Gaming dead before it gets a chance to live?

[SSHGuru]

Super G

I could not uninstall Super G fast enough. It's a trial that lasts a very short time and then it ends... and it's not very good - don't bother.

Speed Forge is incredible.

TBH, most of the Android stuff i've seen so far from Gameloft hasn't impressed me at all. Basically ports of J2ME cell phone games, not taking advantage of the additional capabilities of Android smartphones.

The best games i've seen on my Droid so far have been from smaller devs. Speed Forge 3D is pretty impressive (especially given its filesize)

I also like the Super G stunt plane game from OmniGsoft. Kind of pointless, but it has nice colorful graphics and is rather relaxing. It's also iphone-eque in quality and framerate.

And I really think the gaming genre that the Droid excels at is retro console gaming, with the plethora of emulators out there. And 16GB is a huge amount of space for ROMs.

EDIT: Okay looking back thru the thread, the "High Definition" games for the new Android devices (Droid! Yay!) thing sounds good. I'd assume these will install a stub app in device memory and copy the datafiles to the SD card. I hope so, considering some of their iPhone games are ~100MB or so. I really hope they are accelerometer controlled like on the iPhone (especially the racing games)

EDIT2: Looking at some info on the web about Gameloft's announcement and subsequent 180 degree turnaround on the issue, i'm beginning to wonder if the fact that there have already been up to 800,000 Droids sold in such a short timeframe has something to do with them changing their minds?

 

[andjarnic]

PowerPlay (et all), that is great to hear.. but how do the customers that pay for an app, download it, then have to register to get it to actually play feel? I would guess that would be a turn off, but not quite sure otherwise how to prevent theft of apps (once you get the .apk file off and share it) from occurring.

I thought all the android phones had accelerometer features? Are there no games making use of it?

I personally really enjoy the tower defense games. They are easy enough to play, challenge you wave after wave, and yet you can pause/stop it any time without too much fanfare about spending hours to get to a specific spot only to start over again. I tend to think games like these are the best on any platform except the home consoles, because they allow the hand held user to stop at a moments notice and not feel they just lost/wasted all that time playing it. Games like Jewels and such lend well to this as well. Agreed?

 

[Dave12308]

I could not uninstall Super G fast enough. It's a trial that lasts a very short time and then it ends... and it's not very good - don't bother.

I did bother, I got it from Mobihand for $6.95 - that's why I am stating that it's a good diversion. I do agree the demo sucks, it's way too short. But the full version is pretty fun and relaxing, I only hope that they update it to use accelerometer steering.

 

[mpdroid]

This has already been posted but it is simply propaganda. It depends on what the masses want. If the masses support Android then developers will want to bring in money.

The Android platform will far outweigh the iPhone in the future. Ask any app developer which platform is easier to develop for. Android wins, plus there is no fascist approval process like what Apple does to developers.

 

[andjarnic]

I gotta be honest.. I want to develop for both platforms. While my current day job provides me with a macbook pro, if I lose this job, which hopefully I wont anytime soon, I'll lose the Mac, and my possibility to develop for iPhone. It's really crappy that you must own (or have access to) a Mac to write iPhone apps. It's one more reason I think a lot more developers will migrate over to Android, along with a slew of java developers already jumping on board. I myself am not a fan of ObjectiveC, having to own a Mac AND the ridiculous process to get your app approved for iPhone. Those three things make it far more likely we'll see a much larger growth in the android market in the near future. It's been a month since Android 2.0 came out and already a number of updated apps using multi-touch, and some newer higher-res updates for droid are coming out. I am a bit concerned with Moto Droid only versions of apps. I think being the only solid 2.0 device with the 854x480 resolution available, a lot of developers are rushing to have "droid dirst" apps, but meanwhile the market has 2, 3 sometimes 4 different versions of the same app. That is going to pollute/confuse the market if it keeps going on. There has been some talks in the developer forums that Android is going to tank because developers are finding it hard to develop for the different devices, screen resolutions, hardware capabilities, and so forth. To some extent, this can be true. The problem really means that us Android developers need to write apps for the lowest common denominator. That is one advantage the Apple iPhone developers have over Android, they have a pretty solid development platform that wont change much. If you developer for the 3G (the 2nd gen), you're pretty safe. Us Android developers are going to have to account for a large variety of screen sizes, hardware, and potentially other issues, like a physical keyboard being present or not and more importantly how to properly close an application so that it doesn't remain and run in the background draining battery life... something iPhone apps can never do because only one can run at one time and there is no background service capabilities.

