Hey guys,
This post is going to be a little bit different but it is something which I think needs advertising! I was given the chance to read and review a book called ‘Developing AR Games for iOS and Android’ by Dominic Cushnan and Hassan El Habbak. As some of you know I worked on an AR game called ‘Pygmy Panic’ (Which you can view on the home page) so I was really interested in what I could learn from this book.
After reading the book I can strongly recommend this book to anyone who is planning to make an AR and I strongly recommend to those whose first time it is with making an AR game for the mobile market. The book helps first time users extremely well, by taking the time and discussing some of the basic of Unity as well as nicely designed diagrams which will help the player. With the fact that the book helps explain all of this incredibly well, I feel that readers will learn a lot about AR and using it with Unity.
My favourite section of the book is when they explain what makes a good marker. This section was incredible as it took me and my team a while to figure out what picture gave us 5 stars and how we could improve it. With the help of the book developers should be able to create their own 5 star marker in NO time! I read this part twice just to make sure nothing got past me.
Other area I am happy they addressed was that the reason why there are not many AR games. Which is because publishers/developers don’t see a profit in this market so many of them won’t take the risk. I agree that AR games can be new and exciting instead of a tech demo, this then leads to teaching the reader how to make an AR wack-a-mole which is pretty cool.
Two things I would of liked to of seen in the game would of been looking at the other plugin for AR I know it was mentioned briefly but just a bit more detail on why use Vuforia (I know that it is the best free choice out there) but just say why. Second point just to talk about some of the AR games out their already and discuss about the theory maybe and how us as developers can learn from their pros and cons.
Overall guys I strongly recommend this book to people who are interested in creating an AR game for the mobile. If you have never made an AR game for mobile then this is a MUST buy! Its not a long book but what you can learn from this book is amazing!
http://goo.gl/lhQHmz
Thanks guys and lets continue