Tickled_Pink's Blog - Loopz Smartphone

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Wow! Didn't realise it had been that long.

 

Anyway, a few days ago I started on a new project. As stated in the forums I've decided to try my hand at developing mobile games. The first task is to pick a platform and figure it out. The first one I've decided to work with is the Windows mobile 5 & 6 smartphones. To work out the .NET compact framework and the Windows Smartphone SDK, I've decided to try and convert Loopz to it. If all works well then I'll contact Audiogenic to try and come to some kind of arrangement over publication.

 

One of the advantages of first writing a game using a PC-based development system, such as Visual Studio (it's being written in C#), is that it's a RAD environment. Prototypes can be put together that much quicker, which can also make porting to other platforms much easier. The way that I've structured Loopz, for example, makes it easy to port across to virtually any system - including the A8.

 

I've taken a layered approach to it, which is probably the way most tile-based games are written. At the moment I've not indulged in any OOP coding. It's just one straight program file. This is simply so that I don't have to think too much about the structure. The layered approach involves getting the game to work 'behind the scenes' with a bundle of arrays in one layer and then in the second layer, interpreting the game data to display the graphics on the screen. This is, of course, what all games do but in this instance both layers are going to be separate entities. What this means is that the data and algorithm layer can be ported fairly easily from one machine to the next without major modification. The only bits that would need to be written from scratch on each platform would be the AV layer.

 

So if all goes well, I don't see why an updated version of Loopz for the PC can't be written using C# and XNA from the same codebase as the Smartphone version. Of course, using XNA it could also be written for the XBox360. Then you have the Symbian and Java-based mobiles - again, with the same codebase as the original but with different AV layers.

 

Then we get to the A8 version. It's still in the forefront of my brain. Once I can get the mobile gaming development business underway and earning money, I can start to relax a bit and spend at least some time doing what I want to do. I still want the A8 Loopz to come on a RAM-backed cart ...

 

http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?a...;showentry=3921