Until I have the money for a mac, I was thinking of making webapp games. Nothing too fancy, but minigames networked together as a type of online arcade earning tickets/points/highscores/ect. Do you think anyone would use something like this and is the mobilesafari browser capable of displaying decent games?
Safari+javascript is capable of presenting a pretty broad class of games with decent interactivity, graphics, sound, etc. But I think you'd have an uphill battle trying to get people to find/play webapps, no matter how good they were.
In reguard to the final thought, that is what I had feared, but was generally expecting. I wonder, would it be doable to make the webapp play within an AppStore app? Not sure but I think that is what ds effects does, although I'm not sure, and quite positive other apps do this such as the bank of America app. Perhaps I could hire a dev willing to make an app that would display the website within it. At first thought it seems like a half decent idea anyway. It's been a few years since I experimented with making JavaScript games. But I did have a lot of fun making them. Here is an example of a JavaScript minigame I have done a few years back: http://koolzone.net/aavila/MiniGames/game/6-Way%20Shootout/game.htm of course this was meant for a webbrowser and had planned to optimize it for the original Nintendo DS operah web browser that was released. But even so if zoomed into with mobile safari it works (after all the images have loaded anyway). It's stuff like this I would like to do, simple, but fun. Of course I would have to reskin it, Optimize for mobilesafari, and have increasing difficulty. But it is an example of what I would like to get back into doing.
I can truly say that the iPhone/iTouch webapp base is ignored by most users. I've been developing most of my webapps for the Nintendo DSi browser, and so far it's been great. I've been getting a lot more attention of it because of the very small base of webapps there are for the DSi. An affiliate of my website has been working on a DSi web-app game. It's an RPG game, but it's not like your usual web game. The whole game will feel like a real DSi game, like Final Fantasy. It's come a long way and he has a working demo out. If you want to try it out, it should work on a desktop browser. Check it out here, http://dsipaint.com. What I'm saying is that the iPhone/iTouch webapp approach has failed on many levels. It's badly represented by Apple and it's hard to get a word out about it.
I see.. Perhaps I will just try to focus on DSi I just want to make games, Im only 22, but in that 22 years I have never found a hobby I enjoy more than programing. Been doing it, reading books, and taking classes, since I was 13 years old. Haven't done much with that in the last year or so though. I need to get back into the scene though, I've lost touch with my dream of ever doing it full time since I dropped out of school, and need to start working my way back on track. I'm going to check out that RPG when I get off work. I have built my own RPGs that played like a real game (well at least made the basics of the mechanics, never put it into a game with a story).
lol I'm 17 years old and I'm heading to college very soon. Take this approach when you get a good amount of users for it: develop an iPhone/iTouch version, then Wii, PS3, and so on so forth. It builds more "word of mouth" because it transfers from one platform user to the other. Also, take interest into Publishing Ads onto your website. It's not going to be much, but hey it's some kind of revenue that you can get from it. Good luck
Well now you're effectivly getting me pumped for making some webapp games I already have a hosting account with unlimited bandwidth/storage, and two domains tied to it, might get a 3rd this weekend and start making a few simple things.
If you can't afford a Mac yet… 1: Use your spare time to get a part-time job and you can buy the Mac in a few weeks. Or 2: Use your spare time to make web apps, which you can probably get some players by promoting on the TA forums as 'free games', but just treat them primarily as a way to extend your game design and development capabilities so you'll be ready when you do get that Mac and the iPhone SDK.
