Ever since smart phones have been a thing I’ve wanted to see an AR FPS phone game. I’m a little surprised this has never happened, at least to my knowledge. I suppose something that plays like laser-tag Call of Duty would be the ideal, but I’ve had some thoughts on implementation that would take (I’m guessing here. Not really a programmer.) a bit less coding wizardry and probably be about as fun. Here’s the ideas some of the mechanics of it:
- The game is meant to be played in open areas and players’ hitboxes are determined by geolocation. Your hitbox is just a giant sphere that other players can see when looking in your direction with their phone.
- The default weapon is a mortar gun of sorts. You have to tilt your phone to control the arc of the shot. It’s a slow moving projectile, in order to make for more gamey-ness.
- There are long cooldowns between reloads. Maybe 15 secs or so to give time for moving, planning and other actions
- One of the other actions is a flashbang. If you point your camera toward the player and hit the flashbang button the your phone’s camera flash goes off and the other player’s phone screen goes completely white for a few seconds, rendering them unable to do anything but move.
- The flashbang is a multi-use tool. If you see another player’s mortar round is arcing toward you or a friend, use the flashbang to intercept the shot. The flashbang is on a longer cooldown than the regular shot so managing it’s usage is important.
- I like the idea of just the one gun, but single use power-ups. One could make your shot into a bowling bowl of sorts that travels in a line. One power up that negates the next damage taken or does “melee” damage to any enemy whose hitbox intersects with you. etc.