Most iPhone games that are actually bought are made by same companies that dominate every other platform (EA, Sega, Popcap, Gameloft). Even when you can create game of same quality (which is unlikely considering how much those companies can spend on every game), independent developer will always lose on making your game noticed. Its not same market as Flash games where you could in theory get away with buggy code and simple graphics because people are not expecting much anyway.
I find it a very interesting platform and I would definitely try to come up with something that would use the hardware well if I could get a free iPhone :)
I already have a badass new phone though so I won't be buying one for a long time
I THINK the ipod iTouch runs the same apps as iphone, and you can connect to internet via wifi. So get that (half the price of an iphone and no monthly bill).
As I already mentioned, the only accessible market for freelance devs is doing contract work! One time basis things for companies that want some sort of App.
No, it's definitely not the same market as Flash!!! You can't make games just like that, and put 'em up in the iPhone store, and expect to make money! The only real money is doing work for other people!
And hatu, another thing that I already said: you don't need an iPhone/iPod Touch to make apps for it, or to test them!!! The SDK comes with an emulator right on your desktop!
P.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tomsamson
I wasn't aware that I could develop iphone apps with a PC, I thought I needed a mac to work with objective-c?
I hadn't considered middleware - I've recently learned that you only need obj-c as a wrapper.
I have an android phone at home, right now, waiting to be opened, so I'll soon be developing for it, I'll share any issues I have with the forum.
One huge advantage is that I'm going to have to learn java, which is a skill I can many places, and it's very similar to AS3.
Good work, do let us all know how you get on.Quote:
Originally Posted by VENGEANCE MX
Yep, iPod Touch runs all the same apps as the iPhone, and I reckon you can use it as a dev device. Btw, the current-gen iPod Touch is actually significantly faster than the previous iPod Touch and both iPhones. Speed ranking is as follows:Quote:
Originally Posted by Ray Beez
Current iPod Touch
iPhone 3G
iPhone
Old iPod Touch
Can't remember the figures, but I think both iPhones were basically the same speed, the new iPod Touch is a fair bit faster than them, and the old iPod touch is a tad slower than the iPhones. The speed hike makes a difference in 3D games, or when you're upscaling output to a TV screen (undocumented feature).
Ok, now check this out:
http://www.bit-101.com/blog/?p=1766
If you have the passion to start developing for the iPhone i say go for it. There is enough room for everyone to make money of the app store, event with big companies stepping in! The app store market is still relatively new and it will take some time for it to be flooded by the top developers.
Personally i bought the iPhone to start developing however quickly got frustrated with the limitations that apple applies on its products, the main thing being i don't have a mac and i have sworn not to get one under any circumstances and second well the alien objective c. I actually started digging in Android's docs and it seems much more understandable. It doesn't have the apple looks(which i think is simply amazing) but it's a start.
Won't Android still be prone to a lot of issues facing mobile developers already ?
I know it's a bit more standardised, but you're still going to have screen size / cpu issues just like before.
Everyone I know involved in mobile development ( The long touted next big thing, oh wait, that's Flash now isn't it ) has either turned their backs on it, 'cause you're having to make untold versions of your game and then have no control of the outlets to get it out to the customer, or they hate it and want to change jobs to get away from mobile dev, for the exact same reasons.
Android will make life less painful, but so does developing for Nokia phones as they have a standard API for a lot of things. You'll still be checking the screen size, testing the cpu speed, using the same publishing channels etc.
iPhone on the other hand, it's like developing for a handheld console where everything else, Android included, is like developing for PC.
Squize.
i already sorta said it, but yeah, i totally agree with Squize.
Android sounds teasing for beeing so open and still offering so much more variety in capabilities and devices but that is in my eyes exactly what would cause most developers most trouble.
Standards are heavily needed and while many mobile developers who are used way less standardisation and have had way more trouble thanks to that praise Android now as it makes their situation better, its still not standardized enough at all in my eyes.
When Squize says:
"iPhone on the other hand, it's like developing for a handheld console where everything else, Android included, is like developing for PC."
