Tag: Augmented reality »

Elemental Combat is a multiplayer game that challenges you to blast away your foes with fire and various other elements. In VR though, not in real life.

You cast these moves with your real hands though, thanks to motion controls. Think The Last Airbender but far cooler and you're along the right lines.

Each move is based on one of the four different elements of air, earth, water, and fire - each of which has a different strength and weakness. Fire is very offensive, but lacks defence for example.

Selecting your favourite element and developing a playstyle is a huge part of the fun here. By the time you're an expert you'll really feel like your style is unique.

You'll do all of this in two different modes. There's a single player that teaches you the basics before you take them into battle with you in multiplayer.

That serves like an FPS, with you performing moves on your friends to defeat them so you have a higher score by the end.

Elemental Combat took the top prize as Best VR Game at the PGC XR Helsinki Indie Competition, and even ended up as a runner up best XR Game.

So stop wasting time and go and grab Elemental Combat right now on Steam. It's even 10% off right now to celebrate the launch.

This article is sponsored as part of Steel Media Preferred Partners.

There's no need to panic about Pokemon GO. Though you're almost certain to have read articles in various places about how it has fallen off in terms of popularity since its stellar debut, that was inevitable. When your star burns as bright as Pokemon GO's did, literally the only place to go is down.

The numbers tell a slightly different story. Pokemon GO is still a top 20 app as we head into the holiday weekend in the U.S., even bouncing up a spot from the previous chart. That's not too shabby for a game that's been out for two months.

More importantly, it's still the top grossing iPhone game (though unlike some of its competitors for that throne, it's way further down on iPad). That should give Niantic all the resources it needs to keep plugging away on updates.

And make no mistake, those updates are definitely needed.

The Team Leaders in Pokemon GO have had it pretty easy up until now. They show up when players reach level 5, make their cases for joining their respective teams, and that's pretty much it. Light work, as Floyd Mayweather might say.

Niantic's latest update for the game changes that situation and turns every Team Leader into a consultant of sorts. Can't blame them for that, as there's money to be had in that field, or so I'm told.

They still don't have to commute or work out of an office, but here's what you need to know about the Team Leaders' new duties and the new update in general.

In the U.S., the bloom is off the Pokemon Go rose ever so slightly. It's still doing great, sitting atop the top grossing chart as it has for some time, but it's no longer among the top 10 free apps in downloads, possibly because darn near everyone who wants it already has it.

But while it may no longer be the all encompassing phenomenon it was in July and early August in the United States, it's as big as ever in some other countries -- maybe even bigger, if that's possible. Let's take a quick look at five places where Pokemon GO is still the unquestioned number one mobile game.

You may have heard people talk about a mythical "fate worse than death" before, but here's something that definitely fits that bill: getting banned from playing Pokemon GO -- forever.

We're being tongue in cheek while saying that, but it's happening more and more often. As reported by various media outlets over the last few days, Niantic has been issuing permanent bans to some Pokemon GO players for what it says are violations of the game's terms of service. To be fair, most people never read the TOS for, well, anything, but some of the issues the developers have pointed out are clear.

Things like using bots are actions that only the most passionate believers that users should be able to do whatever they want with software tend to defend. Other violations pointed out by Niantic are less obvious and have already been the subject of some debate within the Pokemon GO community.

But the rules are the rules, and all we can do is roll with them. In the interest of keeping you in the game, here are three things you shouldn't do if you want to avoid the banhammer.

It's hard to remember one aspect of a popular mobile game that's caused as much hand-wringing as the 'Nearby' tab in Pokemon GO. Just in case you're one of the (very) few people who hasn't played the game or followed its coverage, the tab was supposed to offer a way for players to have an easy reference for which Pokemon were nearby and approximately how far away they were.

The phrase "supposed to" is the key there. It never functioned as intended thanks to what gamers dubbed the "three-step glitch," causing all the Pokemon to appear as if they were an equal distance from the player. Instead of fixing it, Niantic deactivated the feature altogether in one of the game's first updates, causing a predictable overreaction from some of the more passionate Pokemon GO enthusiasts.

The thing is, they had a bit of a point, in the sense that when paired with Niantic cutting off support for third-party tracking apps, gamers were left without a way to even know which Pokemon were around, much less hunt them down. The latest Pokemon GO update doesn't offer a fix, but it does provide a roadmap for how the developers might proceed.

