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On which phones can one play VO, again?
On the ones that don't have an awful walled-garden OS so games like this can work in the first place.
It's available on the phones where the app won't suddenly get revoked because some random Apple AppStore employee decides he doesn't approve ("self-updating app!@#"), leaving us with little or no recourse after a year of development investment. This actually happens. Pretty often. To a small indie it's a very scary prospect (not without possible work-arounds, but still scary as a first-port mobile platform).
Anyway, I think the 4S performance is great news. It helps everyone. iOS is still on my radar, and the way I see it, if all goes well and we move there eventually, it'll be a lot more polished experience from the development time put in on Android. Plus, at the time when we made the platform choice, we were building on iPad2-grade multi-core hardware when iPad1 was just too slow and had too little memory to run the game. So, iOS has caught up in the meantime and become more appealing.
I'm unsurprised about the improvements, I expected the new iPhone to be the iPad2 guts in a phone, which seems to be correct. But all that said, there's a joke in the computing world that there are "lies, damn lies, and benchmarks". SGX can be very fast. They're all pretty fast, but often in specific circumstances, which are sometimes not the circumstances you want to use. We have a quad-core Tegra3 Android device that's pretty fast too. Lots of stuff is fast.
As far as answering the more specifically relevant question: "will it be fast enough to give a good game experience?", and the answer to that is yes.. for iPad2, iPhone 4S, and all the Qualcomm 8660, Tegra, and late-model SGX hardware on Android. Unfortunately, there's more to ports and platforms than just who uses decent hardware.
Anyway, I think the 4S performance is great news. It helps everyone. iOS is still on my radar, and the way I see it, if all goes well and we move there eventually, it'll be a lot more polished experience from the development time put in on Android. Plus, at the time when we made the platform choice, we were building on iPad2-grade multi-core hardware when iPad1 was just too slow and had too little memory to run the game. So, iOS has caught up in the meantime and become more appealing.
I'm unsurprised about the improvements, I expected the new iPhone to be the iPad2 guts in a phone, which seems to be correct. But all that said, there's a joke in the computing world that there are "lies, damn lies, and benchmarks". SGX can be very fast. They're all pretty fast, but often in specific circumstances, which are sometimes not the circumstances you want to use. We have a quad-core Tegra3 Android device that's pretty fast too. Lots of stuff is fast.
As far as answering the more specifically relevant question: "will it be fast enough to give a good game experience?", and the answer to that is yes.. for iPad2, iPhone 4S, and all the Qualcomm 8660, Tegra, and late-model SGX hardware on Android. Unfortunately, there's more to ports and platforms than just who uses decent hardware.
Quad-core tegra3? What is that some evil pre-release prototype voodoo magix?
It's a devkit. Although a pretty polished tablet-form devkit.
..Which kind of bears on another point about how we chose to do development. With NVIDIA we were building on devkits for a year before the device was launched. We knew exactly how fast it would be, exactly how to tune all our shaders and settings and gameplay and so on, and what the experience would be like following shipment. Now it wasn't supposed to be an entire year, but it was intended to be a lengthy period prior to release where we could get everything well-tuned, do lots of driver testing on pre-release builds (and we helped fix a lot of driver stuff), and so on. And the same goes for everyone in Android-land (TI, Qualcomm, etc), we almost always have samples of their Next Thing, because we need lead-time to properly support it.
Apple, on the other hand, works in total secrecy. People like me make educated guesses (I said in an IGDA talk back in november/2010 that the iPad2 would probably be a dual-core device somewhere on par with Tegra2), but no one really knows for sure, and no one is able to do any prototyping development until the actual device is shipped. That's probably fine for Angry Birds, but doesn't work so well for big complicated games with a gig of textures.
When devices are making a huge jump in performance (iPad1 to iPad2, for instance, which Apple called an 8-fold increase in GPU speed), that's kind of difficult to prepare for without access to prototyping hardware. It's not always just changing some settings, we spent months ripping shaders out of the game and coming up with a middle ground that looked good on Tegra and also performed and played well. To even get the game running well on the iPad1 would have been a major ordeal, given the ram limitations and challenges with the OS's memory management (which I have had some well-known iOS developers privately rant to me about at some length). So we would have been prototyping on a too-slow machine on the hopes that maybe a really fast one would come out? Instead of one with just.. a nicer screen or some funky Apple cloud apps or whatever? That's a hell of a bet to place.
So, frankly, I'm fine with developing first-gen on Android with the option of back-propagating onto iOS at some future point when the risk is lower and I'm dealing with known quantities (like, say, the now-known ballpark performance of the iPad2 and 4S, or theoretically knowing whether they'll be ok with a self-updating app).
..Which kind of bears on another point about how we chose to do development. With NVIDIA we were building on devkits for a year before the device was launched. We knew exactly how fast it would be, exactly how to tune all our shaders and settings and gameplay and so on, and what the experience would be like following shipment. Now it wasn't supposed to be an entire year, but it was intended to be a lengthy period prior to release where we could get everything well-tuned, do lots of driver testing on pre-release builds (and we helped fix a lot of driver stuff), and so on. And the same goes for everyone in Android-land (TI, Qualcomm, etc), we almost always have samples of their Next Thing, because we need lead-time to properly support it.
Apple, on the other hand, works in total secrecy. People like me make educated guesses (I said in an IGDA talk back in november/2010 that the iPad2 would probably be a dual-core device somewhere on par with Tegra2), but no one really knows for sure, and no one is able to do any prototyping development until the actual device is shipped. That's probably fine for Angry Birds, but doesn't work so well for big complicated games with a gig of textures.
