Introducing the VCS Variator

[Csonicgo]

Imagine: You're at a party. The VCS is out and everyone wants to play. Thing is, Game 1 ain't working for the beer-loving patrons. "It's too fast!" So you look at the Manual and:

 

AAAAAHHH!

 

Do you:

A: flip through the numbers one by one, hoping to hit the right one

B: Try to read the chart, if you have the manual

C: Try to download a manual scan

D: Get an application for that

 

I'm hoping to create option D. The VCS Variator is the epitome of laziness. Here's how it'll work:

 

1. Pick a Game. This can be done by several ways: By controller, Genre (maybe), Manufacturer, max number of players. Title search is also available.

2. At the next screen, you are able to select the options you want. For example, for Space Invaders, i should be able to select "Basic Game, Invisible Invaders" and the application spits out "9" - which you then select on the VCS.

3. Write your score down in the scoreboard cards.

 

Additional features I'm hoping to add:

 

1. Ability to add additional games through a text format (CSV probably)

2. Ability to add favorite variations, with custom names

3. Add difficulty switches to the variations interface

 

Now for the bad news: There is no prototype for mobile phones yet. hope to have a demo up this year. My Proof of concept is a rails app which queries a database. The main hurdle to this is the lack of sane text game variation tables - no one thought about parsing them into a phone application.

[InfoMan]

CSV format for a phone app? Why not use JSON? What platform do you intend to do this for? What in-"sane" game variation tables are you currently using?

[Csonicgo]

CSV format for a phone app? Why not use JSON? What platform do you intend to do this for? What in-"sane" game variation tables are you currently using?

I had assumed that most wouldn't know JSON - but since I'm using that internally anyway, I guess it'd be okay to just use that app-wide.

 

I intend to make an Android application. iOS is a "maybe" - I don't know iOS development yet.

Edited February 25, 2016 by Csonicgo