After 7 months of testing, work and tinkering, French Yu-Gi-Oh! fan SuperZouloux has built one of the coolest card game tricks I have ever seen: a game mat and camera setup that, thanks to augmented reality tech, is able to broadcast 3D versions of his monsters as he plays his cards.
When I say he put in work, I mean it. While SuperZouloux has had a life-long dream to see something like this come to pass, when he started on the project earlier this year he knew practically nothing about any of the tech or software he would need to pull this off. So he started studying.
He had to learn to develop in Unreal Engine so he was able to program and animate the monsters. He had to immerse himself in the Arduino scene to be able to hack together the hardware required. He had to learn how NFC worked and how he could make use of it, so that when he placed cards down on his custom mat they would trigger the required actions.
“Fortunately, I managed to surround myself with passionate and competent people who managed to pass on their expertise to me by joining me on this journey which was strewn with pitfalls,” SuperZouloux says. “I doubted all along, but mostly I learned. Learned that even in a project that I wanted to do alone it was important to surround yourself. Alone we go faster, in a group we go further, this maxim has never resonated with me as much as during this project.”
SuperZouloux shows the tech off in this video, which is in French but has English subtitles throughout so we can all follow along. Mostly to enjoy just how happy he is at how amazing the whole thing looks.