Shmupping on the new Nokia N81

[FRO]

Just saw this on Engadget:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/28/noki ... -personal/

Looks like a shmup on the top pic to me.

[Fenrir]

That reminds me. How's gaming on the iPhone? The rotating-thing feature makes me think of a cool Gyruss port

[doctorx0079]

Just saw this on Engadget:

http://www.engadget.com/2007/08/28/noki ... -personal/

Looks like a shmup on the top pic to me.

Gee, the controls might actually be decent.

[pixelcorps]

it'll only be good if the pad supports diagonals (a rarity) and is a BREW phone.

j2me isn't good enough for a fast shooter.

don't hold your breath.

funnily enough most new phones have QVGA displays, exactly the same res as most vert shooters...

[SFKhoa]

funnily enough most new phones have QVGA displays, exactly the same res as most vert shooters...

Damnit, so close yet so far.

[pixelcorps]

thing is, BREW phones are pretty much up to GBA levels of speed now, but because mobile game co's have to port to EVERY phone avalable, including the shitty, blurry 128x128 res series 40 phones, the games have to be extremely generic and low demand, noone is willing to specialise in a high end game for one handset.

I have to make 3 ports of every mobile game I produce, then our port department take the 3 sizes and adapt it for at least another 60-80 handsets (!)

If you have a verizon phone, you have a brew phone, it just depends how modern it is, but most don't do diagonals, and because of this the base code in most cases wouldnt support the ones that did...

profesional opinion?


buy a handheld.

[Zebra Airforce]

You didn't make that terrible snowball-fight game, did you??
And whatever happened to snake? That game was fine. Now I have some shitty bejeweled ripoff.

[Frederik]

That reminds me. How's gaming on the iPhone? The rotating-thing feature makes me think of a cool Gyruss port

Or a Warioware Twisted! port

[eight]

Last I've seen a guy playing 3D Snake which funilly didn't have the option to lose; if you ran into a wall or something you just took a turn. Weird shit happening to mobile phone games these days.

[Herr Schatten]

Weird shit happening to mobile phone games these days.

That's just because I left that industry.

[eight]

Yeah, you made that Amiga game port, right? Was it Thor? Never played it though.

[Herr Schatten]

Yeah, you made that Amiga game port, right? Was it Thor? Never played it though.

No, it was Gods. And, actually, I only did the adaptation of the graphics. Overall, it was an awesome port, though. Very true to the original in feel, and greatly playable. Shame it was completed, but never released due to absolutely clueless people being in charge after the company got bought out. I think the only two working versions of the game left are on my own cellphone and the one of the lead programmer.

[eight]

Aw shucks! That thing sure looked pretty good to me (although I just saw some screenshots on your website a couple months ago)!
Oh and I meant Gods btw. just mixed the title up in my head. =/

Why did you leave the mobile phone development industry? Better job?

[Herr Schatten]

Why did you leave the mobile phone development industry? Better job?

Not quite. The place got shut down. Also, due to the higher resolutions of newer devices it got more difficult and time-consuming to produce artwork of the same quality as before, but the development cycles were actually becoming shorter. I didn't like the prospect of being forced to chuck out half-finished graphics of questionable quality, so i felt the urge to move on and do something different.

My current job is very unsatisfactory, though. I wouldn't mind exchanging it for something better and more interesting.

[tassian]

I think that the shmup you can see in the pics of the N81 is not limited to that platform. Nokia is currently creating a universal "N-Gage" platform for S60/SymbianOS phones. The game you can see seems to be Space Impact Kappa Base. It seems to be a tate shooter which will also run on phones like the N95. Check out the screenshots, there seem to be elements in the game that you could almost describe as bullet patterns.

[the2bears]

j2me isn't good enough for a fast shooter.

It would depend more on the hardware of the phone, though, wouldn't it? J2ME is fine on modern phones, plenty of power.

Bill

[PC Engine Fan X!]

thing is, BREW phones are pretty much up to GBA levels of speed now, but because mobile game co's have to port to EVERY phone avalable, including the shitty, blurry 128x128 res series 40 phones, the games have to be extremely generic and low demand, noone is willing to specialise in a high end game for one handset.

I have to make 3 ports of every mobile game I produce, then our port department take the 3 sizes and adapt it for at least another 60-80 handsets (!)

If you have a verizon phone, you have a brew phone, it just depends how modern it is, but most don't do diagonals, and because of this the base code in most cases wouldnt support the ones that did...

profesional opinion?


buy a handheld.

The Gameboy Micro is about the same size as current cell phones and still can run some specific GBA game titles at arcade-quality 60 frames-per-second framerates...that's the highest benchmark developers aim for (but most shitty GBA game titles don't even approach that mark or even the 30 frames benchmark). ^_~

[pixelcorps]

j2me isn't good enough for a fast shooter.

It would depend more on the hardware of the phone, though, wouldn't it? J2ME is fine on modern phones, plenty of power.

Bill

nah, you can do tons more on brew, and it still runs faster.. alpha chanelling, blitters (if you're a good enough programmer) , tons more particles..

[pixelcorps]

The Gameboy Micro is about the same size as current cell phones and still can run some specific GBA game titles at arcade-quality 60 frames-per-second framerates...that's the highest benchmark developers aim for (but most shitty GBA game titles don't even approach that mark or even the 30 frames benchmark). ^_~

I cant believe any GBA should drop below 30FPS, that's inexcusable.

that said even a GBA runs better than most top end mobiles - you can squeeze 15-20 FPS out of a really well programmed, well specced, good content BREW game at most.