[gameprogrammer] Re: Carmack on Java phone games

Now I am one of the many that admire the man for his work, but please 
John...

First and foremost java mobile games are still very young. B&W phones 
are still in the market and the differences between phones could hardly 
be greater.
People seem to think of mobile phones as mini PSPs or what.

Now you can say what you want about java but it does its job and that 
quite well. I sure miss all the pluses c gave me but let's be realistic!
Getting the java sdks can be hard enough sometimes, you can forget about 
getting system-sdks! Not to mention them all working as they intended.

Also java was designed with safty in mind. No java application is able 
to mess with the internals of a mobile phone.
(yes it is annoying but then think about who our customers are and all 
the dialers in the world)

You cannot compare the hw of phones to each other as you can one pc to 
another. Off the top of my head the comp I work for supports 9+ phone 
manufacturers and about 50+ unique devices.
Concider each mobile phone like a PSP. Now imagine all the different 
PSP-variations out there that only have to adhere to certain 
communications standars. You get a LOT of different HW combinations.
On the PC if your gfx card sucks you can get a new one, plug it in and 
it works (because it was desinged that way)
The only way you can upgrade your mobile phone is by buying an extra mem 
card (no effect for java) or getting a new mobile phone!

Yet the PSP was designed purly as a gaming console.

see the following link for a incomplete listing:
http://developers.sun.com/techtopics/mobility/device/device?api=6
Each mobile phone comp will have different hw and different os on their 
devices.

Not to mention that it is a PHONE and not a gaming device.

The mobile gaming market is a hard market to get into and a tough one to 
develop for.
We mobile game devs have NO, ZERO, NADA say in the mobile development 
and are VERY happy when we can even get a device to test on (and my comp 
being one of the market leads!)

John was correct when he mentioned Brew. Sure it would be nice to 
develop with on a lower level, but then you will have to forget about 
market coverage and without market coverage you will make a loss. Even 
with the killer game.

I would never dare say anything about John's work without knowing the 
details and would recommend John not do so about mobile gaming.

Sorry for my little rant.
I really get a kick out of people from the PC world coming and trying to 
trash us mobile game devs without knowing anything about what we do and 
what we have to live with. Though I do get my laughs when they get into 
the mobile game dev and fall flat on their faces!

cya

Frank
*me goes back to lurking*

brianevans wrote:
> If you guys haven't heard, Carmack wrote a bit about mobile Java for phone 
> games.
> 
> http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/johnc/Recent%20Updates
> 
> So much for my assertion that Carmack would never program in Java. ;)  To 
> be fair, that assertion was in reference to "next generation" PC 
> engines/games.
> 
> It's a pretty good read.  Seems like in a lot of ways the phone games 
> market has brought us back to the "good old days" where game design and 
> gameplay overshadowed graphics and special effects.  Simply because, you 
> can't do that much on the platform yet (and if you believe Carmack, Java 
> makes it that much more challenging).  The problem is, I think we're 
> already too spoiled-- interface wise if not graphics wise.  That and we 
> already have portable game platforms in the Gameboy, and now PSP, which 
> will overshadow anything that the general phone games will be able to do 
> for quite some time.



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