Does Apple hate Adobe or Developers?

I was thinking that perhaps I should wait until tomorrow to make a post. April 12th is when Adobe is going to officially announce the Creative Suite 5 lineup. I am hoping that something big is going to be announced tomorrow but think that perhaps the iPhone OS 4 rumors may have dampened Adobe's plans. One feature that they were planning on having for Flash CS5 is an iPhone exporter that would convert Flash apps into iPhone apps. Sadly, the iPhone SDK license agreement (required to use the iTunes store) may be specifying that apps must be written in Objective C or C++ and that API features must not be accessed through third party libraries. This effectively rules out using Flash to develop iPhone apps. It also rules out other tools like Unity.

I think the real reason for doing this is to force developers to develop specifically for the iPhone/iPad. Flash being able to export to iPhone would circumvent this requirement making it easy to develop cross-platform applications. While Unity also allows this, it has a much smaller developer base as compared to Flash so Apple probably didn't even notice it yet. In other words, this attack against Flash isn't actually aimed at Adobe, but it is instead an attempt to make it much more work for developers to create cross-platform versions of their apps. Right now, the iPhone is in a dominant position, so developers pretty much have to support it. This is just like Windows is the dominant platform for PCs which is why there is so much Windows software.

With Android continuing to gain market share, one has to wonder if this is a good long-term strategy for Apple. Right now, the major player is the iPhone, but with all the hassle and inconsistencies with the approval process, how much market share will Android have to gain before it becomes the better choice for initial development? In the computer industry, Apple was the dominant player with the Apple II, but that quickly changed when IBM created an easy to clone PC that numerous companies copied (today's PC) resulting in Apple slowly becoming a niche player. When companies start developing for the Android and then deciding if they should bother porting their app to the iPhone,  we may again see Apple become the niche player but this time in the mobile market.

Engine Search

Coffee Quest fans will probably be disappointed when they read this entry, as I have very little progress to report on Revenge development. In fact most of the ten hours allocated for this project this week have not been used so I can't even tell you if a new build will be happening this week. Work this week is revolving around finally implementing a tile class (in AS3) and if there is enough time I will try to get a map class also finished with a very simple viewer so the result would be a map viewer. I honestly don't think that I will get all that done in the allocated time, which means there probably will not be an update as there will not be a second build until I get the map view functional. While I normally get most my hours in on Sunday, yesterday was spent looking at a variety of game engines which would be used to develop a commercial game when I am between contracts again.

A game engine is what you use for building a game. This is essentially what I am creating with my CQfs project that is being used for the creation of CQR, CQ5 and CQ6. The engine used for these games, due to the fact that it is being written for online Flash games, is much less capable than what is necessary for a commercial quality game. Once Flash has proper hardware 3D support and better resource management, it may be possible to expand CQfs into a much more powerful engine. Even with the FS project, I am planning on using a 3rd party software 3D library. The problem with software 3D is that it is so limiting. A commercial game that uses 3D hardware can throw huge numbers of polygons at the screen allowing for incredible looking images. In addition, hardware supports all sorts of effects and special per-pixel shaders that simply is not practical to do in software.

All of this fancy stuff comes at the cost of complexity. While I could certainly write my own game engine, it would be a multi-year task. Using an existing engine saves a huge amount of time and allows me to focus on making the game. The problem is that there are so many engines that choosing one is quite a challenge in itself. My lack of a budget is actually not that big of a factor, as many of the engines are low cost (for instance, the C4 engine is only $200) with a lot of them being Open Source (Crystal Space being the big one here). The best way of cutting down the options was to require Mac, Linux and Windows support which cut the field down to about fifty. I will go over my short list of entries in future posts.

Apple did get back to me, which was nice, but they basically didn't tell me anything. I don't know why the Smashing Pumpkins albums are no longer available as plus (DRM free) albums, but do know that they are trying to work out some issues. Not sure who has the issues but do hope that this gets resolved as I do like Smashing Pumpkins and don't want to have to remove them from my favorite bands list.

