal jump & run. The fact that the left/right-movement of the character can be controlled by tilting the phone and jumping by quickly pulling the phone towards you is nice, but not something new either.

The innovation comes from the fact that turning the phone changes the gravity of the virtual game world. An example: the character is standing in front of an uncrossable abyss. How to get over it? Turn your phone upside down to walk on the ceiling and safely pass the depths!

Through this mechanism, the acceleration sensor not only influences the movement, but is directly integrated in the whole game experience as well as the level design. It’s not just an add-on that could be easily replaced by a key control mechanism (like in a racing game), but an essential part of the game.

The video on YouTube demonstrates how this works in real life:

The project is available as a free download from David’s official homepage, as well as from the project page at symbianresources.com.

Please note that the game is a prototype and therefore not really bug-free. The main game is a Java ME application. As it still isn’t possible to access accelerometer data from Java ME on Nokia phones, a native S60 application is provided as well, which runs in the background and provides acceleration data to the game via an internal socket (does not lead to data charges, even though the Java ME game warns you upon start-up).

Mobile Surround Sound

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 11:27:46 +0300

3D Sound on current mobile phones might mainly be a marketing gag – like the sound effects found on Nokia phones like the N95. It certainly does sound nice to have your ringtones swirl around and it works surprisingly well. But of course, it’s just simulated surround with two small speakers that are close together.

It will certainly be interesting to have technology from Dolby integrated into phones, like it was demonstrated at the CTIA Wireless in 2008. However, there is no precise information about future roadmaps or products.

What the students Stefan Damm and Arnold Ahrer from the Mobile Computing-department of the University of Applied Sciences in Hagenberg (Austria) created is a small solution to enable real surround sound through mobile phones - called Mobile Surround Sound.

It works by using four different mobile phones, which have to be placed into the corners of the room. Essentially, the phones are turned into speakers, albeit with a bit more intelligence than the usual speaker. A central control PC is connected via WLAN to the phones and is able to control them in real time.

Once all phones are connected, the PC starts the sound on all phones at the same time. The user can now move the sound source on the graphical interface of the server. This automatically adjusts the volume of the different speakers, thus leading to the impression that the sound is moving around in the room.

Also great to put your phones to good use if you've already got too many of them ;-)

The application was developed by Stefan and Arnold as a small project for the Interaction Technology course during the summer semester. It is written in Java (Server) / Java ME (Client) and is available for free (open source).

3D games and more – Java ME course materials available

Wed, 16 Jan 2008 15:41:34 +0200

A few minutes ago, the last upload was finally finished and now symbianresources.com does not only feature loads of Symbian OS-related projects and tutorials, but also the course materials of the introductory Java ME course from the Mobile Computing-department of the University of Applied Sciences in Hagenberg, Austria - all available for free.

The slides and challenges are targeted at students with basic knowledge of Java and introduce the specific concepts of the Java Platform, Micro Edition. With almost 400 slides/pages, they cover quite much, but of course do not go too much into specific details that wouldn't be relevant for teaching.

Some examples of the exercises, where solutions are provided with full source code:

A mobile 3D car racing game framework, created with JSR 184 (m3g). Includes: the first basic steps in creating your own 3D scene with Blender, an open source 3D package written in Python, and how to display this 3D scene on a mobile phone.
A client for a multiplayer “Asteroids”-like game (server components and game protocol were developed by my colleague Stephan Drab).
Your own small game, complete with an enemy, bullets, highscores and everything you want from a game – well, almost everything, at least. Based on the boss fights of Schlabo 1, a text mode game that I wrote in QuickBasic at school many years ago.

If you’re interested, take a look at the new Java ME section at symbianresources.com.

I’ve been rather silent on the blogs lately - but now that the semester is coming to an end, you can expect more content to be released soon, including:

ShakerRacer source code and hardware setup instructions
Updated and improved Symbian OS course materials (@ symbianresources.com)
And of course, some fascinating new student projects... I'm looking forward to the results myself :)

Wii Controller + S60 Phone = Motorcycle Game!

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 22:32:45 +0300

Controlling a game on a mobile phone is often a bigger challenge than the game itself — with tiny buttons that are close together, playing a game can be cumbersome and inaccurate. Therefore, designers always have to adapt the games to the keyboard of mobile phones, which naturally limits the possibilities.

WiiRider is a motorcycle game that is controlled with the Nintendo WiiMote - connected to a S60 phone!

For gaming consoles, dedicated gaming hardware makes it possible to play complex and involving games. One of the most recent examples is the success of the Nintendo Wii. Its wireless Bluetooth controller includes great features, like motion sensors. Therefore, many projects have already tried to use it for many other things — e.g. for controlling a roboter.

WiiConnect / WiiRider is a student project by Alexander Erifiu and Mario Grammer (developed at the University of Applied Sciences in Hagenberg), which now enables you to use the controller with your S60 phone.

WiiConnect is a Bluetooth-"driver" for S60 phones. It allows using the features of the Wiimote, including the 3D accelerometer and rumble functionality. WiiConnect is very easy to use — activate Bluetooth on your phone, start the driver and you’re connected to the Wiimote. This application offers the data of the WiiMote to other applications through an internal socket connection.

WiiRider is a motorcycle game, based on Java ME. The controls simulate driving with a motorcycle on a country road. You have to hold the Wiimote like the handlebar of a motorcycle. To accelerate, you symbolically open the throttle by turning the controller. Moving left or right is equally controlled by your motion – you do not have to press any buttons to play the game. To make the game more challenging, you have to evade several obstacles like cows and pigs, but you should try to collect petrol cans to fill up your energy. The goal of the game is to keep up as long as possible!

The services could also be used by other games, of course it would be great to see more games use the Wii controller using this new project. The new N-Gage platform does also looks very promising - let's hope that it will contain games that make innovative use of the mobile phone features like the camera (remember Mozzies from Siemens Mobile?) or acceleration sensors.

You can download WiiConnect / WiiRider for free from symbianresources.com - the zip-file also includes the source code of the WiiRider Java-game, so that you can develop your own games using WiiConnect!