Abstract

1. Casino Kingdom – Mobile Casino Platform for Android Computer Science Tom Harrigan and Dr. Christian Shin, Faculty Advisor Abstract Features Trophies and Chips Android is the fastest growing platform in the mobile market. Casino Kingdom is a game application written for Android devices. Casino Kingdom will offer multiple casino games from one application. Additional aspects of the game will include trophies and leader boards. Due to its modular design, it can initially be released with a limited number of games and include additional games over time. Allowing players to purchase additional in-game chips can achieve monetization goals. In addition, a future monetized release of a tablet-based version is planned. Areas researched in the development of this app include game theory and touch screen user interfaces. Trophies – Trophies are a way of adding gaming mechanics into the use of the Casino Kingdom application. Trophies are awarded based on accomplishments in the game. By implementing a trophy or award system, we encourage users to explore the game and spend additional time in the application. Trophies are awarded for reaching goals such as high chip counts, hitting jackpots, winning risky bets and winning tournaments. Chips – Chips in their most general form are a representation of user score in Casino Kingdom. By interacting with a database, leaderboards can be created in order to see how a player ranks against others in the game. To add more value to the game and to the importance of achieving high chip counts, chips also offer additional benefits in the game. While all games will be unlocked upon installing Casino Kingdom, additional features can be unlocked by reaching certain chip levels. For example, after winning 5,000 chips, players can unlock additional slot machines that offer a different look and feel as well as multiple paylines and different winning combinations, amounts and jackpots. Casino Kingdom is targeting a market of games with relatively few competing applications. While a large number of casino games exist for Android devices, Casino Kingdom aims to offer the full experience of a casino by offering multiple casino games in one application. Rather than having to download an application per game, Casino Kingdom allows one to play their favorite casino games from a single application. This allows a players chip count to follow them throughout the experience, as they unlock trophies and additional games. Key features of Casino Kingdom include: Ability to play multiple casino games from a single application Trophy room to view in game accomplishments, such as winning tournaments or hitting a jackpot Leaderboard to see how a player ranks against others Game Screens Monetization Games Casino Kingdom will launch as a free application for Android 2.x devices. It is a full featured application and has no restrictions due to being a free application. The application is ad supported and will display these advertisements on a small area of the bottom of game screens. Research includes optimizing ad content to the viewing audience as well as marketing the Casino Kingdom app itself to others through existing advertising outlets on the Android platform. The tablet/Android 3.0 version will launch as a paid application and will contain no advertising. Aside from being optimized for higher resolution devices and a user interface based on a larger screen, it will also offer games specifically developed for tablet devices. These games are those which have more complex layouts, such as craps. Pricing will be based on existing application prices in order to find an appealing price point at which to maximize downloads and revenue. Slot Machine – Slot machine is the first game programmed and released in Casino Kingdom. The initial build of the slot machine required setting up custom ListViews in order to create the vertical scrolling wheels of the slot machine. Additional time has been spent programming the logic for winning combinations. Multiple slot machines will be created, with future machines allowing multiple paylines and taking diagonal combinations into consideration as well. Roulette – The roulette game is centered around a spinning roulette wheel. Once setting up the wheel is completed, programming the behavior of the roulette ball will create a fun experience for the player by randomizing the position of the ball throughout play. Research will be done in the area of 2D graphics in order to properly simulate ball behavior on screen. Roulette will be the second game introduced into Casino Kingdom Blackjack – Blackjack will be the first card game in Casino Kingdom. Research will be done in basic animation to simulate cards being dealt to the player. Poker – Poker will be a first attempt at playing a game over a network with other human players, as well as the option to play against computer opponents. Players will be assigned to a poker room on a first come first serve basis. This will also be the first game in which trophies will be awarded for winning tournaments. Areas of research include working over a network in order to facilitate gameplay and using a webserver to host rooms and tournaments. Craps – Craps will be introduced only in the paid version for tablet devices. By introducing this game only on the tablet device, it provides incentive for users of the free version to become paying customers. Android 3.0 SDK was released in February 2011. Since this is Android’s first tablet operating system, a much smaller number of applications exist in the Android Market for these devices. This provides a big opportunity for developers to establish their applications as the default in their respective categories. Creating the craps game will provide a learning experience in developing for version 3.0 and tablet devices. Other areas of learning include user interface and user experience for tablet devices, which have substantially more screen real estate than handset devices. Development Cycle Code Samples The development of Casino Kingdom is focused around its modular design. By allowing each game to operate independently from other games, we are able to release early and frequently. The minimum requirements to launch are having at least one functioning game. After reaching this point, the first version can be released. Energy can then be focused on developing additional games, enhancing features of the trophy system, etc. Each release after the initial release can add more games to the casino, creating a more complete virtual casino experience. By releasing early, we can enter into the market at a time when competition is at a minimum. By adding major features, such as new games to every release, we maximize potential download numbers in the Android Market. Tablets: Android 3.0 Honeycomb Initiating and spinning the slot machine Testing for winning slot machine combinations of three symbols in a row The recent release of Android 3.0 has opened up a whole new market to Android and mobile developers. Tablets offer more powerful hardware and features than handsets and allow for advanced layouts and user interfaces. Advanced hardware allows for more intense graphics processing in applications, opening the door to more realistic animations. Casino Kingdom will have enhanced game screens and layouts for a better user experience and will also include additional games. These games, such as craps, are better represented on the larger screen of a tablet device than with the limited screen space of a handset. Creating Custom Items and Utilizing the Community Utilizing Hardware An initial hurdle in the development of Casino Kingdom was creating scroll wheels for the slot machine. Creating every aspect of an application from scratch leads to increased development time and can increase the cost of a project dramatically in a commercial production environment. An important part of creating and programming feasible projects is being able to use portions of existing code effectively in order to decrease development time. The initial idea in creating custom scroll wheels for the slot machine was to modify a gallery in order to allow vertical scrolling. Gallery widgets allow images to be scrolled through horizontally. By automating the scrolling in order to spin and modifying the widget to allow vertical scrolling, it would be possible to create our scroll wheels. The gallery widget however, does not allow any changes in orientation. The best option at this point was to create a custom ListView and attach an ImageView to it in order to scroll images. By utilizing the existing developer community around Android in the StackOverflow community, I was able to interact with other developers who had faced similar hurdles in their own projects. These discussions flushed out requirements of what would be needed in order to create the scroll wheel objects. Eventually, I came across and open source project called android-wheel by Yuri Kanivets. This project allowed me to create the scroll wheels very quickly and also offered the ability to identify which objects were in focus, or where the wheel landed. This allowed me to focus more time on game logic such as winning combinations, trophies, scoring, animation, look and feel, as well as other aspects that a user would seek in his or her gaming experience. Native Android applications are able to use the hardware of the Android device in order to enhance the experience of using an application. The Casino Kingdom application takes advantage of accelerometers in the Android device. These sensors can measure the movement and speed of a device. By utilizing SensorEventListener() and SensorManager, we are able to integrate movement of the Android device into the gameplay of the application, allowing the player to interact more deeply with the game. We use movement of the device by the player to perform in-game actions such as throwing dice and pulling the arm on a slot machine.