WizARds
Pun very much intended. WizARds is an AR card game created at Brumhack in 2017.
Players would print a deck of cards, which would then anchor 3D characters and clickable attack actions in augmented reality, displayed on a monitor for that real E-sports vibe.
🤷 Why I Made It
AR was just recently starting to take off, while primarily in industrial fields, as a gamedev at heart I wanted to work a small interactive demo to relive the dreams of my 13-year-old self playing YuGiOh/Pokémon (though I never really knew what I was doing with Pokémon... did anyone?)
⚙️ How I Made It
- AR supported by Vuforia's SDK which worked by uploading images to the cloud to act as labelled triggers. (though, these days I'd opt for an ARCore/ARKit implementation)
- Based on Unity's engine, super easy to implement game logic/systems such as rigging and word-space UI.
- 3 awesome teammates ❤️
⚔️ Challenges
⚔️ Challenge: Image tracking was not reliable, either drifting, taking too long to recognise, or disappearing completely.
🛡️ Solution: Increased image complexity by introducing more elements, the noise generated from the image produced a more recognisable trigger.
Fig A: No background in splash art, or card backing
Fig B: Background for splash art + backing
⚔️ Challenge: Without player-specific cards, a true deck-building game creates an interesting problem of defining each player's deck without scanning every single card before a duel (not a great UX 😅)
🛡️ Solution: Divide the scanning regions into two separate fields, with each player using half the real estate as their play zone. Easily separate between two decks and handle the rest of the game logic as usual.
📕 What I Learned
- Image complexity plays a significant role in creating a smooth experience with image tracking. This learning has been reinforced multiple times over across other projects!
- Learning and implementing an AR Framework in 24 hours is very hectic but very fun
👉 Check it Out!
Yeah... I don't have the repo to this anymore :( sorry! But I hope you enjoy the gif! Here's a pic of us presenting though:
👀 And us winning (ft. sick Microsoft hoodie),
