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

The future of the genre


With the popularity of Pokemon Go and the cultural shift that occurred because of it, one can only assume that the location-based and AR genres are now mainstream gaming platforms. Previously, GPS functions were only rarely used on mobile devices, and now they have become mainstream.

This shift will not only encourage better GPS capabilities on mobile devices, but that in turn will allow for apps and games to consume more accurate location data. Also, GPS power consumption will likely be reduced and both these factors will have a positive effect for those developing location-based apps or games.

As apps and games begin to consume more GPS and GIS data from services such as Google or others, it could be assumed that prices will be reduced and limitations on data will be increased. That may sound counter-intuitive, but Google is able to supply those services cheaply because of usage tracking. Google will then typically use that usage tracking to support services like...