As the starting point for developing haptic and otherwise non-visual games for a project in collaboration with Harvestworks’ “Cultural Innovation Fund” program, I’ve been poking around the Android documentation for developing apps with Processing for tablets and mobile devices. Since this is a relatively new feature for Processing developers (and since the Android syntax is a bit weird), the first step was to figure out how to get everything working.
In the spirit of sharing, I’ve created a GitHub repository for these experiments, as well as a detailed set of instructions for getting started. I have also created a GitHub repository for this project, which will be a bit of a mess over the next 3-4 months of development but will hopefully get cleaned up as the project nears completion.
- GitHub repo with Android examples
- Install instructions for Mac/Processing users
- GitHub repo for haptic games
These examples and projects are being developed for the Google Nexus 10 tablet – it seemed the beefiest and most flexible for the price. If you have problems with any of these examples on your device, please let me know so I can update them!
In the pipeline:
- Better control with the vibration motor
- Research into the role that sound + other feedback (visual, tactile, etc) plays to clarify or intensify interaction
- Consider trade-offs for games created for mobile devices vs custom hardware (accessibility, reliability, price, etc)
Above: a giant d-pad