First blog post

So, welcome to my first blog post! I hope you’re all as excited to see this grow as I am!

I’m currently in my final year at Sheffield Hallam University studying Computer Science for Games, and it’s about that time where we are all starting our dissertation projects. This is a large part of the final year and involves us creating a deliverable (a physical piece of work, such as a game, piece of software or hardware) and also writing an extensive report.

I have been lucky enough to have the opportunity to work alongside tech giant IBM for my final year project. One of my ideas was to create a multiplayer augmented reality game as I have been really intrigued by AR tech and what can be achieved with it, in a games setting. This idea was very closely related to a project idea submitted to our university by IBM and I thought it would benefit me greatly by taking on this challenge.

So here we go! My project tile is : Augmented Reality Artificially Intelligent Board Game.

With more and more families being separated due to parent’s having to work away from home, or other such circumstances, regular contact can be quite difficult. This project aims to provide a platform for family members to play together despite their physical distance.

To do this I aim to work with IBM to create a new (or existing) board game that harnesses the power of augmented reality, Watson AI and Watson IoT to provide an immersive and comfortable setting for families to get together and to play together.
The board will have IoT components built in to provide visual feedback for the users, such as LEDs lighting up when territory is taken. Watson will be used in conjunction with this to provide interactions such as voice recognition, facial recognition, and to detect when pieces are moved, giving every user a fluid and consistent experience wherever they are.
To further this project, I will create a companion app for the board to provide the augmented reality aspect. The app will augment the board with 3D graphics, animation and sound to give a more detailed and immersive experience. This will be created inside the Unity engine, as this will allow me to easily create the app for both iOS and Android, making the app as accessible as possible.

The first few stages of this project will be to research the different aspects of AR and IoT tech that will need to go into the creation of the board game. I’ll also need to work out the good/bad design practices for board games, as this will help me make sure that the final product is fun to play for a large age range due to us focusing on family play.

I’ll be blogging about the progress I make weekly, so be sure to stay tuned!

Now, time to do some research!