iPhone OS 4 license changes - How does it affect iTorque?

#61 Not sure if I would call them indisputabel actually.

Apple went that far that you can have fullscale html5 + css3 webapplications that can even use offline cache etc and integrate the location service there. They have shown some stunning movies at last years WWDC and you get them in the WWDC video bundle.
If you see that stuff and know how easy you can do them with DashCode you understand why the direct use of flash on the iphone browser is really a very question thing. For the stuff its used most, movies and menues, its a very bad and very slow replacement to what HTML5 + CSS offers. Same goes for various flash based RIAs.
The only thing it lacks at the time is WebGL, guess Apple stopped there for now due to the success of games in app form.


And yupp its out of question that we are talking about some monopolitic / world control dreams control thing here. But thats exactly the good thing about it, cause the change without prior notice to the tens of thousands of registered devs could apple break the neck on that intend TOS change and any future change that breaks business like this. Not considering the amount of refund requests for hardware, WWDC training video etc they will get as a consequence if they don't take it back.
I've my doubts that apple thought the consequences of this large scale dev pissing through, including the class action suite consequences that they will have to bear with.
They are a major player in the US and european phone and computer market by the last 12 months sale numbers and try to use their "good old" minority benefits in that position which allowed them to do what they want and that can easily become freaking expensive.

#62 But Marc, you really believe they left out the most widely distributed web application plataform because of technological reasons?

*I know* the arguments, we agree in what html5 is capable of, I just dont think they are doing it in a quest for quality. If that were the case, any thinking person would have engaged some actions like the ones you mentioned in this thread. Instead, they took this combo of clauses a la "my toy, my rules, go f. yourself", which in fact is the ultimate move after a long path of erratic, arbitrary behaviour.

Edit: And btw, we are absolutely ridiculous if we believe their speech of FLASH = Poor Quality, thats just a nonsense, the same as with any other intermediate API/middleware.

#63 Flash is not necessarily bad, but middleware like Adobe Flash Catalyst that goes straight from script to binary is bad for any platform. If Apple implements something new (like Accelerate). People that depends on Adobe Flash Catalyst will have to wait for Adobe to implement those functions before they can use it.

Adobe might become a very responsible middleware developer and implement those functions before the new OS ships, maybe even integrate it in their existing functions. But frankly Adobe's track record doesn't convince anybody that they won't seriously lag behind.

Anyways, this thread is for discussing the future of iTorque, not Flash.

#64 @Novack: I believe that they left it out and will ensure it will remain out is due to two factors:
1. Adobe wants to play on each field but only support a single one and thats Windows. Every other platform is handled second class or worse (OSX as best worst case example). If it does that on the iphone then the iphone will be blamed

2. When Apple breaks something, flash applications would be broken for months to years by Adobes past track of updating, leaving the store in a massive mess causing a lot of work Apple to resolve, refund etc basically costing more than they would help. The only way around that for apple would be not to break it, which on the other end cuts flexibility and control over direction which apple is not willing to give up.

In case of Adobe the personal factor Adobe - Apple plays in too, combined with the fact that Adobe wants to move it aways from OSX, basically making any user of Flash CS5 who uses its iphone deployment a contract breacher. Apple has good reasons why they require XCode and while I hate it compared to VS, it makes sense that you have to use and familiarize with it cause otherwise you stand no chance creating anything thats not slow, leaky or hell buggy. Flash devs are not known for their bright mind and background knowledge on inner workings on the C level etc yet thats exactly what they would need to know at minimum to solve issues basing on crash reports and instrument due to the total disconnection and lack of tools they have on the dev side. Thats really nothing to support or even want.
If Adobe would have been smart they would have gone the same way as all others: Output an xcode project that requires osx and xcode to build, sign and deploy and get the flashies to learn those things too. then apple likely wouldn't have made even half as much rukus as they are doing know that Adobe missused US laws for reverse engineering and bypassing the whole stuff.

