My first iPhone Project
by Johnathon · 05/05/2009 (3:10 pm) · 8 comments
Building a game for the iPhone is certainly not a cheap and quick venture. Considering the cost of an iMac if you do not have one, the $100 Apple Developer fee, then the fact that you must develop your own engine/tools/game using Cocoa, or using existing technology like iTGE, iTGB or Unity... Any of which will run you an additional $500+
Since I do not own a Mac, and I have yet to right a single line of code in Cocoa, I decided that it would not be the brightest idea of running out and spending $1600 on a new iMac and $100 on the Apple Developer fee just so I can attempt to build a game on a platform I've never touched. It wasn't a very realistic goal, so I decided to mess with the TGE and Unity Engines.
After fiddling with Unity I quickly decided to stick with Torque, which I already owned a license to anyway, and I felt that I had the best chance of actually making something work using the TGE technology.
With that in mind, I now begin my quest to developing an iPhone game using TGE. Yes I know I won't be able to deploy the game onto the iPhone or submit it to the app store with out purchasing a license to the iTGE and getting the game moved over the the iPhone OS and implementing the touch screen aspects of the game, and I will still need a Mac to deploy the final product, but it saves me a lot of money up front incase the whole project blows up in my face.
Now I just need to think on what I need to keep in mind for developing a mobile game, as this will be a first for me. At first I was thinking that size would be important, but after scanning through my own library of games I realized that a lot of them where over 50mb in size. Myst was 750mb when it was released, and 100+ people bought it in the first day. So maybe size isnt such an important aspect. I would like to keep it under 10mb so that users can download the game on the go using 3G, but since I dont have the iTGE runtimes, I'm not sure what the actualy size of the engine itself is, and I would have to guess that if I venture into anything 3D, the size of the game will go over the 10mb limit. I think the goal I'll set for myself is to keep it under 50mb which shouldn't be hard to achieve if I do things right.
Next I need to remember that the game will be touch driven, so I want to make sure and not have a complex control scheme requiring key-combo's and lots of menus to navigate to access items and what not. The vital things need to be present on the screen, and the characters movement needs to be simplistic with the camera ensuring that the character is always visible, and that the controls I implement do not obstruct the view of the character and the actions it is trying to perform while the fingers are on the screen.
In the end I would like to have the game published and playable on all platforms, PC, Mac, Linux and iPhone OS, but my main concern for the moment is a PC based game I can easily port to the iTGE and iPhone OS when I'm ready to do it... and so with that, I will start logging my progress using the Garage Games blogs.
Till next time.
Since I do not own a Mac, and I have yet to right a single line of code in Cocoa, I decided that it would not be the brightest idea of running out and spending $1600 on a new iMac and $100 on the Apple Developer fee just so I can attempt to build a game on a platform I've never touched. It wasn't a very realistic goal, so I decided to mess with the TGE and Unity Engines.
After fiddling with Unity I quickly decided to stick with Torque, which I already owned a license to anyway, and I felt that I had the best chance of actually making something work using the TGE technology.
With that in mind, I now begin my quest to developing an iPhone game using TGE. Yes I know I won't be able to deploy the game onto the iPhone or submit it to the app store with out purchasing a license to the iTGE and getting the game moved over the the iPhone OS and implementing the touch screen aspects of the game, and I will still need a Mac to deploy the final product, but it saves me a lot of money up front incase the whole project blows up in my face.
Now I just need to think on what I need to keep in mind for developing a mobile game, as this will be a first for me. At first I was thinking that size would be important, but after scanning through my own library of games I realized that a lot of them where over 50mb in size. Myst was 750mb when it was released, and 100+ people bought it in the first day. So maybe size isnt such an important aspect. I would like to keep it under 10mb so that users can download the game on the go using 3G, but since I dont have the iTGE runtimes, I'm not sure what the actualy size of the engine itself is, and I would have to guess that if I venture into anything 3D, the size of the game will go over the 10mb limit. I think the goal I'll set for myself is to keep it under 50mb which shouldn't be hard to achieve if I do things right.
Next I need to remember that the game will be touch driven, so I want to make sure and not have a complex control scheme requiring key-combo's and lots of menus to navigate to access items and what not. The vital things need to be present on the screen, and the characters movement needs to be simplistic with the camera ensuring that the character is always visible, and that the controls I implement do not obstruct the view of the character and the actions it is trying to perform while the fingers are on the screen.
In the end I would like to have the game published and playable on all platforms, PC, Mac, Linux and iPhone OS, but my main concern for the moment is a PC based game I can easily port to the iTGE and iPhone OS when I'm ready to do it... and so with that, I will start logging my progress using the Garage Games blogs.
Till next time.
About the author
#2
05/06/2009 (2:51 pm)
It's a very good market to get into right now before gets even more flooded than it already is. 
#3
05/06/2009 (8:45 pm)
I thought it was already flooded? 
#4
05/07/2009 (5:51 am)
That's my fear with the amount of time its been taking for me to get into it too. I can't help but get the feeling that the iGame market is going to peak fairly quickly. 
#5
05/07/2009 (7:44 am)
btw, there are plenty of Mac clones for $500 that run OS X just fine for less
#6
So, yeah, you can get OS running on a non-Mac PC, but before you distribute you still have to incur the cost of a Mac. Not to mention I've heard some reports of developing on non-Mac hardware can sometimes cause problems with the SDK.
05/07/2009 (9:28 am)
That's true, but my understanding of the OS EULA is that running OS on non Mac hardware is specifically prohibited and by extension the iPhone SDK (haven't actually read the EULA for that one yet).So, yeah, you can get OS running on a non-Mac PC, but before you distribute you still have to incur the cost of a Mac. Not to mention I've heard some reports of developing on non-Mac hardware can sometimes cause problems with the SDK.
#7
You could also think of a Mac as being a computer for Mac OS and Windows if you need to rationalize the cost ;)
05/07/2009 (2:47 pm)
There's always the Apple education store (if you're a student) and the refurb store (offers the same warranty as new iirc) and or course, the Mac Mini if you need to go cheaper.You could also think of a Mac as being a computer for Mac OS and Windows if you need to rationalize the cost ;)
#8
05/07/2009 (8:16 pm)
Pre-owned Mac mini of a previous Intel generation. Cheapest legal option there is. Who says you HAVE to have an iMac to develop on? I work on my MacBook, while the desktop sits there, playing music and movies :)
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