That sorta is a nice comparison when one sees it as standardized development and as much as possible same runtime result compared to having to tweak things for seemingly endless setups with very varying runtime result.
The comparison goes in the right direction but actually developing for other mobiles than iphone is way worse than developing for the pc (as in having to cater to many different system setups) :
The thing is those mobile devices are way, way less powerful than the average pc, so if they then with such low limits also vary a lot in their capabilities (while still all are very low) that makes it really cumbersome to develop for em.
Flashlite made that a bit easier thanks to making things run considerably closer on different mobile devices, but the problem with flashlite is that its not on most mobile devices and also the performance of flashlite is so low that usually most games are on or below the level of what existed in flash 4 days on the desktop (when done with flash).
Iīll give Android a try in a while, too, mostly out of curiosity, but yeah, i already develop for the iphone and i think both things are really worlds apart, its totally not the same thing at all.
Even when Android OS comes on most mobile devices sometime that doesnīt mean at all it will be great fun to develop for it or there will be a good way to sell things made for it.
When developing for iphone/ ipod touch i have basically just one device spec to optimize for, for what does an adroid developer optimize?
Anyway, yeah, now iīm in christmas holidays, so besides the nice discussion, happy holidays all :)
VENGEANCE MX, how's the iPhone app development coming along? I played around with it myself and got some polygon drawing down with quartz 2d.
But I'm going to explore OpenGl ES next (on the 2D side). I'll let you know when I have something to show. Its not so bad actually once you setup the C++ bridge.
Btw, how's your iPhone Dev hell coming along?
Update: Check out what I came across, Core SWF: Flex/AS3 for Xcode
I wonder how well that works.
Is the workaround we were talking about, to develop iphone apps on a pc, is to install MacOS on a PC ?
as far as i know you need mac os on a machine, if not for unity itself then still for getting your game compiled etc. since i have a mac sitting next to my pc i havenīt looked further into the specifics.
Ehh, got an OpenGL rectangle moving with the accelerometer, but it doesn't work properly. One of the movement axes works fine (slides right when I tilt it right and vice-versa) but the other axis just flickers between being at the top and bottom of the screen. If I could figure out how the hell to trace variables, it'd be easy to pin down. But I kinda gave up. While I was able to trace integers (and even this requires declaring variables across about 4 class files or something), I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to trace floats. Any language where you can't just say print(myVar) to debug is not my cup o tea.Quote:
Originally Posted by Xploder
VENGEANCE MX, that's what break points are for.
Set a break point and go from there.
Break points are way better than tracing something.
Hover over the variable and the value of it will appear.
This may be interesting to some of you guys,
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/featur...hone_game_.php
( I didn't know Torque had been ported to the iPlatform, which is the basis of XNA isn't it ? ).
Squize.
Blimey. That's quite powerful; just tried it. Unfortunately, it's absolutely useless for accelerometer work, since halting the code also halts the accelerometer readings. Is there any way for me to see a live output of a variable in the Console, as I move the phone or something?Quote:
Originally Posted by Xploder
So, by now some guys like this one are saying that the ap store is floded,not only with small games but also with high quality stuff, from the big guys
And i was thinking on buy a mac only to do that...
"Apple has the right to refuse my game"
He's not done much Flash client work has he ? :)
"Reminds me of the Atari 2600 debacle"
Yeah, yeah me too. What debacle ? I wasn't aware of a flood of games for the old vcs ?
That sounds made up to show a long history with games. It reminds me of the great Dragon32 chip storm ( Which took place just after the Oric Atmos wars ).
I don't know about everybody else, but I'm asked if I'm developing for iPhone by nearly everyone I chat to recently, and when I give the standard reply of "No not yet, but it's something I fancy doing" they always look / sound slightly disappointed, like I've got the chance to do something cool and earn a million dollars in a month and really impress them ( After all life is about impressing strangers apparently ), and I'm just not taking that chance. So by default I'm slightly crap.
Squize.