Ultimate Game Design : Building game worlds

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version of Microsoft Windows. Figure 9-3 shows a Smartphone now available in the United Kingdom. It is also worth mentioning the Mobile Information Device Profile (MIDP) specification, which can be used to tell your application about the kind of device on which it’s running. MIDP can provide the basic application functionality required by mobile applications—like games; functionality like user interface configuration, network connectivity, local data storage, and application lifecycle management. All of this control is wrapped up in a standardized Java run-time environment with a set of Java APIs. It’s exciting to see that even as these devices are starting to have games built for them by developers, some forward-thinking companies are already preparing for the 3-D invasion on wireless units. Fathammer is currently a leader in this area (www.fathammer.com). Current-generation phones are not strong enough in processing power to handle 3-D applications, so it will take time for the hardware to catch up with the software. Global Competition Different parts of the world currently have varying levels of wireless networking ability. Companies that provide wireless networking services are commonly called “carriers,” like Sprint PCS (www.sprintpcs.com) in the United States. You can’t have millions of FIGURE 9-3 Smartphone C H A P T E R 9 219 Cell Phones and Wireless Gaming
Building Game Worlds 220 U L T I M A T E G A M E D E S I G N phones playing games with fast transfer speeds without a solid wireless infrastructure. I’m certainly no expert in this area, but it seems that Asia leads the way, followed by Europe, and then the United States. This is a high-growth area everywhere. NTT DoCoMo (www.nttdocomo.com) is Japan’s leading carrier, providing a wide range of wireless services and applications to the public. In Europe, Orange (www.orange.com) and Vodafone (www.vodafone.com), among others, compete to provide the same kinds of services. It is no secret that both Asia and Europe have made serious financial investments in establishing their wireless networks, and that although the United States has made much progress as of late, it has been lagging. The pure global phenomenon and reach of each of these carriers is a very exciting development for anyone involved in providing game content. These carriers obviously reach vast numbers of subscribers, who become potential players when presented with the right kind of game content in the right manner, on hardware that offers reasonable performance. Development Considerations It becomes maddening trying to keep up with each new cell phone handset and its particular hardware specifications, while also watching out for hybrid devices like the Nokia N-Gage. Just like in game development for other platforms, game developers want to build games that will run on game platforms that are widely and commonly available. This factor, among other reasons, is why so many game developers focus on development for the PlayStation 2—there are many millions of these game machines in homes around the world. I’m going to focus on J2ME-based game content developed for the various cell phones, although there are similarities in approach if you’re developing a BREWbased game or a game for the N-Gage. Let’s take a quick look at some of the relevant development considerations: � Limited processing power in phone handsets Currently, many of the J2MEcompliant cell phone handsets offer very limited processing power. The phone hardware simply is not capable of handling complex processor tasks, and this fact alone places drastic limits on the type of games a developer can build. The processors inside the phones have gotten more powerful with each successive phone release, but they still fall far short of being able to handle very complicated gaming applications. � Limited physical screen sizes Cell phone handsets all have tiny view screens. The view screens have gotten larger over time, but they are still very small. Even worse for developers, there are no “standard” screen sizes, so the physical screen size for your game application depends on exactly which model of phone you are developing for. This can lead to portability issues
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A BOUT THE AUTHOR Tom Meigs is a ga
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Brandon A. Nordin Scott Rogers Wend
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Building Game Worlds xviii U L T I
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2 THE game design process begins by
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24 AFTER you’ve completed your pr
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54 FOR a game to be competitive the
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86 YOU now understand the developme
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Building Game Worlds 100 U L T I M
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108 UP to this point, we’ve cover
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130 Building Game Worlds 130 U L T
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136 SCRIPTING in games gives develo
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166 ONCE your game environment has
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274 Building Game Worlds U L T I M
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Building Game Worlds 278 FIGURE 11-
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286 THIS appendix includes useful r
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296 MANY types of software tools we
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304 TO assist you to further define
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310 I’VE gathered together a few
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322 AS a point of reference and as
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Building Game Worlds 336 Baseball s
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Building Game Worlds 346 crowd, 146
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