   Start to Finish: Publishing a Commercial iPhone Game
  Comments for the article Start to Finish: Publishing a Commercial iPhone Game
Quote:Original post by Myopic RhinoComments for the article Start to Finish: Publishing a Commercial iPhone GameThis article is misnamed: it's mainly about "Making a game for Android". Please change the title as it's very misleading.Specifically:* There's no coverage of the publishing process at all, regardless of the platform;* 90% of the article is about building a game -- in Java -- for the Android platform;* The iPhone port is rattled off in just a few paragraphs at the end of the piece. Clearly the article predates Apple's killing-off of the unnecessarily draconian iPhone NDA, so the author (naturally) errs on the side of telling you damned near nothing of any value;* The article mentions using Visual Studio to write C + OpenGL code for an iPhone tethered to a Mac mini. This is an unusual development process and I'd have liked to read more on this technique. (I suspect most developers are far more familiar with C than the Objective C language favoured by most OS X developers.)It's an interesting read nevertheless, but the title does it a massive disservice and leaves one feeling robbed. "Creating a mobile game from start to finish" would have been a far better choice. If the same author could be prevailed upon to expand his iPhone section to explain in more detail how the two platforms compare, it'd be a much better piece.;Quote:Original post by stimarcoThe article mentions using Visual Studio to write C + OpenGL code for an iPhone tethered to a Mac mini. This is an unusual development process and I'd have liked to read more on this technique. (I suspect most developers are far more familiar with C than the Objective C language favoured by most OS X developers.)It shouldn't be too hard to manage. You will need a small Objective-C shim, to initialise the OpenGL context, and receive and proxy events, which will be forwarded to C/C++ code. This is because all the UI frameworks are written in Objective-C. Most of the low-level stuff, including networking, I/O and of course OpenGL, are available from C/C++ anyway.You could even set up a GCC Windows/ARM cross-compiler with support for Objective-C, and run it in Windows, but unfortunately you still need Apple's GCC to perform the code-signing (unless your device is jail broken).   ;  Good article.  I really liked the part when you were on cruch, but still made time for your life.There is one bit of misinformation in the article.Quote:J2ME games suffers from the annoying fact that you can only press one key at a time;Java Micro Edition is not limited to 1 key press at a time.  Some phones have this limitation in the hardware but Java can take multiple key presses if the phone can provide it.   ;Quote:Original post by swiftcoderIt shouldn't be too hard to manage. You will need a small Objective-C shim, to initialise the OpenGL context, and receive and proxy events, which will be forwarded to C/C++ code. This is because all the UI frameworks are written in Objective-C. Most of the low-level stuff, including networking, I/O and of course OpenGL, are available from C/C++ anyway.This is exactly what I do. Each platform has it's own main file. The PC main is in cpp and directx. The iphone main is in obj-c. All the rest of the code is shared cpp. I develop 95% of the time on windows and only when I need a build for the phone do I use the horrid xcode on the mac.   ;Quote:Original post by billy_zelsnackThis is exactly what I do. Each platform has it's own main file. The PC main is in cpp and directx. The iphone main is in obj-c. All the rest of the code is shared cpp. I develop 95% of the time on windows and only when I need a build for the phone do I use the horrid xcode on the mac.Unfortunately, if you are writing anything meaningful, you are going to spend an awful lot of time debugging with the phone. OpenGL ES on the phone has a lot of subtle quirks, and there is no real substitute for play testing with the tilt-sensor and touch screen.   ;  I agree that this article is lacking... you will find alot more information on the subject at the following URLHome:http://sio2interactive.comForum:http://sio2interactive.forumotion.net   ;  If you need step by step help with porting to iphone or developing with the iphone - check out the EDUmobile.ORG online course.   