Nostalgic Posted March 12, 2005 Share Posted March 12, 2005 I'm curious if any sort of homebrew community for mobile phone games has formed. I did some wandering around using Google but didn't stumble across anything. I did not find any individuals writing such games, much less several of them linked together. Perhaps I've been looking in the wrong places. Is there any such thing out there, or is it too early yet for mobile phone games to have gotten the attention of homebrewers? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aaron Posted March 12, 2005 Share Posted March 12, 2005 I've done some programming for Palm, which is I guess a similar situation... The platform doesn't attract homebrewers simply because it isn't much fun to program. The hardware isn't very standardized so you're stuck behind an API, and then you also have much less power to work with compared to e.g. a PC. Then add the fact that these things aren't generally designed to play games... That's not to say there isn't a demand for games on these types of systems, but IMO you'll mostly only ever find (low-end) commercial projects. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nostalgic Posted March 12, 2005 Author Share Posted March 12, 2005 The platform doesn't attract homebrewers simply because it isn't much fun to program. The hardware isn't very standardized so you're stuck behind an API' date=' and then you also have much less power to work with compared to e.g. a PC. Then add the fact that these things aren't generally designed to play games...[/quote'] I noticed the lack of standardization as I was doing my web search. Games would work with some phones and not others and the same game could look very different on different phones. For instance, I have Gameloft's Backgammon on a Nokia 3100. The text is tiny, animation is minimal, and no character faces appear. The screen shots on Gameloft's site have larger text, pop-up help, and faces for the opponents. I presume, then, that they are for a different phone. Phones are indeed not good for some games, particularly action games. I have Tetris Deluxe and that works well enough, but I can't imagine playing Pac-Man or, worse yet, an Arkanoid clone without a paddle. Card and board games should be fine, though. I guess I thought that authors fond of classic-era games might embrace cell phones because of their limitations; the small screen and limited controls would force the gameplay to be the most important element. Then again, those fond of classic-era games will probably write for classic-era consoles. Thanks for the feedback! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kisrael Posted March 21, 2005 Share Posted March 21, 2005 FlapPing would make a great cellphone game...in fact I've already writen versions in Java. Its one-button-control and simple graphics requirements would make it a fairly easy port. I think it's a combination of factors keeping down the homebrewing; you've already got a small enough # of people interested, having to cope with "but why wont it work on MY phone??" would make it even tougher. Also some peole are trying to monetize it. And actually I'm not sure how I would publish a game so that it could be downloaded, or if there are any "phone simulators" for development work... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
salstadt Posted March 21, 2005 Share Posted March 21, 2005 Yeah, there's really no scene for homebrew because companies are always desperate for cheap mobile games. So everyone tends to jump righ into commercial work. - Adam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kisrael Posted March 21, 2005 Share Posted March 21, 2005 Yeah, there's really no scene for homebrew because companies are always desperate for cheap mobile games. So everyone tends to jump righ into commercial work. I'd guess that low end commercial work looks a lot like homebrew in many ways...for instance, FlapPing is definately a 2600 homebrew but it has a pretty decent commercialish release...so the territory is a bit fuzzy. Or how do you see it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
salstadt Posted March 22, 2005 Share Posted March 22, 2005 You're right. The low-end mobile scene basically is hobbydev, it's just people often end up selling their final products. A coder self-published the second game I worked on way back when, and I don't think we'd started with any commercial aspirations. In that sense, mobile might be the most freeing commercial avenue right now for hobbydevvers (if you consider pulling in a few hundred or thousand bucks to be really commercial). - Adam Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kisrael Posted March 22, 2005 Share Posted March 22, 2005 Just for grins, I downloaded Atari's Pong, $2 for 30 days. Man, not so good... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aaron Posted March 22, 2005 Share Posted March 22, 2005 You're right. The low-end mobile scene basically is hobbydev, it's just people often end up selling their final products. So true. I self-published my second Palm game and it brought in a few hundred dollars... but it really wasn't worth the time invested (and I wasn't enjoying the work, as from my previous post). I imagine a lot of people find that out the same way - once it becomes apparent you're not going to get rich quick, there's not a lot of reason to stay on the platform. OTOH if you write some halfway decent freeware, it'll be extrememly popular. There's demand for it and not much supply... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kisrael Posted March 22, 2005 Share Posted March 22, 2005 But do freewre homebrews have the same distribution outlets that Palm did earlier? Or do you have to team up with some big guys to get your stuff available? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rasty Posted March 22, 2005 Share Posted March 22, 2005 I've actually started doing a J2ME framework for games some time ago, but then lost interest because, as Aaron said, it was very little fun.. Of course I had in my mind doing some Atari games. Space Treat would have been too tough to play with all the small objects zapping around the screen. I thought of some kind of Cosmic Ark game (well, just the meteors screen). That would have matched the phones controls pretty well. But nothing came of it! A friend of mine went further and last I checked he was actually in the process of selling some games, but from what he told me he needed a contract with some big online retailer (a Telecom company or similar). HE said this area is very competitive and only the best marketing wins.. very sad indeed! Also, mobile phone market is pretty much overwhelmed with ppl trying to sell you ringtones and the likes.. quite uninteresting! Regards! Rasty.- Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aaron Posted March 23, 2005 Share Posted March 23, 2005 But do freewre homebrews have the same distribution outlets that Palm did earlier? Or do you have to team up with some big guys to get your stuff available? Largely the same, the big sites don't care what you upload. You won't get advertising for freeware, but it's not like you get it for free with shareware... This might be different in the cell phone world, I don't know. There's also http://www.freewarepalm.com, which is fairly popular. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Like us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
AtariAge on Instagram
Watch us on YouTube
Chat on Discord
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.