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Programming Entertainment Games IT Technology

Platforms Worth Targetting for Portable Games? 36

Posted by Cliff from the architectures-to-write-for dept.
rudescotsman asks: "Hi, I'm an independent game developer who just finished his first game on the Pocket PC and SmartPhone platforms. I targeted PPC/SP originally because that's what I owned and the dev tools are easily accessible, but now I'm thinking I'd like to write games for other platforms too. What platforms do Slashdot readers think are appropriate for a one-man game coding-squad to tackle?"

"Here are my beliefs:

PalmOS is doable, but in order to get any kind of graphics out of a Palm you need to target ARM-based Palm devices. How many Palm gamers actually have these more expensive Palms?

Tapwave Zodiac is tempting, their SDK is easy to license, but how many gamers are actually dropping the cash to buy these?

It doesn't look like it's too difficult to get into Nokia NGage development, but how many gamers are taking the NGage seriously?

Consoles and GBA are out of the question, these platforms are locked down so only the big studios can play, and I simply don't have the resources to make a title for these platforms that can stack up against the competition.

Since I'm a small fish in a big pond, I hope Slashdot readers can be my market research team."
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Platforms Worth Targetting for Portable Games? More

Platforms Worth Targetting for Portable Games?

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  • n/t (Score:4, Funny)

    by Elwood P Dowd ( 16933 ) <judgmentalist@gmail.com> on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @07:38PM (#8184762) Journal
    Since I'm a small fish in a big pond, I hope Slashdot readers can be my market research team.

    Thank you so much for preempting all the "do your own research, asshole" posts. Unfortunately, you did not preempt all the people that will whine about those posts anyway (me).

  • PalmOS is probably good (Score:3, Informative)

    by notsoclever ( 748131 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @07:41PM (#8184784) Journal
    ARM-based Palms have basically taken over for the old Dragonball series at this point. Anyone who is interested in playing games on their PDA will have upgraded already.

    There's plenty of resources for homebrew GBA dev, but if you want to market a game commercially then you're out of luck unless you decide to try selling the game to a Nintendo developer. It's not inconceivable, but highly unlikely.

    I don't think any of the other platforms you mentioned are worth considering at this point. I don't even know of anyone who has bought a TapWave or an N-Gage. In the future, PlayStation Portable might be interesting but knowing Sony they'll not go out of their way to make it easy for third-party developers (but again, you can always try selling the game to another publisher, like Crave). Sony is very homebrew-dev-friendly, though.

    But yeah, PocketPC and PalmOS are really the only two choices if you want any chance at selling it as a shareware/independent effort.

  • I wouldn't waste my time with the ngage if I were you. I don't believe its that popular.

    If the people you are targeting are palm 'gamers' then they would obviously shell out for the palm with better graphics support, so there's one target.

    What about just the pc? You won't make much with one game but if you produce many small simple games and do something like popcap does with yahoo games then you might have a little luck.

    If all else fails try Linux or Mac, I hear they are hard up for games :)
  • Hmmm... You're a PPC game developer, The wonderful Yak [llamasoft.co.uk] is also a PPC game dev. You have a tempest-y looking game, and he is responsible for the glorious Tempets 2000 and Tempest 3000. Scientific conclusion: You must be kin!

  • Palm! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by burns210 ( 572621 ) <maburns@gmail.com> on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @07:44PM (#8184815) Homepage Journal
    Palm has become a indy developers dream, and I am surprised you didn't start there. It has a huge collection of software already, along with free dev tools, and the apps are small enough that a 1 man show can still write a best-in-class app or program. PalmOS is your friend.
  • You can develop for Symbian without paying for any tools. Its more than just the nGage. The Nokia 7650, 3650, 6600 and Siemans SX1 have all sold fairly well. Also the SonyEricsson P800 and P900 if you are prepared to work with both the Series60 and UIQ interfaces. There are many phone manufacturers supporting Symbian and I'm sure they must have already shipped loads more Symbian devices than Microsoft have shipped Smartphones.

  • Java? (Score:3, Funny)

    by lightspawn ( 155347 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @07:46PM (#8184829) Homepage
    Sun's web site assures me that with Java you can "write once, run anywhere".

    Specifically, J2ME (micro edition) software is supposed to run on a wide variety of devices, some of which may actually exist.
    • I know the parent was kind of tongue in cheek, but many newer cell phones (almost everything that Spring sells comes to mind) plays J2ME pretty well, so it's an itneresting platform to develop for.
      • If only I knew Java... ...then I'd code a BZFlag radar-only implementation for J2ME (my phone's a Nokia 3100 - SMALL ass phone), and frag even when I'm away from a PC (no, really - the secret to BZFlag is watching the radar, and glancing out the window, not the other way around like most people do).
    • I just got a Motorola T720 ($25 phone after rebates) and it runs Java (games) - has a nice big screen too. There are plenty games out there to play around wit hand the dev kit is free (from Sun). www.colinfahey.com has lots of good info. I'm a Java developer so I will probably try writing a game for it in the near future.