There's been a lot of buzz going through the Pokemon GO community this week after the game received several small updates in the span of a few days. Most of the attention focused on the fact that Niantic removed the infamous three-step tracking feature that was supposed to tell players how close Pokemon were -- but didn't, as it never worked right.

While the debate over that change will likely continue to rage on, something else may have been slipped into the game without quite as many people noticing. Namely, it might now be harder to catch 'em all because it's harder to catch them at all.

Forget big, splashy content additions for the time being. Pokemon GO received an update over the weekend, and it mostly came with a whimper instead of a bang.

That's not to say it wasn't welcome. The update, which hit both iOS and Android, fixed one of the more annoying things that didn't work with the game for most of its existence, made a key activity simultaneously easier and more difficult, and introduced some unintentional humour (we think) into the mix.

There's no question that candy is dandy in Pokemon GO. You need big quantities of it to evolve your Pokemon, and when combined with stardust, it can be used to power up your favorite pocket monsters as well, making them more formidable for the gym battles that await you.

But the dilemma facing many players is which of those purposes is best suited for your candy. Since it only takes a single piece to power up any Pokemon, using it that way doesn't seem too wasteful.

As it turns out, the consensus from people who have been playing Pokemon GO nonstop since launch is that even a single piece of candy devoted to powering up Pokemon is probably a piece of candy wasted. Here are some compelling arguments for why you should rarely, if ever, power up your Pokemon.

Let me know if this scenario sounds familiar. You've got a Pokemon GO gym battle within easy walking distance, and you've visited it many times. Maybe you've even dropped one of your Pokemon there to help defend the place and reap the benefits.

Inevitably though, one of the other teams always comes and beats up your squad, flying its colors proudly. And since the Pokemon they leave there are impossibly tough, there's not a darn thing you can do about it.

Pixel Press Floors has a lofty goal: to make it possible to turn sketches of video game levels into ones playable in their platforming game app, done through the magic of augmented reality. Download and print the Floors Sketch Guide and Sketch Sheets, follow the instructions for layouts and objects in the levels, and if properly done, it'll be turned into a level that can be played in the app. It's also possible to draw levels in the app itself.

Check out the trailer below, and the PixelPress Vimeo channel for more videos on how it works. Pixel Press Floors will be available on April 30.

Virtual Reality was a major theme at GDC this year, but Seebright’s prototype head-mounted display (HMD) stood out to me for one very important reason: it’s not a gadget-filled headset, but rather a frame to hold your iOS device and turn it into an affordable, self-contained VR headset.

The device is still in the preliminary stages, and as such will undoubtedly be seeing some deign tweaks in the future, but what I was able to see during my hands-on demo was quite promising. Using special software, the iOS device will display two separate images at slightly different angles. Once it’s placed into the headset interchangeable mirrors (one for a translucent heads-up display and another for a more solid image meant for gaming) reflect the images back to the user’s eyes and create the 3D image. What’s more, it’s able to use the device’s own motion tracking technology in order to allow users to look around in their virtual environment.

Personally I’m quite interested to see what Seebright does with their prototype in the coming months. The combination of accessibility (due to pricing) and the fact that it use preexisting iOS technology certainly opens it up to all manner of possibilities.

I've killed many a zombie, both in video games and board games, but never in a combination of the two. That's the sort of vibe I'm getting from Table Zombies, though; it's like a weird hybrid of video and table top game in the form of augmented reality. What's currently available is more of a demo level than anything, but there are plans to add even more levels and zombies in the future.

Playing Table Zombies will require a bit of work - you'll have to print out the various markers yourself - but once everything is ready you'll be able to set it up on your dining room table or your desk and start blasting away. Or you could just spin the board around and marvel at the tiny hopeless battle from different angles as it unfolds.

You can download the Table Zombies lite version/demo now, for free.

All Things D reports that Ingress, the augmented-reality game from Google, will be coming to iOS sometime in 2014. The game is currently available on Android and has hundreds of thousands of players every month. The game uses the world around you as players from all over join one of two teams to uncover clues about a mysterious technology. It also forces players to explore and collaborate with strangers to earn points.