Here we proudly announce the immediate public release of our first version of Euglena Arcade on Github.
Euglena Arcade
Euglena Arcade is a remake of the biotic game previously known as “Dodge the Euglena”. The game and the hardware were developed by Roland van Dierendonck, Christian Schultz and Pieter van Boheemen at Waag in 2016. It was featured at several international events, such as BioFabricate, CampusParty, International Festival of Technology and Oslo Innovation Week. The documentation can be found on https://bioticgamesatwaag.github.io/
Although the original game was a great success, it had a number of drawbacks. The primary obstacle was the use of Processing as a programming language. Processing is not a mainstream programming language and to make things worse, the code depends on third party libraries. It requires users to install software on their machine and limits the use of the code to desktop devices.
Euglena Arcade now overcomes these limitations by a full rewrite of the source code in Javascript and HTML5. Whenever possible native Javascript has been used, avoiding the use of fancy libraries such as jQuery and Angular. It is designed to work on desktop devices, as well as tablets and smart phones.
The current version is for demonstration purposes only. It contains the following features:
- Requesting the access to the webcam
- Detecting Euglena movement and collision with the virtual player
- Control of the virtual player by keyboard and USB gamepad
- Spawning the player, counting score and tracking the number of lives
The following video shows live game play footage:
Take a look at the source code in the repository linked below or download the v0.1-alpha release.