   Confused on what to start developing games for mobiles devices with
  Hello again gamedev community.I've been developing games on PC side with API's like OpenGL, SDL and Allegro and now I'm trying to do a smooth transition to handheld development. I'm interested in creating one or two example demo games for mobile phones using touch screen as input but the thing that confuses the living he** out of me is what API gives me what I need. I have desperately tried to dig information in this matter but I just cannot seem to hit the right sites or places to find the information what I'm lookking for. Since I've got only one mobile phone with touchscreen, which is Nokia 5800 ExpressMusic that will be my target platform for now. Of course the aim is to find a way to develop games on that platform that gives me object oriented languages benefits and simple 2D graphics stuff. Like ability to handle transparent sprites, blitting and so on. Like SDL or Allegro but a bit less features... (can a description get more confusing?)I can do Java, C#, C++, C and the basics in ASM but I guess that doesn't really help me at all when it comes to this... Anyway any ideas what API to use to start developing my demo game for my mobile phone? Thanks guys!EDIT #1: here we go.. with these darn edits :)Forgot to mention that I tried lookking into J2ME but seems like it really is not worth the hassle and I've found contradicting information on the matter that it cannot handle sprite transparency, which automatically kills it off from my list. I need it so I can do my sexy, yet really poor lookking effects :)   
  are you sure about the transparency, i briefly did some j2me stuff, and had sprites with transparency?i believe it was 1 bit alpha from memory? and you also had some nice stuff to do hit testing per pixel which was nifty.J2ME is ok, its a bit slow though. and limited.;  This is exactly what I mean about information being in contradiction with each other :P I have to say, I'm not entirely sure. I'd like to develop with J2ME, seems like a feasible solution but I have to be sure does it support the transparency. Gamasutra had a bit older article on this and they stated that it didn't have support for transparency, if I recall correctly... http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/3476/creating_games_using_j2me.phpnote to self: the article is from year 2001... things develop ALOT in 8 years...So never mind the comment about the transparency, heheh. Anyway, it's slow? In what manner? I mean, can games be developed in J2ME, or? Is it just TOO slow?This kind of started to tingle my fingers already. I guess this might be the choice for me...   ;  If you want to develop software for your Nokia its going to be J2ME or nothing.As for an API J2ME has 2D graphics functions built in.   All versions of J2ME support sprite transparency for PNG images.  You may be getting confused with Alpha Blending which isn't supported on all handsets.  Nokia MIDP2  devices however do support alpha blending but it isn't compatible with other manufacturers handsets.Unfortunatly you are going to loose the object oriented benefits.  Mobile devices just can't cope.  Simple apps you'll get away with it but once you start to develop full featured games you'll start having trouble with speed and memory limitations.J2ME is slow but it isn't a fault of the language.  Its because the handsets are slow.  You need to use fixed point for everything precalculate as much as possible.  Don't forget not all handsets have a JIT so you need to optomize your code as much as possible then run it through an optomizing obfuscator like Proguard.Theeasiest way to find out what you are up against is to download all the tools (they are free) and create a game.   ;  Yeah, I guess that's the best way to go. Just download them and see what they feel like. I was just asking because as always, the time is a limited factor and I'd much rather spend it on actually programming than just figuring out is the current choice of API right for my task or not.Any tutorials on going around the floating point problem? I was supposed to ask this too but completely forgot. Since most of handheld consoles/devices don't have floating point support or they have a poor emulation of them and makes it ~sllloooow...But yes, I'll definitely go with the J2ME. I'm guessing the next place to look next is nokias J2ME development kits for nokia devices, am I correct?   ;  You can either download the Sun J2mE develop kit or find the Nokia development kit that is specific to your device.  They'll both do the same job except the Nokia emulator will have a skin that looks a lot like your device.   ;  You will want emulators from all manufacturers who make one available (actual phones for testing would be a good idea, too), and Sun's Wireless Toolkit (part of Java ME SDK). Performance across the various emulators is said to vary (a lot). I've read that a program running slow on the WTK can be fast on the Nokia emulator, and vice versa. So you'll want to test on as many emulators and devices as you can get your hands on.You'll also want the Java ME plugins for your IDE of choice (both Eclipse and NetBeans have them). I am doing it with Eclipse and it's very straightforward, but you do have to configure the javadoc locations manually in order for Eclipse to pull the API docs into the mouse-over help.Java ME is pretty widespread, but iPhone development is seemingly all the rage these days, and that's a whole different ballgame. Another choice is doing apps for Windows Mobile. An iPhone or a device running Windows Mobile should have more power than most conventional Java-enabled phones. Of course, neither one is your current Nokia.   