Kalotai is an Android application developed in my Advanced Game Development course (one year before A Platypus Tale). I worked on the project with Bryan Marty, a few other Case programmers, and a couple CIA students. The idea was a Pokemon spin-off where, rather than moving around to different locations in the game to find different monsters, you’d move around in the real world (with your rough location acquired from GPS) and capture them. The application itself was considered a “portal” of sorts into a place between our world and a world full of mischievous “kryts” who can reach through and wreak havoc here.
Maps were generated procedurally based on satellite data. I wrote an algorithm to process the image and determine what terrain features were mostly present – grass, concrete, trees, bodies of water, etc. A tile engine would then take the parsed map data and generate a pseudorandom terrain that consisted of the same percentage of features, but not necessarily in the same place. That way, everyone, even in the same area, would have a map that was similar, but not exactly alike.
Certain kryts were restricted to certain features: some enjoyed the water, others the more grassy areas. You’d see a kryt on the map as you walked (you could also scroll the map a small distance, maybe a half mile around your current location), and could walk over it to capture it. But first – the battle!
Each kryt had some special moves it could do, along with the basic attacks. We had intended to make a full battle system with strengths/weaknesses/etc. but it was difficult to fine-tune in the available time. Moves were initiated using a gesture overlay – draw a square for one, a star for another, a triangle for something else. I think we had 5 in total.
Here are some pictures of concept art & in-game screenshots:
