Kotaku just released its “Sixteen Games That Make iPhone Gaming Worthwhile” list, which lops a few big players like Rock Band, Peggle, Bejeweled 2 and SimCity alongside indie underdogs like Canabalt and DoodleJump. Clearly anyone can still hop a ride on the iPhone money train, but what are your options for getting on board?
Back in April ‘09, Pangea Software posted a very nice vlog about iPhone development which I think makes a great primer:
Next, let’s take a look at some of your options.
Apple’s iPhone Developer Program
The most direct route would be to download Apple’s free Xcode development environment, along with the free iPhone SDK with its iPhone emulator and interface builder. Drawbacks? No game development tools, just straight Objective C coding with the integrated interface builder. May not be the best choice for beginners and non-programmers. Also, in order to test on a real iPhone (which includes testing your acceleromitor functions), and sell your game in the App Store, you’ll need to join the Developer Program: $99 Standard, $299 Enterprise.
Unity3D features integrated iPhone development tools that beat Apple’s native editor
Unity3D is a multiplatform game development tool designed to allow simultaneous development for PC, Mac, Wii, iPhone, and web browsers. A few months ago, I checked into it’s iPhone support, and to my surprise found that their editor will actually send the video to your iPhone and receive acceleromitor data from the unit while playing in debug mode, so you don’t even have to deploy the game to test it. Amazing stuff. Check it out for yourself in this video.
Below is a list of iPhone features from their website:
iPhone-enabled Live Preview - With the iPhone Remote, you can use an actual iPhone or iPod Touch to view and test your game live, right inside the Unity Editor. Just hit Play then test with iPhone in hand.
Seamless Publishing Workflow - Publishing a build for iPhone will create an entire, complete XCode project that just works. Press “Build and Run” in Unity and put your feet up. Relax until your game automatically compiles in XCode, installs, and launches.
High Performance Scripting - JavaScript and C# scripts are compiled to native ARM assembler code during the build process. This gives an average performance increase of 20-40 times over interpreted languages.
High Performance Mesh Rendering - Unity uses packed mesh formats that get every last bit of performance out of the iPhone. We consistently beat GL ES benchmarks by 30-40%.
VFP Optimized Skinning - Unity has custom assembly-coded animation skinning to maximize vertex throughput. All mesh modifications are offloaded to the iPhone’s SIMD vector coprocessor so your game can run fast — even with many characters onscreen.
Demo Movie – See Unity on the iPhone in action in our video.
Occlusion Culling - Everybody loves high performance. PVS-based occlusion culling enabled on the iPhone is perfect for squeezing maximum performance out of the iPhone.
Shader Emulation - Mimic the graphical capabilities of the iPhone right inside the Unity Editor for fast WYSIWYG prototyping without any surprises in the final output.
Combiner based shaders - Unity exposes the full multi-texture capabilities of the iPhone. All aspects of the iPhone graphics pipeline can be modified through Unity’s easy to use shader language.
PVRTC Texture Compression - Save your multilayer Photoshop files and let Unity automatically compress your images with PVRTC Texture Compression. It’s all automatic without a single required click. This greatly reduces memory usage and distribution size, and also improves rendering performance.
New in 1.5.1
- No more warnings about using Static property in Basic license.
- Added new “In App Purchases” section to documentation.
- Added AssetBundle export helper script to iPhoneStandardAssets.
- Improved support for latest XCode 3.2.
- XCode project now always defaults to “Device” target.
- Improved prefab handling.
- SDK version is now exposed in Player Settings in the Editor.
- Improved draw call batching emulation in the Editor.
- WWW class now support file:// protocol too.
- Introduced support for CADisplayLink on OS3.1 for faster main loops. However CADisplayLink is disabled by default as number of developers reported input lag in combination with CPU-demanding applications. Use with care!
- Updated UnityRemote default SDK to 3.0.
- Help->Release Notes loads Unity iPhone specific page now.
- Internet activation for Unity iPhone trial.
Unity iPhone Basic is $399, Advanced is $1499. Details at http://unity3d.com/unity/features/iphone-publishing
Torque 2D for the iPhone offers drag & drop development environment
Torque 2D comes in several flavors now, including one for iPhone. It is essentially an instance of Torque 2D that sits on your iPhone Xcode framework to allow you to develop a game with the game editor and TorqueScript. One interesting touch is that you can actually develop your iPhone game on a PC, and then tweak and deploy it on a Mac.
A word of caution though, some developers have found its execution speed to be unplayable without rewriting much of the game in C++. Such was the case with Dust Bunnies:
“After just over a month of development time, it became apparent that we could not use TorqueScript for the majority of our game. The very first time we ran Attack of the Dust Bunnies on the iPhone, it was running around 2 FPS – this was when the game was mostly written in TorqueScript”…”There are not many changes we would make to the game. The biggest difference would be trying to develop the game using mainly C++ rather than developing it in TorqueScript first and then converting it to C++.”
The developers were also careful to point out, however, that Dust Bunnies was a special case, and in a less animation-intensive game your mileage may vary. Torque 2D for the iPhone is $750. Details at http://www.torquepowered.com/products/torque-2d/iphone
EDUmobile offers online iPhone course with a big discount and guarantee
EDUmobile is currently offering online Iphone course at $200 and if applicant enters coupon code “WFM” at the time of registration, they will be eligible for a discount of $60.
The Course duration would vary between 4 to 10 weeks depending upon the developers past experience in programming.
There is also an option to access a remote Mac, for those who do not have access to one. Candidates get a certification on completion and an option to co-publish their first app on the Apple App Store.
Salient features of the course
- Web based interactive course is perfect for the working executives and full time students.
- Learn from the comfort of your home at any time of your convenience
- Work on live commercial projects
- Get certification / work experience for the full tenure of the course.
In addition, they offer a 30-day full money back guarantee.
Details at http://edumobile.org/iphone-course.html