Padiddle!

It always bugged me when I would see a car that had a light out and there was no way to successfully get a message to them. I have often wondered how long it has taken to figure out that I have a brake light out, once I found out. So I wanted to make a point based game that would also serve as a way to let other driver's know when stuff is broken on their car.

I had also just learned about the service Parse.com that would make creating and managing a back end for you app very easy. I thought it would be a good time to try this out since there were a lot of things that I would need it for like cloud based storage and push notifications. Parse also became useful for user management since it allowed you to create native users as well as link to your Facebook account.

I implemented a scoring system that gives you points if you submit a report and you gain extra points if the user that the report is referring to confirms it. This also provided a venue for submitting compliments, as well as, complaints. The score you had determined the car avatar that was associated with your account

This game/app was met with mixed results. Many people thought that it would be dangerous because it entices players to use it while driving. I spent a long time trying to figure out a way to prevent the user from using the app while driving. I added many warnings throughout the app stating that it is a bad idea to use it while driving. I tried to use the accelerometer to determine acceleration and deceleration of being in a car but I was not successful. I ended up using the GPS to determine your current speed and if you car at more than 10 mph, it pops a warning and closes the app. Thing think the obtrusiveness of this would have been the downfall of the app.

I haven't done any advertising of this app so it really hasn't had the visibility to go anywhere.