The UCSD Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) and the UC San Diego Division of Calit2 (California Institute of Telecommunications and Information Technology) played particularly important roles. Much of the cutting-edge 3D graphics, programming and gaming know-how that is helping to make TowerMadness popular was developed, strengthened or nurtured at UC San Diego. Only a month since its launch, players have submitted well over 150,000 rounds of TowerMadness to the online leaderboards. Being put in the spotlight by Apple early on has been a tremendous boon,” according to the developers.
“In a sea of over 50,000 apps, visibility is paramount. Several days later, TowerMadness won an award from the prominent mobile gaming web site Pocket Gamer.Īnother big visibility boost came when Apple picked TowerMadness for a prized high-profile spot on the iTunes App Store itself-the Featured Apps section.
The game went live on May 23rd, and news and reviews of the game began appearing on numerous blogs, web sites, and media around the world. On May 15, 2009, after nearly six months of development, TowerMadness scored a preview feature on the holy grail of iPhone gaming Touch Arcade, which fueled widespread anticipation for the release. This would be an important differentiator in an already crowded marketplace,” said Keshmirian, who is now an entrepreneur and consultant based in Silicon Valley. “With our shared interest in building apps for the platform, combined with many years of experience in developing computer graphics software, I knew we could push the iPhone’s capabilities to a level where only experienced developers could compete.
Schönefeld and Mostafavi, along with Arash Keshmirian, a UC San Diego computer science BS/MS alumnus, began developing TowerMadness in their spare time shortly after Schönefeld’s first visit to the department in 2008.
Players can compete globally for high scores, download free additional game content, and share their games on Twitter and Facebook. The game includes additional online features supported by Google’s App Engine cloud computing platform. Anyone with a copy of TowerMadness can watch the replays. In addition to cheat resistance, the replay feature allows TowerMadness players to show off their strategies and learn new ones by watching completed games.
Waaagh!TV develops software that allows thousands of users to simultaneously watch live online matches of the popular computer game Warcraft III. TowerMadness’ replay features grew out of the technology Schönefeld pioneered in 2003 for Waaagh!TV, his e-Sports broadcasting company. The replays are significantly smaller than a video of the same length and can be transmitted over the Internet in seconds. “We’ve already thwarted several attempts at cheating,” said co-developer Volker Schönefeld, a former visiting graduate student to UC San Diego’s computer science department who is completing his doctoral degree at RWTH Aachen University, in Aachen Germany. student at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering and one of the game’s three developers.Įach replay is a tamper-resistant, highly compact recording of a player’s actions over the course of a game. “The replays allow us to verify that the games submitted to our servers are genuine, keeping the online global scoring fair and fun for everyone,” said Iman Mostafavi, a computer science Ph.D.
In particular, the developers built a proprietary replay verification system that automatically replays high-scoring games and checks that players legitimately scored as many points as their devices are reporting. The game’s cheat resistance is rooted in a unique online replay feature. A multi-touch interface allows TowerMadness players to zoom in and around the visually-detailed 3D action. Three current and former UC San Diego computer science students created TowerMadness, the cheat-resistant 3D game which challenges players to repel alien onslaughts by constructing defensive towers in strategic locations.