After showing off his Nexus One slot car gas pedal, Grant Skinner is at it again with another Adobe AIR application for Android. This time he has put his own spin on the classic Asteroids, bringing a multiplayer version of the game to the Android OS that he has dubbed Androideroids. The concept is the same as the original, navigate your spaceship through a field of deadly asteroids while blasting them to pieces, but the game is taken a step further with the addition of 8-person multiplayer.
Androideroids is an Adobe AIR application that runs on a desktop computer with controls coming from your Android handset. The handset UI gives you a first person view of the action playing out on the screen. Throw in a few friends and you’ll be blasting your way through space debris while avoiding enemy fire aimed at taking you down. It is a great example of a multiplayer experience for smartphones done right.
Just like his slot car program, Skinner’s Androideroids showcases just how cool Adobe AIR combined with Android can get. While the game isn’t available for the general public, hopefully we’ll be seeing more innovative approaches to gaming and device interfacing coming to market very soon.
[via Grant Skinner Blog]
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This looks awesome. So simple, yet so much depth.
@Phil
I hadn’t thought of that, but yes, you could do some very awesome things. Good point.
Droid does…
@Ryan I immediately thought the same thing. AIR is really not needed nor is it really newsworthy here. The game itself and the paradigm shift is whats really the big story here. This is heading right down the path I had imagined for Android and gaming. With both HDMI out becoming standard on Android devices and Google TV I believe games like this will become common place where you phone is your configurable controller or a secondary screen while the main action is pushed up to the big screen. The potential is huge.
There’s really no reason to be using AIR for the controller. I’m sure it makes it simpler to create, but AIR apps have full flash functionality and he isn’t really using any of the graphics side of flash with this on the android side.
Neat project though
That’s pretty cool.
Wow, the name needs some tweaking though, sounds waaaay to close to an anal condition…
-Brad
That is awesome. The day to buy remotes for the game systems are passed.
Just bring your phone and join the fun!