Only a year ago, the Google Maps Platform for Games was developed, an interesting tool for game developers that allows them to develop augmented reality games that adapt to the real world and take care of the physiognomy and conditions in any place where the player is in real time, based on Google Maps data.
Google points out that the platform’s capabilities allow players to know aspects such as the amount of traffic on a street at a given time, and whether a business area is full of people on the days of the daily and empty weekend, or whether they are in a public or private building, or even opening and closing shops and restaurants.
Now, the Google Maps platform for games is evolving, so games can be better tailored to the conditions at any location. In this sense, the platform will now offer games three new ways to adapt to the real world.
First, it offers the ability for games to offer experiences with movement based on routing algorithms in Google Maps, so that players can instruct monsters to track another player, fly an airplane to leave supplies in a safe house, or participate in missions through a futuristic city based on Google examples.
On the other hand, games can also take biodata into account, with access to information about the type of land cover of a particular location, to adapt the gameplay experience to the specific conditions of each surface.
For example, cacti can grow in deserts, players can search for insects in a meadow (due to humidity), or raccoons can be placed in garbage cans.
And finally, the games can also include terrain elevations for those who want to go beyond flat environments and add hills, mountains, and cities to give them more individual locations, according to Google.
Interested mobile game developers can inform themselves under g.co/mapsplatform/gaming and, if possible, also participate in a lecture on 19 March.