wePoker
wePoker is a multi-player poker game for Android that allows collocated people to play a game of Poker.
wePoker does not need a connection to the internet, everything happens using local communication technology.
On newer devices, wePoker will even use Wifi-Direct and NFC!
wePoker won the 'best app' award at the V Hack Android Belgium Hackathon in October 2012.
You can see a demo at http://bit.ly/wePokerDemo or download the application at http://bit.ly/wePokerapp.
Features
-
Nomadic and Spontaneous Poker games!
- Play poker even when disconnected from the internet or when no free wifi is available.
This is much more common than expected: trains, Eurostar, airplane, bus, metro, car, at holidays, at the beach, cafe, ...
And those are actually the places where you have spare time to play poker!
No set-up or pin code or internet required, just launch the application and start playing with your friends.
-
Multi-Device interactivity: maxfun(x) { x | x E P{Phones, Tablet, GoogleTV, SmartWatches} }
- Optimise experience based on available resources at that moment in time.
For instance:
- Two phones (or more) can start a local game
- Add a tablet that can serve as the poker table
- The GoogleTV serves as a high-end poker table where the audience can spectate at a distance. Pubs can offer a GoogleTV basestation with the opportunity to win beers! Local gaming with a couple of friends also benefit from relaxed living-room environment. Furthermore, the stable connectivity of a GoogleTV allows users to join a game over the internet if wanted.
- A SmartWatch enables intelligent, personalised poker estimates (i.e. what is the probability I can win this game?)
-
Interactivity:
- Incognito-mode: When hiding the phone, your private poker cards will be displayed
- Curling cards: Obtain the slick physical feeling of curling cards
- Fold-on-backside: Automated fold when phone is put on its back
- Swipe gestures: Throwing chips at the table
- Speech support: Google's Speech Recognition (with Levenshtein implementation to cope with bad recognition results)
- Talkback: Text2Speech and customized content descriptions
- Haptic feedback: Immersion's SDK
-
Connectivity: Using the latest Android API's
- With infrastructure (i.e. connected to Wifi):
- Automated discovery of Poker games on the local Wifi.
- Without infrastructure:
- Wifi-Direct: Allows users to set up a local game without any infrastructure required (Android 4.1 or better). Our intelligent priority connectivity layer configures all complex Wifi-Direct settings automatically.
- NFC: Allows users to join a game by simply holding the phone near the tablet (NFC Beam)
- RFID: Allows users to scan an RFID tag to join a specific game
- QRCode: For devices without NFC and Wifi-Direct, we support QRCodes to join a game without having to go to any settings menu.
-
Accessibility: we customized our interface for accessibility
- Check for audio feedback (when the microphone plugged in)
- Set content description for all UI fields to improve talkback
- Enforced UI view where all cards are accessible (even if there is a dedicated poker table)
- Allows visually impaired users to compete with sighted people without game-specific advantages for any side.
-
Extra
- Cheat mode: players can add money on the server view. All players get informed via visual and audio feedback about this sneaky interaction. This allows to customize the money rules.
- Customize nicknames and avatars
- Free gaming (no internet required)
- Open source!
About the authors
wePoker is being developed by the AmbientTalk team at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel.
We are a research group that specializes in connectivity and communication for mobile devices, especially on a small scale.
Additionally, our advances in multimodal fusion allows to maximize the use of a large range of sensors and actuators.
Check out our other apps at the Google Play Store: