I'm looking at the larger touch screen as a way of providing better button-based controls in games. DPad (for example) tend to fail on the iPhone due to lack of screen space. Since there's no tactile feedback, it's easy to lose track of your buttons. The iPad OTOH has a screen that's large enough to put some rather large control buttons without detracting from the action. This would allow controls to better fit users' muscle memory for direction pads and other common controls.
Some things that I'm considering: 1) Someone mentioned portability of code to other platforms. A wise developer once suggested to me to get rid of as much objc in your gaming code as possible with the goal of having your code be in C++. This lends not only to greater performance, but portability of your games to another non Mac platform. This becomes especially important as iPad and even Mac games hit the App Store. Why not port to Windows with little effort? Etc... 2) External monitor. Neat, however, you start talking about a giant PITA worrying about resolutions supported and whatnot. Not sure how they plan on handling that wrt limits of what the iPad can drive. Something to keep in mind. 3) The iPad supposedly has a non-flat back. So it rocks if you place it on a flat surface. Keep this in mind for your UI. 4) Also along the lines of UI, I wouldn't be surprised to see game controllers be supported. Especially with the likes of EA going after the platform hard. Just a thought, but there is no physical reason this couldn't happen.
Surely supporting different resolutions isn't that difficult of a task. You just increase the pixel count on what you render and/or just increase the game view. You could also just support 1080p as target resolution and scale it down to 720, 480, PAL and NTSC. If consoles can do this quite easily, I don't see it being that difficult to have a TV-out mode in iPad games.
This would only be true if devices had infinite fill-rate, which is they do not. Even Xbox 360 and PS3 struggle outputting smooth 1080p graphics for games, and their graphics chips have not been designed with power saving as the first priority. It remains to be seen how much pixels the iPad can actually push, but it would be wise to remember that many console games actually render at a lower resolution (1024*640) than the iPad screen to maintain smooth frame-rates. How capable the iPad will be at running complex games at its native screen size remains to be seen. But before we know more, it's still entirely possible that the iPhone 3GS is relatively faster at running games that take full advantage of OpenGL ES 2.0 capabilities than the iPad. In summary, supporting multiple resolutions is not always trivial. For many games there's significant optimization required. And I didn't even bring up the issues with font legibility, relative size of UI elements on screen in different resolutions, supporting different aspect ratios in UI layouts etc.
Better said than what I was going to retort with. It's just one more thing that is going to be difficult for an indie or group of indie developers to support. Unity3D becomes more appealing by the day. I'm a software guy, one that is good at optimizing, but if I want to make games, staying with an engine that takes care of all of the hard stuff is going to game making a lot more efficient and portable.
True… there is one famous example where Dead Rising on the 360 has impossibly small text on SDTVs. Capcom never tested on SDTVs before shipping. But that was at console launch, and since then devs have known to use the right fonts at the right sizes, so they scale well on any screen size. You are right, we do need to find out if the GPU is capable of any sort of upscaling, which would make this much easier. I think initially the large studios will be implementing the TV-out function more than indies. I also think it depends on the game… for example, NOVA would be incredible scaled up to the TV with your hands able to touch the whole touchscreen without them obscuring the television screen. But players of iPad versions of Flight Control or Fieldrunners would probably prefer to play it directly on the tablet itself. But I see no reason games would need different interface designs depending on the resolution. So long as you consider these things like font and icon sizes in the design stage it should work well on all screen resolutions.
It's really not safe to assume that a layout of touchscreen buttons designed for iPhone resolution and hand positions would not need to be re-designed for a device which is held in a totally different way.
My games are fairly split beteween art that was made low res and high res stuff that I shrunk. Initially I might finally push out a Xeno Sola HD sequel that I have mused about for months. I have an original iPad game idea that I might dive into after that. If Cascadia Kart (out today) is as popular as Zombie Karts, I may just stick with the genre a little longer!
No, the DPad controls fail because they are not conducive to the hardware. Instead of shoehorning wonky control schemes and HUDs into a game, the developer should be looking forward to determine how to make the experience better. Adding more crap to a bigger screen isn't 'better'.