Point 2 is what likely speaks against every non source solution but Apple needs to make a difference between Adobe with a track of hell and MonoTouch / Unity / GameSalad and similar which so far have ensured that already betas of new OS were kept up with technically so the new version for the new OS was ready at latest by day 0

@BenjaminS: Yeah if hell freezes. Adobe does not even support OSX and by now still has no 10.6 updated player that runs reasonable nor did they have in 10.5. You really think that they are up to deep changes in the OS if 4 years of OSX time were not enough to get it done? not really.

To get back to the original topic:
The problem is that the fear of this and similar situations that pressure apple in a given direction is what caused the current situation (aside of the potentially assumed reason against cross platform where apple is shooting its own leg cause they are the once that started the need for cross platforming due to the crap flooded app store and lack of interest to do anything against it by strict guidelines for non UI based apps and/or fair, low but high enough approval fees to keep "just for the sake of it" apps out that account for at least half of all apps on the store)

What I don't get so far is all the rukus about scripting because scripting basically always was forbidden. The TOS already before contained the clear wording that no execution of dynamically created code at runtime is allowed, which is exactly what scripting does per its very definition (the code is not executable contained code but virtual machine code as such it can be changed at runtime). In addition every scripting system including torques has an eval command and every scripting driven application has a VM that executes that virtual code.
It was never enforced but devs knew about it, as the threads in the very early iTGB days show, where I was among those seeking for clarification on iTGB and exactly that clause that forbid TS.

Torque has the benefit that it will not be touched by 3.3.1 independent of all ongoing.
But its clear that if 3.3.2 is not taken care of in a way thats green lighted by apple it could be pretty much the end of iTorque and I doubt that apple will let torque onto the iphone again if they "pissed on their shoes" before by not complying with the requirements right from the start.

I personally would welcome a cut of TS and a more programming (clean programming) focused usage, cause its faster to much faster.
Just thinking of the common return of functions, the "delimited string" word arrays, makes me shudder ^^

#65 @Mark, as I said earlier it seems to me that at this moment iTorque would be a lot safer than the RAD tools simply because they could whack TorqueScript. Since Torque is and has always been source-based, it would be easier for its user base to adapt. Stonetrip has been working on a new path to allow C, C++, and ObjC in addition to and/or instead of Lua in Shiva, so they've got a solution. I would guess that Unity Tech would work towards a similar solution, but since they are keeping their tech plans under wraps for now who knows.

Let's all just hope that this is posturing on Apple's part, and that they back down when Adobe calls their bluff. Not that I'm an optimist or anything... in fact I'm already working on my escape plan. ;)

#66 have been looking for escape - worst case plans myself and the options for 3D are really not large.
For 2D its trivial yeah :)

But for 3D I don't see much triviality nor any direct hope:

* T3Di is not an option if it still bases on TGE. If it is TGEA / T3D base + iphone layer, its a whole different story
* Shiva is a collection of cool sounding features packaged up in a bundle of unintuitive, unconnected and user unfriendly editor messes and features that at least to me lack considerably. Also I consider shiva to be nearly as black listed as Adobe due to their way of doing the whole thing (author anywhere, push it through packager for iphone)
* SIO2: yeah sure, I hate blender like the pest, so hell will freeze before I touch something that fully requires it ;)
* Oolong: thats actually where I originally came from dev wise on the iphone at all and where I potentially would go back worst case.
* iMiniB3D: thats where I game wise came from, Blitz3D and iMiniB3D would just fit the needs for quite some of the prototypes ... also its pure source like oolong without any scripting, so its among the ones that are "clearest green light" :)

#67 Are the TOS in Effect now? If they are, then we've just had an App Update approved, so it doesn't effect us right?

Or are the TOS in Effect as of OS 4?

#68 They are not in effect yet.
From what I recall they start to be in effect by april 22 or alike.

