Greeting Programs!

[zander_evans]

Names Zander, using the Samsung moment since early this year, just upgraded to 2.2 (manually -_- the auto update said it was up2date when it was running cupcake).

I'm a Computer Engineer (hardware mainly) and have a decent background in 3D animation/modeling, so decided i'd start looking into development. And hey! why not on my own phone?!

So I'm here to gain knowledge, and if i can, pass on knowledge as well. ^^ I'll probably be browsing a lot in the coming weeks and will more than likely asking a LOT of questions so please bear with me, and hopefully i can give back to the community some home brew games for our droids

Thanks in advance!

~Zander

 

[furbearingmammal]

Welcome, Program!

Assimilate! One of us! One of us!

 

[zander_evans]

hehe joining the 'collective' is it?

 

[furbearingmammal]

NeGatoRY FleshLINg. Your BrAin CElls are NoT BEing HackeD.

DoNOt unPluG thE Phone. We ARe youR Friend.

 

[zander_evans]

FrIeNdZ? :motdroidvert::motdroidvert::motdroidvert: dancedroid :motdroidvert::motdroidvert::motdroidvert:

sorry i think i'd stand out

 

[furbearingmammal]

You're right. We usually end up with bananas.

:icon_ banana:

 

[furbearingmammal]

:welcome:

10char

 

[zander_evans]

thanks for the welcome

As we've been randomly bantering, I've been downloading and installing the SDK and a few apps to start making my first app game

Dunno how well it will work, but thinking of using the tilt/balance to make a Starfoxish style 3d shooter easy 3D graphics at least XD coding is going to be fun... to say the least lol

 

[furbearingmammal]

That sounds like a productive use of otherwise amusingly-wasted time to me.

Of course, I run around with a lightbulb on my head in green Spandex, so my opinion may be highly suspect. <twitch twitch>

That sounds like a good use of the engine. Any clue what the minimum specs are going to end up being?

 

[zander_evans]

hmmm Depending on how I'll code it, i'll aim for the Original Droid base specs, since the SNES and the N64 could both handle it. though the OS does bog it down many apps, We'll see how it goes ^^; I don't want to stick my foot in my mouth before i even get to the coding part XD

but yeah, i want it to be as light weight as possible, the more i think about what i 'want' to use, it's probably going to need at least the 550mHz, bluetooth for co-op vs. (3G would be nice but that's going to take a bit of time), and i'd say 16mb storage tops (depending on how many levels i make it etc)


Edit:

In all honesty, i'm tired of seeing all these games come up for the iPhone that are honestly great, but the droid getting the short end of the stick :-/ the community for homebrew is better or droid though hands down

 

[furbearingmammal]

Well, with the Gingerbread base it should be possible. My understanding is it's a lot better at memory optimization and IO bandwidth, even with the ARM 7 bottleneck. Just make sure there's a frame limiter so it's not run-away fast on overclocked Droids and anything packing more punch than the D1.

 

[furbearingmammal]

Oh, and you have my apologies for any non-correct term with my non-technical vocabulary. I know what I'm trying to say, but I am NOT a coder. :redface:

 

[zander_evans]

heh, i'm not normally either XD but i know what you mean
a framelimit ie, 15 frames a second (at most) would force even an OC phone to still display and run at a set speed. But the general Idea is that, if i work to make it run on an older phone, it only requires slight tweaks to run on newer phones, (until they release a full restructure on the OS)

 

[furbearingmammal]

Good point. Gingerbread is a major tweak but it's not a total revision like Honeycomb will be.

Will the upcoming dual-core CPUs and tablets cause you any problems with a 15FPS limit? Or would the threading take care of that?

 

[zander_evans]

I'd like to think that the multi-core will allow for a better rendering so i may be able to add a 30fps limit to it for newer phones. Or just have it under options in general as a throw back. Granted the game will still be designed with single core rendering in mind, but we'll see when that time comes ^^

Don't want to bite off more than i can chew

Edit:
honestly, i don't like the tablets atm I work with them a lot, and most of them are either broken out of the box, or have too many issues. they are surprisingly slow response, even to typing for a webpage, and this is out of the box not modded or added apps or anything. Don't get me wrong, i think the iPads are the biggest waste of money since the pet-rock. I dunno, i was expecting much more from both companys