i've been developing for mobile platforms for over 10 years now - working with almost every platform that has been produced. as a developer on the iphone platform; are you considering other platforms to work with? if so; which ones? mobile1up uses its own internal "cross-platform" development kit so that there are very little iphone specific code within its games which allows us to port the games to other platforms very easily - we would like to gauge if there is an interest level to consider licensing it to external parties.. we have licensed it in the past; but only within a close friend community.
i would love to get access to the DSi SDK - but, i doubt nintendo would be interested in my games i've dealt with their legal team many times - and i hear that you need to have quite an established company to even see the SDK. i have played with DS development way back; i need to find my DS devices - but it was restricted to homebrew - would love to be in the DSi store it wouldn't take much to get all our stuff on other platforms - we have designed our games for portability.
I'm considering PSP and DS as targets for my next game after the iPhone / iPod Touch version is complete. Are you suggesting you have simple method to port between these devices? I'd be curious to know a bit more, and I am sure others here would too...
well; we have a cross-platform development kit - it is called SHARK http://www.mobilewizardry.com/multi-platform/ (yes, mobilewizardry is my company) - you can find on that site a bunch of games that are commercially released using this development kit. our iphone games uses SHARK 3 (the page above is from 2001! - version 1). we kept it internal for almost 10 years - and, we use it exclusively! if you want to see how the code looks - check our Effektz; our demo code http://www.mobile1up.com/effektz/ there are links there showing how code is written. we are working on a framework that is cross platform for doing 2D sprite programming similar to the cocos2d library to maximize the Open GL ES SDK - we use it already; but in a framebuffer approach. i am exploring if we should devote more time internally to it; and open it up for everyone to use we even have a SHARK BAIT BOX; which, is a linux machine running virtual machines that do the cross compiling to every platform. so you dont even need to own a mac etc to build binaries.
btw - for real-life proof - check out blog: http://www.mobile1up.com/blog/ you will see "GW Series" running on moblin (www.moblin.org) - it took us around 3 hours to update SHARK to support it, and all our games recompiled and worked the same day i purchased the netbook and installed moblin on it. intel is launching an application store; and we intend to be on it. i can also clarify that we build native binaries - it isn't a runtime; and you can write custom code for each platform as needed (our games have iphone specific highscore submission systems) so you are not tied to what our environment provides; it is 100% flexible and the more you design cross-platform, the more easier it will be to migrate to other platforms.
Not really its fairly open. You need offices though an a real company etc to apply. Having shipped other games helped. After that you need 5000$ or less in development gear. Might be like $2000
The DS / DSi at least is nothing like programming the iPhone. For one you only get 4-16MB ram. and a CPU that is 66 - 130(?) Mhz Arm with no FPU and no OpenGL. Any how its a lot of work to get most iphone games to run on the DS. Its very specialized low level hardware vs the iphone is pretty much like programming a 10 year old PC / Mac with a decent GPU. My advice is stick to iPhone unless you have a lot of time on you hands. You also need a publisher... With out one even as a developer you will not be allowed to ship anything on DS / Wii. /me is going through all this now... My engine .... the one in Mouse House runs on iPhone, Wii, Mac, Win, Linux. In the time it took to port the engine and 1 game with it to Wii I probably could have put out 10 decent iphones games using the tech already in place...
sounds like my dream hardware. SHARK also supports Palm OS - which is no longer actively in use; which has less than those specifications.. not everything needs open GL ES FPU can be worked around with fast integer fixed point maths.. but you are right about the publisher issue.
Those specs are fine. A lot of times you get memory warnings on the iPhone if you try to use more than 20-25MB of RAM (due to mail, safari, etc) so I plan on some clever tricks to keep it in the 10-15MB range on my next game anyway. No OpenGL, no problem. All my past and future games will be 2-D, sprite based with individual frames of animation. The DS hardware is obviously designed for that. Low CPU speed requiring clever programming tricks... no problem there either. I initially learned programming on a unit with a 1.5 Mhz CPU in 1983, and for most of the next 10 years never had a processor with more than 8Mhz. Assembly language was my friend. I think that a lot of modern programmers would wet the bed at night if they had to deal with the limitations 20-25 years ago. Needless to say, programming on hardware as powerful as the DS would have been a dream come true back when I was learning, so the only real barrier to entry for me is convincing Nintendo that my game has merit enough to let me get ahold of a dev kit. Maybe if I am lucky my iPhone release and sales numbers will be good enough to help that along
this is what i see the problem is; right now - i play with my R4 and homebrew. due to the requirements Nintendo sets; i dont see many indies getting to the platform officially; it is a waste when you think about it.
Actually the DS and Wii have GL like Apis in many ways. Im told the DS can draw about 2000 polies max... this is fixed. And you do have texture memory and a real GPU. Really though the hard part out side of the time it will take you to learn how to code for it... is the fact that nintendo holds you to high standards. Implementing the standard alone might take you months. This is why even simple Wii / DS games have at least small teams working on the vs 1 guy. The up front cost in time and $ to develop for the platform is high. Where as on the iPhone you might get an engine up and running well in a few days. BTW most of the DS in store market imploded in the last year with many publishers going out of business. Another question is like this.. If someone handed you a DS dev kit today to you have the 80$ you need in time and resources to develop a game for it? Also note that you will only be paid 4 times a year for DSi after it ships etc.
Not really. Its a controlled market. Nintendo does not want indies. What they want are really serious well funded companies that will be around and can put out higher quality products. Its a different way of doing business. You play their game and they guarantee you a captive audience and low signal to noise ration... unlike the app store were you game competes with 100K other apps.
CommanderData if you have a project you really would think is good for the DSi drop me an email. I have some connections, publisher etc that might be able to help. It might be worth talking to them at least.
I see a lot of iPhone vs DS discussion… I think something important to think about the DS is whether its worth beginning development efforts on it now. It's more than five years old, and I'm not saying it doesn't have a few more years left in it, but is it closer to the end of its life than it is the beginning of its life?
we just submitted one of our iphone games recompiled for moblin to the intel application store; dec 21 2009 is the deadline for their release launch (which, will occur at CES 2010).. we'll see if it is of any interest
Funny how things always change and stay the same... oh those Zodiac days, and zodiacgamer.com - Jani, ex-Fathammer
i still have some working zodiac's - and more "valuable" development board in an ugly yellow box; classic stuff.. zodiac was a great device; pity it didn't really establish itself.
I've got three as well. Two of them have the sadstick problem, one is still shrink-wrapped in its box, no idea if it works or not And yeah, a shame. I recall reading on some obscure website that it was Motorola who bought the IPs from Tapwave, I don't know if that included the Linux OS they were developing in the final days. One can only imagine how nice it could have been. As far as the topic of the thread goes, we're keeping our eyes open regarding iPhone App Store, PSP Minis, PC & Mac and the Maemo Ovi store when it comes to porting. PSN and the other console channels are of course interesting, but developing a game there shouldn't really be considered a port. (Look at how Critter Crunch evolved from iPhone to PSN to see a wonderful example.)
