So quiet in this forum... no games for Android?

[andjarnic]

Lol.. sorry, couldn't resist. I am both surprised, and impressed, that there isn't more chatter in this forum. Maybe most of the users here aren't gamers and that is why. I am a big time gamer. One of my favorite is Bejeweled, and there is a free game that is really good, Jewels or something like that for the Android. I haven't found too many games tho that are really good yet, but I do suspect this is largely due to lack of hardware AND Android 2.0 with multi-touch capabilities. Now that we all know that the Droid and other phones can support multi-touch, it's just a matter of time before better games come out with multi-touch.

I am myself going to be working on some simple games initially, like kid games, such as math quiz tests, match-em games, etc. I've got a few rough ideas for more fun games, but I don't know much about things like good AI, collision detection and so forth that I will need to learn before starting on anything more robust.

By all means, if you got some ideas, throw them out.

 

[JhankG]

I have to say, the game selection for Android sucks right now compared to the iPhone/iPod Touch. My 3rd generation Touch felt like an actual handheld gaming device and there were tons of options. I'm sure Android will catch up with time now that they have the hardware capabilities and a larger audience with Verizon customers.

 

[andjarnic]

Definitely. One of the biggest detractors for me was no mulit-touch. Now that we know Android 2.0 supports it and hopefully all phones coming out will, games should be no problem. This is one of the few areas I think that could hurt Android tho.. if some phones support 2.0 but don't provide multi-touch.. games that are developed with it wont work. I am not sure if there is an API yet that can determine if the phone supports it or not. I sure hope there is a way to determine this tho so that us developers can at least check before running the game and then it's unresponsive or doesn't work completely!

 

[Purist]

While I didn't get the Droid for its games, I'm surprised too at the lack of quality titles. I've heard that a Java environment keeps it difficult from running intensive games, so it's not just the multi-touch feature. If that's not the case, I wonder how long it takes to port over an iPhone game.

 

[AcidBurn]

Another issue with the game selection is the available app memory. When the Droid is rooted and we are able to install apps to an sd card, we will have better memory supplement. The 256MB of memory for apps just sucks.

 

[Purist]

But devs can't rely on people rooting their Droids. That would fracture the user base and lessen overall sales. It's best to have the app install to the core memory with the data writable to the card.

 

[AcidBurn]

well if they dont offer more available app memory then no one will be able to write iPhone like apps. Those apps require much more memory than 99% of all the android apps.

 

[rushmore]

If you like game emulators, NOTHING compares to Android and Droid for phones. There are thousands of games and hundreds of those are classics that are worth having on Droid (in spite of the weakish KB)

If you do not like emulators, then yes, Android only has a a few good games and sucks in this respect. Please search "Android app space" and you will see many articles where the game industry is not making games for Android due to the app space.

Burned out but worth repeating:

Android built a shopping mall (Android market), with no parking (device app space).

This is the MAJOR weakness of Android, and as they update the OS with more goodies, you will have even LESS app space, since the apps that come with the OS takes up your app space too.

On a side note: Games are not the only issue. It is not even possible to make video codecs or audio EQ's since Android does not allow access to these features in the framework. Though Android allows many chipsets to use the same apps, the price is limited hardware access to be creative with apps. Kind of like Android is a lego building block system.

 

[revise]

Can't games just install video, etc. to the sd card? I'm sure I've played a game that required a data install first

 

[rushmore]

I got a Droid to try out for the next few weeks. I am impressed so far, but wish the d-pad was 8-way and the sd card was not blocked by the battery.

I installed a ton of stuff and still have 204 megs free. That is about 230 megs more than my G1. Waaaay better!