#69 Are we really going to have to wait until April 22 to submit an app and see if Apple approves it, or is it likely that someone at Apple will actually answer a phonecall from GarageGames and clarify this situation?

As a teacher using iT2D in universities, it's essential for my courses that iT2D remain functioning with TorqueScript. There's huge demand for iPhone and iPad courses that are accessible to designers and artists and iT2D is really the only development environment filling that niche at the moment.

#70 even when the scripting has to be cut for deployment you can still easily use them for your courses etc.
AdHoc builds and test builds are not affected by it.

#71 Marc - sure scripting could still be used for educational purposes, but nobody will pay to attend a course with limited commercial outcomes. Still, there's no sense in speculating 'what if' scenarios - we need clarification from Apple.

#72 WRT to Apr 22nd - we will be submitting Invaders World Tour (iWT) within the next week so we may well know sooner - of course a giveaway to Apple is the Torque splash screen. I hope it is not rejected as it has been about 3 months of dev :(

#73 I have posted earlier but I just want to said that I became even less worried when I was actually seaching google for more info on areas such as flash and html5 on iPhone.

It must be Apple is really worried about all the games that whould be playable on the platform without buying the games from the Appstore! It is already possible to play games through safari in html5 for example without download it from appstore.

If this is the case I see the reasoning behind it however it doesn´t make sense to start banning games that is targeted against appstore.

whatever the outcome I will continue to use Torque 2D and reject iPhone as a possible platform for me if the worst-case scenario appears. I become loving Torque and I already beginning to switch the game to HD :)

#74 I don't see how this impacts Flash and alike at all as neither of them is through a browser plugin (cause there are none on the iPhone OS). They would all be through the appstore.

As for the "reject as possible platform": In that case though you would better be using TGB ...projects don't go from one to the other by just moving them ;)

#75 Well I´m using TGB and it has very similar to iTGB and it shouldn´t be any problem porting that now as I have done all the gfx in high-res either way.

Check some videos on youtube there is indeed games you play through the browser only. Because videos there is however if they are fake in anyway I don´t know...

#76 you can create html5 + CSS3 games but they are not really immersive or alike and apple has no problem with them.
Actually apple originally only offere this way to get any app on the device, the so called WebApps and they are still there.
you can even offer such games with offline cache etc so they run without internet etc.


As for TGB and iTGB: its easier from iTGB to TGB yeah due to iTGB having more :)
But there are still differences to be kept in mind

#77 I think I´m in the "easier" position though as my plan from the beginning was to release for some several platforms and my game isn´t "Touch" unique in anyway...

It is much worse for those who is much further into their projects and is more touch specific with the iPhone features at hand if they want to make the switch :/

#78 Well the consensus on the net is that a lot of small and large companies just halted all of their iphone projects until this mess is sorted out. I think what has made it worse is that Apple has done nothing to help clarify it.

I have had an iPhone from the beginning, and I was one of the first official iphone developers. Right now I have two iPhone projects underway. So if Apple does cause us a lot of heartache, they will lose me as a fan.

#79

Quote:* T3Di is not an option if it still bases on TGE. If it is TGEA / T3D base + iphone layer, its a whole different story

It is built from Torque 3D 1.1.

Quote:But its clear that if 3.3.2 is not taken care of in a way thats green lighted by apple it could be pretty much the end of iTorque and I doubt that apple will let torque onto the iphone again if they "pissed on their shoes" before by not complying with the requirements right from the start.

Well, as I stated before, unless Apple comes out and directly says "you cannot use 3rd party middleware like Torque or Unity" iTorque will go on. If TorqueScript has to be ripped out (which we will do our best to avoid), we have options. We also have some very interesting R&D code sitting around, stuff the public has never heard about.

#80 Ah cool so T3Di moved on since the last news or I missed something big then :-)


And I guess there is a lot of stuff we have never heard about given the large redirecting basically of T2D :)