Discover the game with a sandpit as its interface

We’ve seen some strange user interfaces over the years, but none as strange as a sandpit. That’s what Design Mill used for its game Tanked.

In this two-player table-top game, players shape the terrain in the sandpit strategically before the game. Their tanks are projected onto it during gameplay. The angle of the tank on the terrain determines the trajectory of its missiles. Mines are buried in the sand and during the mini-game, players have to dig the sand to uncover them before they go off.

To assess the depth of the terrain, the free Intel RealSense SDK is used, together with an Intel R200 RealSense camera, mounted above the table. As the developer’s story reveals, the camera had to be carefully positioned to capture the game table.

The game uses the Unity 3D game engine and there is example code showing how you can gather depth data from the sensor. There’s an additional article about creating an Intel RealSense SDK interface to Unity 3D UI elements here.

Read the developer’s story here to find out how Tanked was created. This is one of the articles on the Intel Developer Zone, which provides tools, tips and tutorials for developers.

This blog post is sponsored by the Intel Developer Zone, which helps you to develop, market and sell software and apps for prominent platforms and emerging technologies powered by Intel Architecture.