FindAR

Bored in your own room? Have fun with AR & sprinkle a bit of fun to your room. Race the clock to find items strewn across your room. Move around your room, find the said items in the said time & win.

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Inspiration

With augmented reality being the next frontier in mobile apps, we wanted to build a game with AR. Our main intention was to keep the game simple, light, creative, fun, offline support and versatile across any age barriers. We made FindAR, mostly pronounced as "Finder".

What it does

The game requires the gamer to look his environment through phone camera, identify targets in augmented reality and select. The game will be clocked and the gamer who gets all the targets within the said time wins. As an added advantage, user can play any levels in offline too and then can sync with online and get updates once he is back to internet.

As simple as that.

How we built it

The Idea

Build an application on the mobile platform that's simple, creative, engaging to multiple age groups and uses futuristic concepts. Supports offline. Driven by the passion to do small things in a great way, we concluded on building FindAR.

Tech Stack

React-Native,Viro Framework and MongoDB Mobile.

The Fun

We started the development and went about building the code base. That was the usual part. The Fun part was when we started testing our code in offline. We created quite a buzz roaming around the halls pointing out cameras. People invited themselves to try out the game and were excited when we set about tweaking the AR objects.

Challenges we ran into

Infrastructure Setup

Being the first time into Mobile development, the very first challenge was setting up the Dev Environment with tools. The conventional Android Studio ended up being too heavy for our simple minds. With more exploration we found Viro and life became easy.

Property Propagation

We had successfully added the AR Screen to a Viro box and was able to see the object in AR. However, for our we wanted to select the object and pass on the state to the header which was running on React-Native. After 1 sleepless night and a bit of Viro tutorial, we found out how this needs to be done.

3D Axis Management

We succeeded placing the objects randomly on the AR screen but slogged around fixing them in a required position. Our game plan was to view the objects in AR and commit its position to mind and when requested think back to where the object was displayed. Fixing up the 3D coordinates was a mandate.

Offline Game Availability & Game Agility

The AR objects had to be bundled up with the app making it heavy. Imagine loading 36000 objects required across all levels loading when the first level is loaded.

3D objects required the Spotlight parameters to be perfect for pristine visibility. This was over-burning the app, making it slower.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Our first baby steps into the gaming industry especially in the most futuristic concepts in mobile app development turned out to be quite successful. This development has elevated us from just exploring new frontiers to Game Developer. It is not every day that you try something new and it turns out be a life changer!

What we learned

Apart from learning not to play this game in a hall with a stairwell ("Ouch"), we took the following learnings:

MongoDB Mobile:

  • A one stop solution for offline data storage.
  • Unified data access mechanisms for cross platform applications.
  • Built in sync eases data sync complications around offline data storage.

React-Native & Viro Framework

  • Improving UI rendering and organizing components by granularizing a regular HTML CSS module.
  • With the Viro Framework working on AR concepts becomes such a breeze. No additional AR/VR libraries are required.

Gaming Concepts and 3D Rendering

  • Creative UI was second to none.
  • Working was coordinates X Y & Z needed an artistic lookout.

What's next for findAR...

FindAR will:

  • Develop into a 3D game where the gamer will find and identify 3D object.
  • Start having levels with increasing complexities and game plans.
  • Develop into a suite of AR games instead of a single game. Some of the ideas include:
    • Finding clues at a crime scene (Age Restricted)
    • Finding Easter Eggs around the lawn
    • Find Alphabets/Numbers in the right order (Educational Use)
    • Race the clock and find required object
    • Bid with Cash, Race the clock, Find required object and double your bid! (Age Restricted)
    • Find the right parts and build a 3D model of maybe an airplane, a car etc.,

How you can help

Suggestions, Comments and Guidance. Obviously, Love & Support.

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