Guess what? About 5 minutes ago I submitted my first game to the Android Market and .... it's in the Android Market now, available for sale for $2.99! And I'm pretty sure when the first person buys it, the $2.99 will be sitting in my Google Checkout account for me to spend. My game is Cryptose (http://www.insurgentgames.com/cryptose/) and I made it with Airplay SDK, which is a middleware-type system for writing cross-platform mobile games in C++. Soon (and when I can afford dev phones to test on) I'll probably also release it for Windows Phone 7 and Palm's WebOS. I'm also porting Skeleton Key, my first iPhone game that did pretty well, to Airplay so I can release it for Android and other platforms. Now I'm about to start the process of submitting Cryptose to the iPhone App Store. Apple might reject it for violating section 3.3.1 of the new terms of service, since I wrote it using a third-party SDK in Windows. Xcode wasn't even involved in any way (Airplay can sign your iPhone app). Or they might reject it for some other reason, who knows? Just saying...
Well, let us know how it goes. Apple's draconian measures are making it more tempting to go to an open marketplace. Good thing I got an android phone from GDC.
I don't see how this could be the wrong forum. Congrats Micah, I wish you the best of luck. Maybe we'll run into each other again someday.
anyone considering palm pre? all our games are ported over - took only 5 hours. they use SDL as the underlying layer so if you have a good base structure that works with SDL (or, simply to support), you can be on that platform to.. they are launching a pre-release market access to the catalog, less crowded and we'll be there! more info at http://developer.palm.com/ - specifically the PDK
I'm not a developer but a user. I actually think you need a system between Apples and Android. Yes Apple is too harsh sometimes but also just allowing anything onto the store in 5 minutes allows phishing applications to get straight onto the store. That's already happened on Android so no protection for the users. Also you might get your game up in 5 minutes saying it works on lots of devices but it doesn't. Sure Google will probably give people a refund who buy it when it doesn't work but it's still a hassle for all involved. Hence I think Apple checking that apps do what they should do, work on the devices the app says it works on, is labelled well, etc is good for consumers. The only downside is when they block stuff for other reasons. Android is going to be a hard platform to develop for with so many different devices, screen resolutions, processors / 3D chips, OS versions, RAM. I think assuming you can code in Objective C is less of a hassle and the Market is still vastly bigger.
@Flickitty, thanks! I noticed that the Flickitty icon is still wearing a santa hat. Any luck with that? I'm very interested in developing on Palm. Airplay has alpha support for it that is mostly broken now, but they're releasing an update next month that should work much better, and I might release Cryptose and Skeleton Key (when I finish the port) for WebOS then. I'll want to buy a Palm Pre first though to test on. I wouldn't want to release something that doesn't even work on the real device. @FastLaneJB, I agree that absolutely no approval process is subject to a more abuse, but I think the benefits by far outweigh the cons. It's not easy to anonymously release stuff on the Android Market, and Google does remove phishing/malware apps, and even apps that hardly work because they're buggy. Apple has been known to approve malware apps, and ridiculously buggy apps. It's true that it's tricky to get your app working on all the different Android devices, but if you code it well it will end up being like any decent Windows program: it should run just as well on a desktop as a netbook, and in Windows 7 or Windows XP. Game designer have been having to deal with multiple screen resolutions since computer games were invented. Cryptose looks great in 480x320, 854x480, 1024x768, and most other random resolutions. The way Apple runs the App Store has nothing at all to do with ensuring quality of apps. Just look at the apps in there...
Nope, I do not have direct control over creating a new binary. The 512x512 has limited affect- it only changes the icon within iTunes. This is the primary reason that I am using an open source engine for my next project. Nobody should have control over what I release and when I release it. A new app using Lua Wax was approved recently, so that is promising.
Cryptose just got approved in the App Store! Of course, they rejected Cryptose Lite because it's feature-limited (it lets you switch themes, but has a note on two of them saying they're only available in the full version). But this is great news because it means that, at least for now, Apple isn't rejecting apps made with Airplay. Here's the Cryptose game thread: http://forums.toucharcade.com/showthread.php?t=53272
I don't supposed you happened to use the Lua library in with Airplay, did you? I looked into Airplay, and I really like the possibilities. However I kept running into stupid licensing issues, and for no apparent reason my iPhone license isn't sticking. For iPhone usage, the license is FREE. Just let me use the damn thing, Airplay.
I didn't use Lua for this. I did use sqlite3 though, which is third-party compiled library, the same way you include Lua in your project. I think the biggest problem with Airplay is there's a steep learning curve, and it's not necessarily quick or easy to get to the point where you can work on programming solid gameplay. I spent about month building my own 2d framework, with scene switching, sprites, animations, and all that. Once I got to that point, it wasn't too hard to get into things, but the Airplay SDK certainly doesn't include any of that stuff for you. And it's not like you can plug-and-play cocos2d there either. The licensing is a little wonky sometimes. If you want to use it on multiple computers (something I do) you have to login to teh Airplay website, release your one computer's mac address, then use the Airplay Configuration program to re-accept the license on the new computer.
We ported our first couple apps over to Android last month - sales have been okay but nothing really to go nuts over. I do like being able to upload stuff right away so it has that going for it, haha. The downside is people love free apps, so charging does not make them happy. We're going to have to reevaluate our strategy, we'll probably just do free apps with upgrade to full in-app
