AR / VR / XR 2015 Completed

SMART: Some Mobile Augmented Reality Thing

An AR tower defense game built with Unity and Qualcomm Vuforia for Android. Place 4 physical marker cards on any flat surface and defend headquarters from robotic spider monsters in full 3D augmented reality.

UnityVuforiaAndroidARAugmented RealityTower DefenseC#CMUGame Creation SocietyMobile

Overview

SMART (Some Mobile Augmented Reality Thing) is a tower defense game with marker-based augmented reality, made at Carnegie Mellon University as part of the CMU Game Creation Society in Spring 2015.

You position 4 physical SMART cards on any flat playing surface, then point your Android phone’s camera at them to bring the game to life in full 3D. A virtual battlefield materializes over the cards, and waves of robotic spider monsters march toward your headquarters. Your job: stop them before they break through.

Gameplay

Players have access to three types of defense turrets to place and upgrade across the AR battlefield:

  • Gatling Gun — rapid-fire, high volume suppressive fire
  • Missile Launcher — high-damage explosive projectiles
  • Lightning Blaster — area-of-effect electric damage

Robotic spider enemies spawn in waves and pathfind toward the main HQ marker. The game ends when the headquarters is overrun.

Technology

  • Qualcomm Vuforia — image target recognition and AR tracking for the 4 SMART marker cards
  • Unity — 3D game engine, physics, pathfinding, and turret logic
  • Android SDK — native mobile deployment

Credits

This was a large collaborative project made entirely by CMU students:

  • John Choi — Project Leader
  • Barry Li — Lead Programmer
  • Mark Mendell — Lead Programmer
  • Pratik Prakash — Programmer
  • Jon Xia — Programmer
  • Zhuoyang Wu — Programmer
  • Kayla Jin — Programmer
  • Sophia Zhu — Programmer
  • Roger Liu — Programmer
  • Yijing Chen — Lead 3D Artist
  • Huayun Huang — Lead 2D Artist
  • Cloud Tian — Music & SFX
  • Madeline Duque — 3D Artist
  • Evan Shimizu — 2D Artist