Mobile Phone Games

#1 Try the resources at www.forum.nokia.com/, I've found them to be very useful for most mobile-tech related issues.

#2 Thanks - I've already had a brief look around on the Nokia site, but I was wondering if anyone had already looked into it so I could get a quick answer.

#3 I would look into using java. J2ME comes with functions for resource reading/writing, and will run on many, many phones. Here is a good introductory article:

www.gamedev.net/reference/programming/features/j2me1/

J2ME is great for small games, and I think that you can even get game development libraries for it.

#4 Moblie phone games that are not multi-player kind of miss the point, and the pathetic input systems are frustrating at best.

the games that are on the phones right now are not worth the effort, I would rather drag a GBASP or the new PSP around to keep myself entertained at airports and buses and what not.

#5 Even if that is true Jarrod, phone games sell the best out of all handheld devices (obviously omitting the commercial consoles here like the GBA). Our Publisher wanted us to port our Pocket PC games to microsoft's smartphone, but seeing as we don't have 500 bucks for an SDK that probably wont happen. The biggest problem with developing for these devices is you need to own one. That $500 SDK comes with a unlocked phone for development. (although you cant use it as a phone since its not locked down) I got lucky enough to win a Zaurus in a developers challenge by sharp but I had to end up buying a Pocket PC. Pocket PC has no license to buy and with Gapidraw you could make a game in theory without a Pocket PC. Zaurus has a $200 license fee unless you want to make your game GPL. Most of your good phone SDKs Ive seen are around $500 because they come with a developers phone. The good news is, unlike the GBA, anyone can buy a dev kit for a phone, you dont have to be a multi million dollar game company.

-Tim aka Spock

#6 I was talking about an end user perspective. I know lots of people with phones that have games, I don't know anyone that actually plays games on their phone, but they do own handheld game devices that they use all the time.

PocketPC and Palm devices are a different story and market altogether.

#7 If you want a handheld console you can cheaply develop games for, you might want to check out the lesser-spotted GP32 (from GamePark - a Korean company), which uses Smart Media for storage and has a free SDK! :)
There is already a fair community of homebrew/emulator developers and free games. There's a free port of Doom available, for instance! :D

www.gp32x.com is a good place to start IMO

It hasn't been 'officially' released anywhere outside Korea yet though (European release is supposed to be soon), so it's not particularly well known...

#8 I have been developing games, using Gapidraw/Opentrek which is totally free (it was on that time). Its a network/graphical solution for Pocket PC / Palm computers. I know the developer of this solution pretty well, and he is still devloping this further.

GapiDraw is the fastest, most advanced, and easiest to use graphics library for Stationary PCs, Smartphones and Handheld Computers! GapiDraw is individually optimized for each system platform, providing features such as hardware blitter support, surfaces with variable transparency, bitmapped fonts, rotozoom, real-time tint and colorization effects, and much more. With over 90 games and applications based on GapiDraw released so far, GapiDraw can be considered something of a de facto standard for creating applications with high demands on graphics performance for mobile devices.

www.opentrek.com
www.gapidraw.com