19 December 2007

Accelerometer Ball Game
Gaming with Nokia N95 using accelerometer!?

This fun MIDlet is inspired by a game that many of us played when we were little children where tiny marbles have to make their way around the obstacles, through the wooden maze, without losing it down a hole.

BallGame is based on the same idea, its a marble maze game for the Nokia N95 (it should works on Nokia N93i and Nokia N82 as well) that requires you to move a ball bearing through a maze but instead the two wooden knobs like in the real version this virtual game is controlled by detecting the movement of the phone through motion sensing, something like the Wiimote.

So, game actually uses the N95 Accelerometer Plug-in to hook into the accelerometer to detect movement in the orientation of the phone and translates this input to controlling the moving ball.

It's mesmerizing and difficult, and you'll find yourself putting other tasks aside to see if you can't beat the Labyrinth. It is really challenging fun for all ages although IMO it is mostly aimed to children and I guess that my little niece will find it much more attractive than most of us.

So, first of all you have to get and install Python for S60 1.4.1 (if you haven't already installed) and the wonderful aXYZ module by Cyke64.

Then you can start (you'll need the phyton shell to run it) the contained accserver2.py - script (Copy the script to the Python scripts folder), put the Python in background and start the Bal Game midlet. I really hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

If you have problems with running scripts, installing game or Python please don't be hesitate to ask anything over at our forum section.