When devices are making a huge jump in performance (iPad1 to iPad2, for instance, which Apple called an 8-fold increase in GPU speed), that's kind of difficult to prepare for without access to prototyping hardware. It's not always just changing some settings, we spent months ripping shaders out of the game and coming up with a middle ground that looked good on Tegra and also performed and played well. To even get the game running well on the iPad1 would have been a major ordeal, given the ram limitations and challenges with the OS's memory management (which I have had some well-known iOS developers privately rant to me about at some length). So we would have been prototyping on a too-slow machine on the hopes that maybe a really fast one would come out? Instead of one with just.. a nicer screen or some funky Apple cloud apps or whatever? That's a hell of a bet to place.
So, frankly, I'm fine with developing first-gen on Android with the option of back-propagating onto iOS at some future point when the risk is lower and I'm dealing with known quantities (like, say, the now-known ballpark performance of the iPad2 and 4S, or theoretically knowing whether they'll be ok with a self-updating app).
Ok, after reading the original article, and trying the actual program used, I now think we need to make a benchmark that displays a more real-world use of gaming graphics. Ugh.
John, how is development for iPad2 going (or, not going?)
I'm ready to test!!! lol
I'm ready to test!!! lol
We'll announce something if and when we have something to say. I'm being very nonspecific about iOS on purpose, I don't want to get a whole bunch of people's hopes up, and then have the project end up getting killed. I would prefer to wait until I'm pretty sure one way or the other.
I can say we're still looking into it, and that's as far as I'll go. Sorry.
I can say we're still looking into it, and that's as far as I'll go. Sorry.
No need to be sorry. Limbo is better than the trash can!
Inc. just put it on cydia. no app polices. :) :) :D
I initially took that as a funny and joking suggestion, until reading how the Washington Post says the Cydia jailbroken app store is getting like 1.5 million views per day and is claiming 9-10% of iOS devices are jailbroken now.
That's an interesting, if kind of out-there option. But, not one I'm likely to consider unless I'm completely shut down by Apple. The dev time on making the game work consistently on iOS is not a trivial expense to begin with.
That's an interesting, if kind of out-there option. But, not one I'm likely to consider unless I'm completely shut down by Apple. The dev time on making the game work consistently on iOS is not a trivial expense to begin with.
Great! I'm glad to have you take it into consideration. It is a good way to put it on there because I have a jailbroken iPhone and the iPad 2 just recently got a jailbreak so it would be easy to play and no app polices. I have self updating apps. Also, Keep in mind, If you make more game time on an in app purchase like the android, there is a cydia package called "Iap cracker" that lets you get all in app purchases for FREE! It is advised that you take that into consideration. You may not make as much money if it is on the app store. It is a good option because on Cydia packages, you can make it self update and even better, it is not attackable to "Iap Cracker". Apple app store apps are prone to attack. Theres Installous for apps that are payed so there is just about no way at all to make money if it is on the Apple App store. Just keep in mind about your decision and take all the time you need. Just get someone to host it like Bigboss or Modmyi is a good one. Zottd is a good one for gaming. I don't think the Apple app store will support such a big game since the Apple app store does not have a compressed like Cydia. Cydia can make it like a 500 MBs as Apple from the lack of a good compresser would be like 2 gigabytes. The Cydia store isn't going anywhere anytime soon so just give it some time.
http://jailbreakstory.com/2011/09/crack-in-app-purchases-in-ios-with-iap-cracker/
(note, this is when it came out so almost all of the apps are prone at this point. IGNORE THE LIST OF COMPATIBLE APPS!
Frequent Flyer
http://jailbreakstory.com/2011/09/crack-in-app-purchases-in-ios-with-iap-cracker/
(note, this is when it came out so almost all of the apps are prone at this point. IGNORE THE LIST OF COMPATIBLE APPS!
Frequent Flyer
The iOS App Store hosts games a lot larger than ours, like Rage HD (700MB) and Myst (727MB). Our game assets are all compressed internally. Cracking of IAP is different in our case as well, since we would be server-authenticating everything. But, anyways, thanks. That's.. interesting, even just as an education on the prevalence of piracy on iOS.
Yeah. true. but i think they still have found ways to hack it. they have hacked into MMO servers too. on the cydia store they have hacks for EVERYTHING! you name it. they have packages that can hack the server so fast. they have all that modding stuff to skip your auth. Think about it, if they can skip can skip the whole process of putting in your credit card for a purchase, they can skip a process of your authenticating the purchase. you won't even know that they purchased it. keep in mind, if the game is very successful, there will be mods and hacks for the game on the Cydia store. I read somewhere maybe of a forum that you will end the subscription and cancel there play time. But wait just a minute, how can you stop the subscription that they didn't pay for?
Note: I am not trying to advertise the Cydia store. just giving you advice because I have been Jailbreaking for years and years. I know a lot about what is actually on this store. its not pretty to trying to sell stuff on the app store. :&
Note: I am not trying to advertise the Cydia store. just giving you advice because I have been Jailbreaking for years and years. I know a lot about what is actually on this store. its not pretty to trying to sell stuff on the app store. :&
lolol
Sounds to me like there's some pretty serious design flaws with the way in-app purchases are handled on the iOS app store...
true. but apple can't find a more simple way of doing it. have to make it easy for those customers! lol
I love it that my Samsung Glaxy S plays this game flawlessly. (poor Iphone sucke... i mean users)