![]() By around 2010, with a few other products in the market (VX Sports, Zephyr, Polar etc), athlete tracking has gained a bit more traction in the world, and also got into other team sports such as soccer and (field) hockey. As both of these companies originated from Australia, it’s no surprise that the early adopters of these tracking systems were Australian (Rules) Football Clubs and Australian Rugby Clubs (League and Union). When it all first started, there were 2 main companies/brands that developed and sold athlete tracking systems (using IMUs and GPS) – Catapult Sports and GPSports (GPSports was later acquired by Catapult). Some of them also integrate heart rate data from heart rate chest straps. Since the early 2000s, IMUs with GPS tracking have been used to track athletes in team sports to monitor their performance. ![]() ![]() And the level of personalisation we are able to deliver through leveraging the social graph data – such as signing your contract for River Park FC – is pretty special.A Very Very Brief History Of Wearable Tracking In Team Sports “Through blending live action video and first-person perspective 3D gameplay we’ve created amazingly realistic match experiences. “We wanted to test that the game’s on-field parts were fun and engaging, and Unity allowed us to build the 3D elements quickly to get the all important user feedback. “When building something new and untried, it’s important to get user feedback early on in the project,” offers Didd. Merging the filmed sections and 3D gameplay in a way that would not jar the player from the illusion of the game world proved tough, and user testing became an essential part of balancing the blend of typically contrary visual approaches. It wasn’t all plain sailing for the I Am PlayR team. Our developers work on writing the scripts and setting up the game objects and environments, then we pass on the Unity project to our designers who can play around with the public settings to create the variations they want.” IN THE MIX “We also take great advantage of the clear and concise Unity interface, which works really well for our developers and designers. “For I Am PlayR we have all the characters, standard player actions and stadiums saved as prefabs – so when it comes to creating a new match chance you don’t have to start from scratch – you just play with the ready-made pieces. “The fact that you can utilise prefabs to store a master copy of a game object and then instantiate copies of it at will for quick set up of your scenes is great,” he confirms. This speed is essential to I Am PlayR, where we are we constantly creating new game content and responding to feedback from users.”Įqually, Didd and his colleagues were impressed by the prefabs that make Unity such a popular engine. “It’s quick and easy to tweak the scripts and then click ‘play’ to see the effects immediately, without having to wait for the code to compile every time. ![]() “Unity lends itself really well to fast iterative development,” says Didd of Unity’s other Facebook-friendly features. They have been especially awe-struck by its AB testing functionality, which has allowed the studio to optimise the install flow and user uptake that is so vital to making a Facebook game a success. The We R Interactive team toiling away on I Am PlayR have certainly been impressed by the engine’s suitability for making games on the ever-alluring social network. But the active community for which the engine outfit is famed for, along with a wealth of online tutorials geared towards developing for social networks, means it is emerging as an increasingly popular tool for Facebook games development. Unity is, of course, most commonly associated with iOS and browser games. Also, the fact that Unity supports both Android and iOS development was a key consideration in our mobile strategy for I Am PlayR.” THE BEAUTIFUL GAME “It’s great that the production team are able to get hands on with building training drills and other game elements. “The fact that Unity is so user friendly was one of the key reasons we chose the Unity engine for the development of I Am PlayR,” says We R Interactive executive producer Steve Didd of betting the studio’s creative vision on the engine. Not bad for an original IP that serves as the studio’s first release.Īnd who has developed the engine powering this soccer-themed Facebook game, with ambitions for Android, iOS and Flash? Unity of course. ![]()
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