Taterz

Base hit
Swing and Miss

Inspiration

We were inspired by our love for baseball and wanted to create a game that lets players experience the excitement of stepping up to the plate. We wanted to take a traditional sport and make it interactive by allowing players to use their phones as baseball bats.

What it does

Taterz is an interactive baseball game where players use their phones to swing a virtual bat. Players can face a pitcher throwing different pitches, time their swings, and try to hit singles, doubles, triples, and home runs. The game also features base running and defensive plays, bringing more of the baseball experience to life.

How we built it

We combined programming, game mechanics, and phone motion controls to create an interactive baseball experience. We worked on connecting physical phone movements to in-game swings while programming the pitcher, batter, base runners, and defenders to work together.

Challenges we ran into

One of our biggest challenges was calibrating the phone's movement with the virtual bat so swings would register accurately. We also had to figure out how to make base runners run to the correct bases, teach defenders to react and make appropriate plays, and program pitchers to throw balls, strikes, and different types of pitches. Another challenge was making hits produce realistic outcomes, from singles and doubles to triples and home runs. Getting all these systems to work together consistently required a lot of testing, debugging, and teamwork.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We're proud of turning our idea into an interactive baseball game that uses real phone movements as part of the gameplay. We also worked toward bringing multiple parts of baseball together, including pitching, hitting, base running, and fielding, rather than focusing on hitting alone.

What we learned

We learned how challenging game development can be when several mechanics need to work together. We improved our programming, debugging, communication, and teamwork skills while learning the importance of testing controls and adjusting game mechanics based on how they actually perform.

What's next for Taterz

We want to improve phone motion calibration, add more realistic pitching and defensive AI, and make base running smoother. In the future, we could add multiplayer matches, scoreboards, different stadiums, difficulty levels, and home run competitions so players can compete with their friends and chase the highest score.