      Brian

    • Specifically, J2ME (micro edition) software is supposed to run on a wide variety of devices, some of which may actually exist.

      Java enabled mobile phones will be everywhere shortly, so should be a good platform to target. The latest ARM processors include Java acceleration called Jazelle [arm.com] that will be making their way into most mobiles (nearly all mobiles use ARM processors).

      Nokia has plenty of information on getting started in their developer's Forum [nokia.com].

  • Most people dont buy a PDA for its gaming capabilities. They play games to pass time. I wouldnt think even the most hardcore gamer would go out and buy a 500 dollar PDA for only purpose of playing games on it. My suggestion is to make games for the highest selling platform. The more people who have the oportunity to get the games the better.
    • 500 isn't so bad, I got my PDA for gaming and playing media and paid 800 (imported from Japan, has a beautiful 640x480 screen ^^). So cut that in half and I paid 400 for the gaming, heh.

      The emu options for PDAs are really great: mame/nes/snes (the last is a little slow, but fine for rpg's). None of that catridge crap like gameboy, one microdrive and I have a huge library of games.
  • so you can target sx1/that_sendo_one/7650/3650/3660/n-gage/6600/662 0 at the same time. and anyways nokia doesn't look like it would drop series60 tomorrow, so there's potential market right there that's not going to disappear in mere months.

    the sdk is availabe from forum.nokia.com, the docs aren't really great though(well, they suck goat balls), but I've managed to get something done without having any documentation besides that's whats available on the net.

    oh and if somebody has one (series60 phone, su
  • I would suggest the GBA. Now I know that you said you didn't want to because they were locked down, but the fact is that isn't true.

    First of all, it's really not that hard to program for and most languages are available (with free compilers no less). You don't need a library, although there are ones out there that might have a license that would suit you. All you need is a flash cart and a flash cart programmer and those aren't too hard to get and don't cost that much. You'll have to look around for one bu

  • My Palm OS Experience (Long and Unfocused) (Score:4, Informative)

    by angst_ridden_hipster ( 23104 ) on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @08:29PM (#8185182) Homepage Journal
    I did some work on an established, GPLed Palm OS game (version 1.2 of Space Trader). That was fun! So I decided to write another Palm OS game.

    Hence "Flummox" was born. Frankly, it's been a pain in the ass.

    Flummox was born as "Rigmarole." I did a name search initially, but I probably misspelled in Google, or confused which variant spelling I'd used. Boom! I got slapped by the Trademark owner of the Rigmarole game. While the slapping was a bit legalistic, it was appropriate; I was in the wrong. So I renamed the game Flummox.

    In my description of Flummox on my Palm Gear page, I meantion that if you like Bejewelled, Tetris, or Marbles, you'll probably like Flummox. Well, Handmark has acquired the rights to Tetris on the Palm platform, and sent me an email cease and desist from mentioning Tetris in my page. While I'm clearly in the legal right (check the Lanham Act's statutory fair use provision, 33(b)(4), 17 U.S.C. 1115(b)(4)), they went around me and told Palm Gear they'd sue if my page wasn't taken down. Or so they say; I doubt they really needed to threaten, since they do a lot of business with Palm Gear. While it is enormously frustrating to me to capitulate to a big bully with an overdeveloped sense of entitlement, it's not worth it to me to spend the time or money to defend my rights in this case. So I had to capitulate, and remove the word Tetris from my page. Palm Gear, however, kinda sucks, and never re-indexed, so if you search for Flummox on their site, you won't find it, even though it's there.

    Now, enough whinging about my trademark troubles.

    You'll need to advertise to get anywhere. Probably a lot. The Palm market is heavily saturated with games, and it's hard to get people to download your game. It's also hard to get any registrations (if you're doing shareware, like I am). I have yet to make back the price of the compiler. It could just be that my game is no fun. Still, among the test players, I had very positive feedback.

    When it comes to the Palm OS, configurations are also kind of a pain in the ass. While I love the simplicity of the Palm philosophy, Palm OS is still an ancient OS model. No protected memory. No common standards (or APIs) for displays beyond the original 160x160. If you're going to run from the expansion card, you have to code carefully. There are a lot of gotchas from the evolution of the OS. Just because you can run on the emulator (or now the simulator), doesn't mean you won't crash on specific devices.

