IPhone Support Coming To Torque

#21 @Orion, even that doesn't give you any information about the position of the object in space relative to other objects in, say, a room. It really only gives you information about the "change" from its initial position, which is considered to be the origin, but it has no information about where that origin lies in the proverbial world coordinate frame (so, it's basically like having an object in a game in which you know that this object is at 0, 0, 0 xyz in its object space, and now has moved to some other xyz coordinate, but you don't possess any information about where the object's 0, 0, 0 origin lies in the larger space).

That's essentially the main problem with tracking motion in this fashion, and why the Wii isn't nearly as "revolutionary" as many people would otherwise hope (it thus makes things like sword fighting games rather difficult to do, if you want any sort of 1:1 mapping of motion).

#22 > even that doesn't give you any information about the position of the object in space relative to other objects in, say, a room.

correct. unless those other objects know their own spatial position and are communicating it to you in some way. like over bluetooth or the internet.

#23 Indeed. Though there are other (less portable) type of systems which work better for that sort of motion tracking (arrays of cameras or IR lights).

#24 All I can say is cool - also Ross, just take 2 seconds and sign up to be a developer and take a peak into the sdk its really not that hard.

You'll see that its at least worth a shot... I mean, NO stay away from iPhone its doom, do not develop for it ever. Less competition for me.

#25 Orion Elenzil:

Quote:
yeah, i think you need 6 linear accelerometers to successfully track [relative] position & orientation,
and then of course you're subject to their accuracy.

Six accelerometers? You only need one per axis which is total of three to track position, now with orientation you will need gyros per axis, but I've seen people in embedded hardware hobby projects use just two gyros [X,Y] and three accelerometers (X,Y,Z) to have a 5DOF (Degree of Freedom) as a really decent 6DOF alternative. Gyros are unfortunately quite expensive compared to accelerometers.

#26 For the price of an iPhone (1 year contract over here, and even that may be illegal soon), you could get two consoles with 1-2 games. It's a tad expensive. Developing for your own phone is free, though. It's just the distribution, even for free, which costs a yearly fee. $100 for free stuff, $200 for commercial, last time I logged into ADC.

The phone itself is really close to general Mac development, so that's not a huge hurdle. It's just all the costs stopping me for now..and the fact I don't actually get happy in my pants thinking about it. I see GG aren't disclosing the license price, so I'm guessing it's a bit higher than the usual indie prices.

#27

Quote:For the price of an iPhone (1 year contract over here, and even that may be illegal soon), you could get two consoles with 1-2 games.

Or for the straight-up cost of the iPhone [without even the contract], you can pick up a whole stack of wiimotes, which have just as much accellerometer happy fun time, work great with any PC, and while the specs aren't "open", at least they're not closed-to-the-point-of-being-hostile. Plus Johnny Chung Lee is a seriously smart guy.

I still find the iPhone totally overrated. I love that it's shown people that phones don't have to suck [your blackberry sucks, as do your treo and your razr], now I just want a manufacturer to release something without the overbearing controlling company throwing their weight around behind it, taking the awesome toy and detracting from it a thousandfold.

Gary (-;

#28 @ronny --

The once-only fee to distribute your apps via the App Store is $99 for a standard license and $299 for an enterprise license (which allows internal distribution of your apps to employees without having to use the App Store).

I'd love to use TGB for the 2D stuff my company has developed ... would've saved time over Xcode, that's for certain. I'm waiting for Unity to do the 3D games.

DaveyJJ, CEO
www.cocoatouchgames.com

#29 Nathan - i was figuring that two parallel linear accelerometers with some distance between them can/are used to track rotation, but that's an assumption on my part. good point that 5 DOF can get you 6.

#30 .. and PS3, apparently ?
ps3.thegamereviews.com/story-1648-Penny-Arcade-Adventures-to-Appear-on-PS3.html
edit: or rather, someone may be porting it to the PS3. whether it'll be available outside of Hothead Games is another Q.

#31 @David, yikes, they still have that? So, I guess I have to revise the $1000/$1880 total price up to $1100/$1980. *Expense!*

#32 An iPod touch is 299$ I believe, it's the exact same hardware (and software) than the iPhone. Though it obviously lacks the phone part.

If the port of TGB is TorqueScript enabled, I don't see any reason to miss the opportunity (well, at least once I finish my 2D project first).