Book Image

Augmented Reality Game Development

By : Micheal Lanham
Book Image

Augmented Reality Game Development

By: Micheal Lanham

Overview of this book

The heyday of location-based augmented reality games is upon us. They have been around for a few years, but the release of Pokémon Go was a gamechanger that catalyzed the market and led to a massive surge in demand. Now is the time for novice and experienced developers alike to turn their good ideas into augmented reality (AR) mobile games and meet this demand! If you are keen to develop virtual reality games with the latest Unity 5 toolkit, then this is the book for you. The genre of location-based AR games introduces a new platform and technical challenges, but this book will help simplify those challenges and show how to maximize your game audience. This book will take you on a journey through building a location-based AR game that addresses the core technical concepts: GIS fundamentals, mobile device GPS, mapping, map textures in Unity, mobile device camera, camera textures in Unity, accessing location-based services, and other useful Unity tips. The technical material also discusses what is necessary for further development to create a multiplayer version of the game. At the end, you will be presented with troubleshooting techniques in case you get into trouble and need a little help.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Augmented Reality Game Development
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Introducing the Google Places API


We will use the Google Places API to populate the virtual world around the player with references to real-world locations or places. Since we already used the Google Static Maps API, adding another service should be straightforward. However, unlike the maps API, the places API is far more restrictive on usage. This means that we will need to undertake additional set-up steps and modify the way we access the service. Not to mention, there will be a direct impact on our business model when we ship.

Note

Another direct competitor to the Google Places API is Foursquare. Foursquare has far fewer restrictive usage limits, but does require additional authentication mechanisms. We will revisit this topic again when we will start Chapter 9, Finishing the Game.

In order to start using the Google Places API, we will need to register and create new API key. This key will allow your app/game to make 1000 queries a day, which isn't very many, when spread over multiple players...