    So, long story short, it's a challenge. It can be a pain in the ass. But it can also be fun. For all my bitching and moaning, I had fun working on both games.
    • Sorry, but Flummox is not an original game, nor particularly inspired. This doesn't mean it isn't good.

      If you want to write games for Palm and succeed, do something absolutely mind-boggling. The "Wolfenstein" for Palm is still yet to be written ...
      • It may not be "particularly inspired," but it is original. It's not a copy of any other game. It does have things in common with other games, but then again, so does Wolfenstein.

        OK. I shouldn't get defensive. There's no question: it's not an "absolutely mind-boggling" game. I think it's a good game, and some of my play testers really got addicted. But it's certainly no genre-definer, no revolution, nothing of lasting significance.

        Believe me, I've tried to come up with a mind boggling game as hard as anyon
        • hey, its nothing personal, i was only intending to highlight the fact that, actually, there's still a loooooot of potential for a new ground-breaking genre/product in the PalmOS game market, and ... well ... having done a game for it yourself, I'd say you're better prepared to be in a position to write such a game.

  • Do them all. (Score:3, Informative)

    by Kris_J ( 10111 ) * on Wednesday February 04, 2004 @08:55PM (#8185443) Homepage Journal
    With the Shark development system [mobilewizardry.com] you can have your game on all the portable platforms out at the moment. No muss, no fuss.

  • ... you should program on the platform you feel most comfortable with. Handhelds still are a niche thing and, to be honest, most people won't buy them for their gaming abilities. The people who own them for other tasks though will more than likely buy games to play while on a long commute (plain, train, carpool, etc), waiting at the doctor's office, etc. You'll want to make a game that is fun yet not so engrossing that the player gets frustrated when they are interrupted. Also, make sure you use the hardwar

  • Think about it - most of Sprint's phones, a good portion of Nextel's phones, some AT&T phones, and most likely some T-Mobile, Cingular, and Verizon phones have J2ME support. My AT&T Nokia 3100 was a free phone, and it has J2ME (I need a data cable or their pay-out-the-ass mMode service to add apps, though). I think there are some J2ME developers here on /. who could help you out. Come to think of it, I want to see a J2ME implementation of BZFlag (it would be radar-only - cell phones don't have THAT
  • J2ME is probably the best to get the game on to the broadest range of platforms. It'd work on Palm devices definitely, but you'd also have a HUGE base for smartphones (the group of platforms, not the single MS platform) as well as most other 'normal' phones that are now on the market.

    I suggest that if you code for Symbian, you code for Series60 instead of UIQ. Main reason being there is a bigger customer base in that market (More than just Nokia use the Series 60 interface) and the dev tools and SDKs are f
  • Java 2 Micro Edition (or J2ME) is supported on a ton of devices [sun.com] and comes on pretty much any new mobile phone you can buy today.

    Most of the wireless providers also have developer programs and will help distribute your J2ME game as well as handling billing and some customer support (for a small %).

    I made a blackjack MIDlet for J2ME, and it was pretty easy to use. There's a ton of documentation and free tools out there and I never ran into a problem that I couldn't find the answer to. Of course, it's Java,
    • For Java2ME a keyword is MIDP (Mobile Information Device Profile) which is what most phones have implemented. I know Nokia has quite a lot of material on getting started with Midp for their phones, and it's useable with other phones as well.

      A problem is that in order to get any kind of good graphics you need to use vendor specific graphic routines. I still don't have a phone capable of doing Midp but when I get one I intend to play around with it some.
  • Seriously. Code for POSIX, use libSDL properly, and maintain a good front on the cross-platform libs for whatever stuff you feel you might need.

    Linux runs on a hell of a lot more systems than anything else, and a "PalmOS Linux-loader" to get into a seriously kick-ass game is absolutely feasible, if not done already.

    That is the point of the exercise, right ... you are gonna write a kick-ass game? Not just some copy ...
  • Target a virtual machine. The z-machine is obvious if you don't need graphics
    and is probably the second-most-portable format after plain ASCII text. (The
    only other serious contender is HTML, but HTML is less consistent, and the
    z-machine is much more powerful and was designed for games.)

    You mention graphics, though, so if that's important, look into a different
    virtual machine. glulx supports some graphics for example. Of course there's
    Java, but it's more heavyweight and so less portable. Parrot is prob
  • I thought the whole selling point of the Zodiak was that it was PalmOS-based...

    Also worth looking at is the GamePark, or GP32... doesn't have a lot of market share, since the company that makes it seems to want to keep it to their own country (Korea?)

    --D
  • Look into mobile games. With J2ME and BREW technology, its pretty easy to get your programs onto any decent handset. Think about it, there are over 1 billion cell phone users. Where ese do you have that kind of an install base. I work in a startup company doing cell games right now and business is so good that were always looking for engineers to hire....

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