New Project: Team-Tactics

So what is it about? Well, it's meant to be a playground for exploring intuitive and efficient ways to control/direct virtual entities - or simply a turn based football (soccer) game.

As some might know, my current research is about interaction metaphors for 3D scenes using novel input modalities (multi-touch, motion-sensors, video, ...). Thereby, a special focus lies on concurrent user interaction with both shared and networked devices. Although I might not be able to share much information about this before scientifically published, I believe the evaluation platform should be open right from the beginning. And why shouldn't it be something fun. A tactical football game will fit:

• the rules are not too complicated to understand and implement


• the big team size and typical player proximities are ideal for cooperative/competitive interaction


• easy to realize in both 2D/3D as well as in various levels of abstraction


• my Ph.D. supervisor is crazy about that football (!FC Barcelona!)

The gameplay will most likely consist of two repeating phases: First, the tactics are defined/adjusted by altering the players' next actions. Afterwards, all the movements are simulated concurrently. Hopefully, this 'genre' (half real-time tactics?) facilitates the strategic/tactical emphasis.

Except for this choice, everything else is still open. The idea is to prototype a lot and to find the most fun and intuitive concepts. (Clearly, the target audience includes casual gamers.)
I guess this is also the place to mention that help is always welcome: if you want to contribute design/interaction ideas, code, graphics, music/sounds or anything else - please let me know.

OK, that's it for now. If you're interested, please follow the dedicated blog at teamtacticsproject.blogspot.com - I intend to write a regular development diary and promise to write at least one post tomorrow.