Cell Phone Game Engine
by Bryan Wiegele · in Technical Issues · 11/30/2005 (5:38 pm) · 7 replies
Hello, I was wondering if anyone here has programmed any cell phone games? I'm wondering if Flash/Shockwave games run on cell phones and if not what language is used to create these games? Thanks in advance.
-Bryan
-Bryan
#2
If you want a 3d engine, Fathammer have a 3D engine called X-Forge which is available across a number of mobile/handheld platforms. IIRC the API is same across all platforms. For 3D stuff in java, there is this engine called m3ge.
12/04/2005 (8:35 am)
Most phones will run Java games. For games that need to get the most out of the hardware you will have to drop back to C++. For Symbian based phones you can get the SDK's for the relevant platform. Both Nokia and SonyEricsson use Symbian across a range of their phones.If you want a 3d engine, Fathammer have a 3D engine called X-Forge which is available across a number of mobile/handheld platforms. IIRC the API is same across all platforms. For 3D stuff in java, there is this engine called m3ge.
#3
02/07/2006 (4:42 pm)
Does anyone have a clue about GoLive CS2 and mobile content/games? It supposedly helps in making it, but cannot find much in the way of getting started with it. Adobe's site and even golive help doesn't seem to have much on it. Thanks everybody for any help.
#4
02/07/2006 (4:56 pm)
Always remember that if you plan on doing this on your own, you have to make a lot of versions of the same game if you plan to port it to all available phone platforms. API's might be the same, but specs vary greatly from platform to platform.
#5
I have worked at Gameloft as a game designer.
Basically, since we tried to cover the whole range of cell phones, we had to actually bear several things in mind.
No matter what library/tool you plan on using, there are certain design elements that need to be known before even starting to put your design to paper.
Such as, different resolutions. The phone I was working with primarily was 240x300.
When designing interfaces, everything must work on this resolution, as well as 176x2?? phones and even some with lower resolutions.
This makes smooth-looking interfaces almost impossible to create, unless you actually design 3 different interfaces for the 3 different screen sizes.
Controls are not standardized either, some phones have a 'joystick', others have a dedicated arrows pad, and others have nothing but the numbers.
Also bear in mind that 'acceptable' .Jar size (the java compiled application, as I understand it) just recently switched to 600kb. Which includes all ressources, in-game ads, code, EVERYTHING!
There is also BREW, which is a C++ approach instead of JAVA.
Bear in mind that this applies mainly to huge companies that will provide games for several carriers. An indie with a cool engine will be able to code for a single phone, but that also severely limits your possible audience.
07/25/2007 (7:53 am)
I know this is an old thread, but my recent experience might help define this problem a bit more.I have worked at Gameloft as a game designer.
Basically, since we tried to cover the whole range of cell phones, we had to actually bear several things in mind.
No matter what library/tool you plan on using, there are certain design elements that need to be known before even starting to put your design to paper.
Such as, different resolutions. The phone I was working with primarily was 240x300.
When designing interfaces, everything must work on this resolution, as well as 176x2?? phones and even some with lower resolutions.
This makes smooth-looking interfaces almost impossible to create, unless you actually design 3 different interfaces for the 3 different screen sizes.
Controls are not standardized either, some phones have a 'joystick', others have a dedicated arrows pad, and others have nothing but the numbers.
Also bear in mind that 'acceptable' .Jar size (the java compiled application, as I understand it) just recently switched to 600kb. Which includes all ressources, in-game ads, code, EVERYTHING!
There is also BREW, which is a C++ approach instead of JAVA.
Bear in mind that this applies mainly to huge companies that will provide games for several carriers. An indie with a cool engine will be able to code for a single phone, but that also severely limits your possible audience.
#6
07/27/2007 (3:03 pm)
Since XML is explictly made for cell phones, as far as i know anyways, i think that you would be quite able to make a flash game and then simply link from an xml site. This means that all games gonna have to be played over the internet though, so it probably not such a good sollution. 
#7
07/30/2007 (6:25 am)
XML stands for eXtensible Markup Language. It was in development well before it was used in Cellular technology. It is extensible because you design your own tags to define your data (as opposed to HTML which are adopted and standardized tags). Like most markup languages, it has descended from SGML.
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