Design and development of end user development platform for mobile games using social media

• Κύριος συγγραφέας: Llorente Munoz, Ruben Cesar
• Άλλοι συγγραφείς: Αβούρης, Νικόλαος
• Μορφή: Thesis
• Γλώσσα: English
• Έκδοση: 2012
• Θέματα: Hangouts; Google+; Mobile games; Παιχνίδια για κινητά; Κοινωνικά δίκτυα; 005.282

In the present project I purpose the design and development of a collaborative game editor for the Android CityScrabble application based in the Google+ Hangouts Platform. CityScrabble is a kind of Scrabble game where several players can play in a real location. This kind of game is called location-based. The game can be located in all around the world. Each player will be able to choose a topic about which he plays in every moment, and about this topic he must answer a group of hints (called elements in the editor). If the player answers correctly a hint, it will add the score value of the hint to his score and all the players will be informed about it in real time. Many technologies have been used in the development process. First of all and because the platform is Google+ I tried to use only technologies directly supported by Google (Google + API, Google Maps API, Hangouts API, Google AppEngine, Google Datastore) but Google AppEngine and Google Datastore gave me problems with the Python server so I decided to use MySQL as database management system. The queries are requested from PHP files allocated in the university server. Moreover, to allocate the Javascript, CSS and XML files needed I have used the server appspot provided by Google. As I said before, the editor is collaborative. This means that more than one person can be editing the same game at the same time. So it is for this reasons that Google+ Hangouts is the platform; to achieve this broadcasted edition. The hangouts allows to the participant to share the application, documents (by Google Docs), the screen, etc. And also provides videoconference and chat system. If I may return to the subject of the editor, it has been developed trying to be compact (due to the conditions of the Hangouts), grouping all the information in a little space and trying also to be intuitive for the user. Despite of this and due of the information compression in the interface, the final user may need a guide to introduce himself in the edition. This guide is included in the chapter 5 of the diploma thesis. I would like to finish this report remarking the utility that an editor might have in a game as CityScrabble, allowing to create games of any subject in any place of the world. I would like to remark also, that this editor has the potential to be improved adding much more features and allowing to edit other different kind of games for CityScrabble.