S. Vishnu Sharma
SRM Amaravati Lab, the team of Next-Tech Lab at SRM Amaravati (SRM Amaravati Lab) have once again brought laurels by winning three hackathons in a row.
Sources say, while many youngsters dedicated themselves to newfound hobbies during the lock down, researchers at SRM Amaravati Lab came up with fresh multiplayer virtual reality game ‘Whack A Mole’ and a cloud based multiplayer FPS in Virtual Reality ‘Desert Shooter.
SRM Amaravati Lab
The three-member team of SRM Amaravati Lab has successfully bagged the second prize in the International Professional Award at SKYHacks2020, Best echoAR Hack at Silicon Valley Hacks and Best AR/VR hack at HackNow organized by Cal Hacks, a non-profit organization at the University of Berkeley, California.
Epperla Karthik, a 2nd Year student of Computer science and Engineering and a member of the team at SRM Amaravati Lab said his family loves attending trade shows.
‘Every time we attend one my dad and I challenge each other to win a game of Whack A Mole.’ But, due to strict quarantine that my family is following, it’s been a while now for such challenges.
‘My teammates and I at SRM Amaravati Lab being gaming and virtual reality enthusiasts, decided to develop a VR version of Whack A Mole.’
‘Whack A Mole,’ the game developed by team of SRM Amaravati Lab is a multiplayer virtual reality game that allows users to play against the computer or their families or both.
One can use it on iOS or Android. It is built on Unity3D, on top of Photon PUN and GoogleVR SDK. It is also integrated with Google Firebase.
‘This was the very first time we were working on the development of virtual reality games and networking. As we had to run the game on our phone to record the gameplay, the output video on YouTube is a bit blurry,’ says Khushboo Sharma, another member of the team at SRM Amaravati Lab.
Khusboo is also a second year student of Computer Science and Engineering. ‘We completed the development of the game in only 20 hours, starting from scratch.
We developed a few of our own UI elements and game assets. I feel the User-Interface of the app and the effects are pretty cool, she said.
VR development is real fun. Moreover, there are a lot of API and SDK that Unity supports, says Koushik Bhargav, a 3rd-Year student of Computer Science and Engineering and the third member of the team at SRM Amaravati Lab.
The team at SRM Amaravati Lab also has plans to make this game to be cross-platform game. Therefore, their next plan of action is to make the web version of it.
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The team at SRM Amaravati Lab is also planning to release it to production so that users can have an immersive experience of modern gaming techniques.
‘Desert Shooter’ is another multiplayer virtual reality game developed by the team at SRM Amaravati Lab that allows users to play against the computer or their families or both.
One can connect with their friends and play together. The game consists of a swarm of robot ships moving towards you and you have to protect yourself from them.
‘The interesting part is that all of this happens in Mixed Reality which makes the game immersive. We built it on Unity3D, on top of Photon PUN and GoogleVR SDK, Echoar,’ says the team at SRM Amaravati Lab
It is also integrated with Google Firebase and the assets are stored in echoar cloud. This project won the best AR/VR hack at “Hack: Now” which is organized by the University of California Berkeley, says Epperla Karthik.
It is again proved that pure talent can never be put in quarantine. It will always find a way to express itself to the world.
The young developers at SRM Amaravati Lab have brilliantly used the ample time and opportunity to put their brains in best use and to bring recognition from nationally and globally acclaimed competitions.
About – SRM Amaravati
SRM University, Andhra Pradesh is a multi-stream research university with focus on diverse fields. From engineering to medicine and from liberal arts to management, SRM’s vision is to emerge as a world-class university that is globally connected, nationally relevant, and regionally transformative.
It has the ambitious plan to be in the top world class universities in ten years with more than 20000 students and 1500 faculty members.
For the establishment of this university, SRM has partnered with the world’s best names for educational method and philosophy, campus design and infrastructure, learning and living spaces, and recruitment of faculty and leadership.
Perkins + Will, American architects who have designed some of the leading universities in the world, are the architects for this new institution.
Perrett Laver and Society, global search firms from UK, are involved in the recruitment of senior leadership roles and faculty.