I don't like that the iPad is closed and you can only install apps from the App Store like the iPhone. I don't think it's reasonable to market something like that as a useful computer, when it's completely locked down by Apple. http://io9.com/5458822/why-the-ipad-is-crap-futurism http://al3x.net/2010/01/28/ipad.html I might develop for it some time, especially since it seems trivial to port existing iPhone games to the iPad, but I'm not as excited about programming for it as I am for other platforms, like Android.
In my case, I have had a game with two four-way controls that I couldn't port to the iPhone because it didn't fit the platform. I'm considering porting it to the iPad because it does fit that platform. While I agree that dpads are generally a no-no on the iDevice platforms, in this case it's absolutely required by the game. I suspect that the end results will prove it out.
I'm planning to use the keyboard in games, if its available as an option. Also porting Port Defender over with screen specific features, and making games that rotate, if needed. And because of the screen space, make multiplier games that load fast, friendly, and my mom could understand.
Would this be possible? Hey Devsters, I've been trying to resolve a realistic way iPad users can buy special iPad optimized versions of games for at least roughly the same price as their iPhone counter parts WHILE allowing owners of the iPhone versions a route to very inexpensive updates to the iPad optimized versions of these games. Below is my potential solutions but only you guys can tell me how feasible this would be. 1) Sell iPad versions of games as a separate entity from the iPhone ones. 2) Add new minimally priced in-app purchases with the iPhone version of games that will upgrade them to the iPad version. 3) Here's where things get hazy, however, when thinking of future upgrades, is there a way to have what started as an in-app purchase convert over to the iPad stand alone version so that there only has to be one app that needs to be maintained for iPad related updates? For that matter, can in-app purchases be upgraded?
Well, if you release a universal binary then the game will run on the iPad and be expected to run as a normal game if the user already paid for the content. If you try to limit what people can do after they paid for the iPhone version they will revolt. If you release a separate version then charge them again, for the in-app upgrade. And you code base will not be that bad, from the same project you can create a phone or pad binary, you just have to be careful about your code. I don't think the in-app purchases can be used between 2 games, but If I think right you can access files from another game, read only, haven't tried, but some games will look for other games as a way to unlock. Also some folks may be happy with the 2X options.
I was just trying to think of a way with there being two ways to get the same iPad optimized app. New or as a very cheap upgrade for previous owners.
For utility apps I can imagine having one iPhone version and one iPad version (is it possible to have both in one app?). So you have a portable version of the utility with you, and when you come home, you somehow sync via wifi and have a 'bigger' version of that utility on your iPad that gives you 'more' access to the data. For example, imagine Pastebot with a bigger interface. The iDevice (which means Pod or Phone) has a small interface with 'few' functions as we know the App now (this doesnt mean that the app is useless. The few functions it has are more than enough for mobile usage, and they are totally effective). When you come home, you sync with your iPad (however this might be possible) and then have better overview over your pastes etc. The bigger screen is already a huge advantage, but maybe there could be some cool new functions, too.
Sure. Why do you need real multi-tasking? The only circumstances I can think of for requiring multi-tasking is listening to streaming music while working, or actively IMing with someone while working - both of which are quite far from "real work"
I've heard this type of comment a few times around the internet, but I've never heard a valid argument for an app you can't put on the App store. Unless you are looking to submit a P2P app, porn, or an obvious 'jailbreak'-style customization app, what are Apple stopping you from doing exactly? Sure, maybe in theory the idea of a closed App store is a bad idea, but in practice it works extremely well for both consumers and devs.
Just saw an article about this and thought I'd share it with you. It's a shame Glenn's already so busy - this could be really interesting. http://appfund.com/index.html
Are you serious? You can't think of anything? So if I'm writing an email and need to check out something in my word processor - quote some information, make sure I spelled the email address correctly, I have to close my email to do so? I could think of a hundred reasons to want multitasking. Windows 3.x anyone? For me, that is one of the biggest killers of the iPad. And the fact that it is a big ridiculous looking, oversized iPod Touch. I'd rather just carry a small computer.
