Star Ships

Where Space Combat Meets Artificial Intelligence.

Star Ships is more than just a traditional space arcade shooter game. You take full control of a star ship and find yourself in a one on one combat against a seconds space craft. However, your enemy is not a dull, easy to destroy alien. Instead, the opponent ship is controlled by an artificial intelligence (AI) agent equipped with impressive fighting strategies. So, it's your task to find the right tactics and policies to defeat your opponent.

As a commander you have to control the behavior of your ship in a number of ways:

  • Attack by using phasers or, for long range combat, by torpedos.
  • Move by using your impulse drive or, alternatively, your warp drive.
  • Rotate your ship using steering jets that are controlled by tilting your device.
  • Avoid collisions.
  • Keep an eye on and manage the energy levels of all tactical sub-systems of your ship.

Features:

  • The app includes a short, 8-step tutorial for learning how to play ('Instructions').
  • Game speed is adjustable at one's convenience (under 'Settings').
  • The strength of the AI agent (controlling the enemy ship) is adjustable at one's skills.
  • Sounds and force feedback can be switched off at one's convenience.
  • The game supports three different modes (can be selected under 'Settings') for ship rotation control: a joystick-like mode, a handlebar-like mode, and a touch-based mode (see 'Instructions' within the game for details).
  • The app supports the use of your device's geomagnetic sensor (compass), if it hase one, in order to improve joystick-like rotation control. This, essentially, also allows for playing in any desired position, even head over heels or upside down.
  • Each of your space combats starts with a short (3 seconds) device calibration, during which you are encouraged to hold your device in your preferred null position (i.e. neutral position that doesn't yield rotations). Exception: When using the touch-based rotation control, no calibration is required.

As a spin-off of the Star Ships game there is the StarShips Learning Framework (SSLF), a framework for teaching, learning, and exploring agent-based programming and the use of adaptive or learning approaches to agent programming.

Drive by Notes

Create Voice to Text Memos on the Fly

Sometimes, one just wants to record his/her thoughts as quickly and easily as possible. That's what Drive by Notes is for! Drive by Notes allows users to store notes without having to unlock the smartphone or even without having to take it into hand. As soon as the device's screen is activated (and for this a single press on the power button or a single fingerprint scan suffices), the user can speak into his/her device: Drive by Notes then converts speech into text and stores it as a note. A free trial version is available on Google Play.

Main Features:

  • captures voice notes, as soon as the screen gets activated (even when the lock screen is active)
  • converts speech to text and stores it as a note
  • uses vibration for giving feedback as to whether the note has been recognized correctly
  • stores alternatives, if the speech recognition was ambiguous
  • has its own simple note management: create, delete and edit notes
  • can copy the note text to the clipboard or send it to another app
  • no ads, no unnecessary permissions required