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How to Make a Massively Cross-Platform Game

blog.brokenfunction.com

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Re: How to Make a Massively Cross-Platform Game

#11

Post by CJefferson »

hyung wrote: post #2

A cross-platform game engine sounds awesome. But I wonder what kind of game can truly be write-once, run-everywhere, and considered "fun" on all platforms. A few major challenges: - Designing a game that is fun and intuitive to play with a wide variety of input controllers (touch, mouse, keyboard, joystick). - Handling the entire spectrum of screen resolutions, from older iPhones to high-end desktop computers. The ga…

I find the controls hardest.

I am writing a simple puzzle game, and am doing a totally different UI level for even mouse and touch. For example when dragging, with touch it is nice to offset the piece so it is easier to see, whereas with mouse you probably want it dead-center.

Re: How to Make a Massively Cross-Platform Game

#13

Post by robert00700 »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #6
hyung wrote: post #2

A cross-platform game engine sounds awesome. But I wonder what kind of game can truly be write-once, run-everywhere, and considered "fun" on all platforms. A few major challenges: - Designing a game that is fun and intuitive to play with a wide variety of input controllers (touch, mouse, keyboard, joystick). - Handling the entire spectrum of screen resolutions, from older iPhones to high-end desktop computers. The ga…

The closest you will get to this I think is Unity although that doesn't currently have Linux support. All programming is done using Mono and it also contains a load of proprietary tools for asset generation as well as stuff for AI etc.

Unity 3.5 now has flash export, so I think even Linux is now supported?

Re: How to Make a Massively Cross-Platform Game

#14

Post by Pedrom »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #6
hyung wrote: post #2

A cross-platform game engine sounds awesome. But I wonder what kind of game can truly be write-once, run-everywhere, and considered "fun" on all platforms. A few major challenges: - Designing a game that is fun and intuitive to play with a wide variety of input controllers (touch, mouse, keyboard, joystick). - Handling the entire spectrum of screen resolutions, from older iPhones to high-end desktop computers. The ga…

The closest you will get to this I think is Unity although that doesn't currently have Linux support. All programming is done using Mono and it also contains a load of proprietary tools for asset generation as well as stuff for AI etc.

Yeah... But even with Mono you have to use the proper classes for display, so it's not completely code once play anywhere.

Re: How to Make a Massively Cross-Platform Game

#15

Post by ZenPsycho »

He dismissed Javascript rather quickly without really explaining why. Oh well, I guess it is javascript's lot in life to be hated and ignored. On the other hand, lua was a very good choice indeed. Lua and Javascript are very similar languages indeed- though I would say Lua is probably a lot less hairy and weird.

A couple options he missed though- There was already a lua to javascript translator. (I think). There is also Pyjamas, which is a python to javascript compiler. It comes with a whole pile of gwt along with it, but you can honestly ditch most of it and just use the compiler if you really want to. (though some would argue that python without all the libraries isn't python).

Re: How to Make a Massively Cross-Platform Game

#16

Post by Pedrom »

stonemetal wrote: post #12

Unreal Script? UE covers all the platforms he is trying to hit except Wii. Though the web stuff requires flash.

That is in theory.... In practice If you have a game that look pretty well on consoles you would have big challanges for mobile devices, and just reducing quality on art assets might not be enough.

Re: How to Make a Massively Cross-Platform Game

#17

Post by Pedrom »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #5

What about Java? It has some quite mature 3d game libraries now, checkout jmonkeyengine for example and 2d is a doddle. It can run on all 3 major desktop platforms as well as android (though you may have to use different libs for some parts) and can be embedded into a webpage easily via an applet. The only platform you would need to re-implement for would be iOS but your going to hit that problem whatever you do (not…

>The only platform you would need to re-implement for would be iOS but your going to hit that problem whatever you do (not sure what it's JS support is like though).

That is not the case for mono as Xamarin compiles Mono code into native IOS code which is Complain with Apple guidelines.

Re: How to Make a Massively Cross-Platform Game

#18

Post by robert00700 »

I'd definitely recommend Unity3D for this. It provides (as far as it can) platform-agnostic abstractions for controls, graphics and audio, although if you want to get down-and-dirty with a particular platform you can easily write native plug-ins.

Very technical people often have reservations over such systems that seem to cater for non-techie developers, but I found it made game development much more enjoyable- less platform-specific graphics boilerplate and more enjoyable challenges like AI.

I ended up creating this simple ragdoll game over a few days for iOS- http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/ragdoll-spike!/id384354298?mt... , I'd be interested to see how much longer it would have taken to do natively!

Re: How to Make a Massively Cross-Platform Game

#19

Post by robert00700 »

Pedrom wrote: post #14
jiggy2011 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The closest you will get to this I think is Unity although that doesn't currently have Linux support. All programming is done using Mono and it also contains a load of proprietary tools for asset generation as well as stuff for AI etc.

Yeah... But even with Mono you have to use the proper classes for display, so it's not completely code once play anywhere.

It's Mono running on top of Unity's own graphics/control/audio abstraction
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