The Battle has just Began

I have just finished adding some new features to Modern Melee Combat, which I will post to the ultimate retro project repository as soon as I finish the title screen artwork. The animation subsystem has been overhauled, so the game can be played significantly faster as you no longer will have to wait until the monster animation is finished before making your next move. This was the biggest complaint I have received for both Melee Combat and for Dungeon Romp. There are now keyboard shortcuts for all of the commands in the game. Finally, the game will have a title screen. The other complaint I have got about Melee Combat was that it was too easy. This is more of a configuration file issue than a programming issue, but I plan on creating a second configuration file that would have a much more challenging set of arenas in it. This will probably be released on the 8th.

Dungeon Romp fans will also be treated to an overhauled version. Work on this will not be started until I have put at least 10 hours into Coffee Quest Revenge. Once I have a version with the faster gameplay implemented, it will replace the existing version on the site. A more difficult dungeon is planned, though that will not be released until there is a free week in my release schedule. Depending on how quickly CQR development is, this could be this month, but may not be until July.

The last couple of posts I talked about DRM free music through iTunes. With DRM free music now available, I immediately purchased a copy of Smashing Pumpkins: Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness on May 30th. Last night (okay, technically early this morning before I went to bed) when I looked at the other Smashing Pumpkin titles available, I noticed that they were no longer available as iTunes Plus albums. This included the album that I purchased the other day. The copy I got was definitely DRM free 256 bit, which leads me to wonder what is going on? My fear is that some bands want to treat their paying customers like criminals. I wrote Apple to find out, but I doubt I will even get a reply from them. If I do find out that it was the band's choice to not allow DRM Free versions, I will simply have to quit supporting the band. In fact, I think from now on, the only bands that I will support are bands that have DRM Free music available.

Roadmap to 0.1

As visitors to Blazing Games already should have found out, the 2D only option won the vote. It was actually a very close user poll, and actually resulted in a different outcome than I had expected. What I had sort of hoped for was that the compromise of a step based 3D render and a 2D auto map that was free-scrolling would win out. What I had expected was the 3D option to win. What actually happened was the 2D option won out by a single vote. No, I am not making this up, even though we are talking about a Hollywood style vote result. Of course, such close races are common when there is under a score (20) worth of votes. Still, I do appreciate the tiny fraction of my visitors who do vote.

Doing a 2D map view of the game should be very quick, though I still have the larger task of finishing the tile and map classes before the viewing code can be implemented. As I am only going to have one type of monster in the initial release, I don't need the partially completed CQFS entity system, so the monster will be fairly quick to implement. The status bar has already been roughly implemented. This means that the 0.1 release might not be that far off. At 10 hours a week, though, I suspect the earliest that I could possibly have the release ready would be for June 22, though early July is probably the more realistic target.

The 0.2 release will be mostly the integration of the entity system, though other features may be added based on upcoming Blazing Games polls. Still, once I have the 0.1 version out, I can get some feedback on what the game needs so my plans might change.

As for anybody who cared about my post yesterday, I bought my first album on iTunes (Smashing Pumpkins -- Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness) so I am officially voting with my dollars when it comes to DRM free downloadable music. It actually worked out to only 89 cents Canadian a track (roughly 85 cents a track US) so buying entire DRM free albums on iTunes does make sense. Though eMusic is still significantly cheaper and a better solution if the bands you like are on independent labels.

DRM Free

While this doesn't directly have anything to do with game development, Today Apple has officially started their DRM Free iTunes Plus service. I have never purchased anything from iTunes as I do not like restrictions on items that I have bought. Especially when the people who are stealing the item do not have those restrictions. My music is obtained by buying CDs and off of another legal music service called eMusic which has been DRM free for years. Of course, anybody who has used eMusic knows that it has only smaller labels, but the price is significantly less than iTunes. The downside to today's news is that not all the iTunes music is available on iTunes plus, so many of the big label bands that I would consider purchasing music from are not DRM free and in many cases are not good enough to warrant purchasing a whole CD, so they will get no money from me. Still, this is a really good start, and I will be purchasing some music from iTunes this week. Let's hope that this is the beginning of the end for the anti-consumer (pro piracy) DRM formats.