[casual_games] Casual Game Framework

[Tom Hubina]

Saying that "most devs" are doing it with a single code base simply isn't
true (if you're going to debate this, provide examples). And what do you
mean by the majority of handsets? What carriers? What handsets? Is the PC
game up on a bunch of casual portals? How about the mobile product ... Have
any carriers picked it up?
 
As I said ... you can make something that runs, but it isn't a practical
solution in all but the most simple of titles. If you want to make quality
product that is competitive with top-notch titles on both Mobile and Casual,
it just doesn't make sense to try to do it with a single code base.
 
Tom



  _____  

From: casual_games-bounces at igda.org [mailto:casual_games-bounces at igda.org]
On Behalf Of Mark Ripley
Sent: Thursday, May 31, 2007 11:02 AM
To: IGDA Casual Games SIG Mailing List
Subject: Re: [casual_games] Casual Game Framework


Gridrunner's a special case I'm afraid, as it's a port of a rather intensive
PC game. The others support the majority of handsets - midp1 and midp2. In
fact, it's a lot easier these days as devs are dropping support for nasties
like s40v1, the sharps, any siemens. 

My point was it *can* be done, and has been done by most devs, without
selling snake oil ;)


Mark Ripley
cheeky.gr

New improved Blobbit Push on Blobbit.com
Vote for Blobbit on indiegameshowcase.com




On May 31, 2007, at 8:42 PM, Tom Hubina wrote:



An API abstraction isn't really the hardest part ... it's the difference in
user interface, gameplay, etc that is required to make a quality commercial
title that is able to compete for the top slots on the mobile carriers and
casual game portals. If you just want to make something that simply "runs on
both", you can do that. If you want to make something that's competitive,
you're looking at a much different animal.

As for "across all the required handsets" ... Gridrunner has about 5% of the
total "required" handsets, and doesn't have BREW or WIPI (and only a few US
J2ME handsets for that matter). It also is only dealing with two out of the
dozen or so screen sizes and doesn't appear to have support for 64k and 128k
download size limits. Also, I notice that the handsets with slower
processors and low heaps (like the Motorola RAZR) aren't in the list either.
OK - it's not as bad as only supporting PDAs, but most of these phones
typically fall under the "smartphone" category I mentioned before, which
makes up a pretty miniscule portion of the US/EU market. I'm also curious
how much testing has been done on the handsets that are listed because I'm
familiar with sound bugs in at least a few of them that frequently requires
different code for different handsets in that list (emulator testing doesn't
count).

I'm sorry, but it is misleading to call something "quite easy" when you're
only doing a tiny fraction of the work that needs to be done.

Tom



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