 

[satchef1]

I am curious tho, as a developer, for any of you that read this and care to reply, if you were to buy a game for a buck or so off of the market, and it required you to "register" that game to be able to play it, thus using wifi/3G (which you have to have anyway to have android phones work.. so it wont cost anything extra to do it), is that a big deal? I am trying to think of some way to avoid the .apk file being copied off of the SD card (when that becomes possible) and just given away for free to anyone wanting to download it off of a torrent site. I think this is the main reason SD cards do not allow apps to be installed... to avoid getting .apk files and running them illegally. I haven't dug deep enough in the android processes to understand how all that works yet. I do know I sign my app, but that won't prevent it from being given away freely. It would be nice if there was some way to tie an app to a device and user, so that it only ran on that one device.. with of course there being some ability if that user upgraded to a new device, to get all their apps again without having to repay for them.

Thanks.

Google just need to set up some sort of verification system. The first time you go to run an App the OS should check your store account to make sure you actually have purchased it. If you have then great, you're free to use the App online or offline and won't have to verify again unless you change handsets or store account. If you haven't then it should take you in to the marketplace and prompt you to buy. It's essentially the same registration thing that already exists, but all registration should be done through Google to unify the interface and make it consistent.

 

[Mr. Premium]

I gotta be honest.. I want to develop for both platforms. While my current day job provides me with a macbook pro, if I lose this job, which hopefully I wont anytime soon, I'll lose the Mac, and my possibility to develop for iPhone. It's really crappy that you must own (or have access to) a Mac to write iPhone apps. It's one more reason I think a lot more developers will migrate over to Android, along with a slew of java developers already jumping on board. I myself am not a fan of ObjectiveC, having to own a Mac AND the ridiculous process to get your app approved for iPhone. Those three things make it far more likely we'll see a much larger growth in the android market in the near future. It's been a month since Android 2.0 came out and already a number of updated apps using multi-touch, and some newer higher-res updates for droid are coming out. I am a bit concerned with Moto Droid only versions of apps. I think being the only solid 2.0 device with the 854x480 resolution available, a lot of developers are rushing to have "droid dirst" apps, but meanwhile the market has 2, 3 sometimes 4 different versions of the same app. That is going to pollute/confuse the market if it keeps going on. There has been some talks in the developer forums that Android is going to tank because developers are finding it hard to develop for the different devices, screen resolutions, hardware capabilities, and so forth. To some extent, this can be true. The problem really means that us Android developers need to write apps for the lowest common denominator. That is one advantage the Apple iPhone developers have over Android, they have a pretty solid development platform that wont change much. If you developer for the 3G (the 2nd gen), you're pretty safe. Us Android developers are going to have to account for a large variety of screen sizes, hardware, and potentially other issues, like a physical keyboard being present or not and more importantly how to properly close an application so that it doesn't remain and run in the background draining battery life... something iPhone apps can never do because only one can run at one time and there is no background service capabilities.

Yes, this is the double edge sword of Android. Yes it is open source so a number of devices can be designed, but the more different devices the more fragmented the platform becomes.

I wish Android wasn't so fragmented so some really good 3D games can be developed. I want a N64 EMULATOR!

 

[twofourturbo]

One thing everyone needs to look at is how many phones are jumping to android.. Consumers and my self will avoid a mac by all costs.. But with so many phones jumping to android its only going to grow and consume everything.. Supply and Demand.. Welcome to America.. Android phone sales have already blowen by their expectations. Once Android 2.1 hits.. Everything will be in fast forward for the Development of Android Programs..