Beginning of a New Project

Yesterday we were assigned a new project. To design an app for an iOS device. This brief is quite broad and gives me a lot of room to experiement and play around with the technology available. I have had a couple of ideas I would like to explore and am looking forward to playing around with these ideas. Before getting too into any of these ideas, or even posting them here, I wanted to look at what the technology offers me. I don't want the technical specs for my game or app to be too high. This limits my audience to people with only the latest and greatest tech. I have decided to look at the iPhone 3GS for my apps minimum specifications. This means that it's not only the people who can afford to splash out on an iPad that get to enjoy my app/game.

iPhone 3GS Specs
Here are some of the specifications I feel could be used in interesting and unique ways to create a truly interesting game or app.

• Multi-Touch: Although now standard in most smart phones and has been exploited a lot in recent, is still a useful tool for making apps easy to use and dynamic.
• Camera: The iPhone 3GS has a 3-megapixel camera. This affords some interesting oppertunities for Alternate Reality apps. 
• Accelerometer: The Accelerometer allows the iPhone to detect the speed at which it is travelling. This could be used for a number of different apps. Alternate Reality, Racing, Tilt based controls and others could use this feature.
• Proximity Sensor: Like the Accelerometer, this could have a number of interesting apps that make use of it in unique ways. 
• Microphone: This allows for voice recognition apps, or sound visualisers. A whole host of aural possibilities a waiting to be explored.
• 600mhz Processor: Although this appears quite limiting, the Nintendo 64's processor was only 93.75mhz and that has released some of the most memorable games in gaming history.
• 256mb RAM: Again this feels quite limiting. However, so long as I make sure not to have too many things going on at once this is more than managable. 

I think this gives me a lot to experiment and explore with. I think there is a lot of untapped potential involving these specs that I can use to create something interesting and unique.

Random Ideas
 Although I havn't done nearly enough research yet in order to pick any idea as definite yet, I thought it might be a good idea to record them and my thoughts on them.

My first idea was of a Tamagochi-esque app with monsters. The principal is the same has the Tamagotchi (http://www.bandai.com/tamagotchi/), to care for and look after a little creature. However, the app would take on a much more darkly comical approach, as well as taking advantage of the superior hardware. The monsters would be designed to look as if they could genuinly be scary and cause some damage. This differs from the typical Japanese obsession with cute 'n' fuzziness and will likely attract a much more adult audience. In addition to this, the content of the game would also be much darker, such as the ability to feed the creatures blood or even whole people. The app could easily link with other iPhones to get other creatures to interact with each other. e.g. fight, breed, play badminton. Although I think as much freedom as possible should be given to the player in terms of environment and how the creatures are interacted with, I think that this should be limited with the monster itself.
The player could, for example, be able to edit the creatures genes while it's still in the egg. The genes will have only a limited chance of actually effecting the final form of the fully grown monster. This keeps the player surprised when the monster suddenly grows a new tentacle or sprouts horns from the knees.

The next idea is based on the relativly unexploited augmented reality technology that the iOS systems allows for. As opposed to a game, the app will be more of a toy to play with. It will be based around Alice in Wonderland and other references to psychedelic culture. The app would use the camera, along with the accelerometer and the proximity sensor to create planes that fit over the image on the camera. The app then places psychedelic patterns on the planes and warps them in real-time. This could be a very entertaining little app that really pushes the technology. The only problem is that it may push it a little too far. I'm not sure augmented reality technology is at the level where this app would fun, but rather frustrating and laggy.