Last week I submitted the prototype build of my latest augmented reality project, InnAR Wars, to Google’s Build a Tango App Contest. It’s an augmented reality multiplayer space RTS built for Google’s Tango tablet that utilizes the environment around you as a game map. The game uses the Tango’s camera and Area Learning capabilities to superimpose an asteroid-strewn space battlefield over your real-world environment. Two players holding Tangos walk around the room hunting for each other’s bases while sending attack fleets at the other player’s structures.

Making InnAR Wars fun is tricky because I essentially have no control over the map. The battlefield has to fit inside the confines of the real-world environment the tablets are in. Using the Tango’s Area Learning capabilities with the positions of players, I know the rough size of the play area. With this information I adjust the density of planetoids and asteroids based on the size of the room. It’s one small way I can make sure the game at least has an interesting number of objects in the playfield regardless of the size of the area. As you can see from the videos in this post, it’s already being played in a variety of environments.

This brings up the biggest challenge of augmented reality games–How do you make a game fun when you have absolutely no control over the environment in which it’s played? One way is to require the user to set up the play space as if she were playing a board game. By using Tango’s depth camera, you could detect the shapes and sizes of objects on a table and use those as the playfield. It’s up to the user to set it up in a way that’s fun–much like playing a tabletop war game.

For the final release, I’m planning on using Tango’s depth camera to figure out where the room’s walls, ceilings, and floors are. Then I can have ships launch from portals that appear to open on the surfaces of the room. Dealing with the limited precision and performance of the Tango depth camera along with the linear algebra involved in plane estimation is a significant challenge. Luckily, there are a few third-party solutions for this I’m evaluating.

Especially when looking at augmented reality startups’ obligatory fake demo videos, the future of AR gaming seems exciting. But the practical reality of designing a game to be played in reality–which is itself rather poorly designed–can prevent even the most amazing technology from enabling great games. It’s probably going to take a few more hardware generations to not only make the technology usable, but also develop the design language to make great games that work in AR.

If you want to try out the game, I’ll have a few Tangos on hand at FLARB’s VRLA Summer Expo table. Stop by and check it out!