  Collecting my thoughts | 
Posted - 6/17/2009 12:03:11 PM | Putting Appcelerator Titanium on the back-burner for the time-being, as I've deemed it to be not-as-yet mature enough to solve all of my problems. Much as I'd like to build everything with free tools, the maturity's not yet there. It'll be there when I need it (around Android/Blackberry time) and in a better state in the future.
So I'm switching gears and going with maturity for now. And that means C and XCode and suchlike. Unfortunately my little Mac Mini isn't in a state where it can write iPhone stuff. First off, it's got OSX 10.4, and OSX 10.5 is necessary for iPhone development. That's $130. I'd like to just leapfrog to 10.6, as there's a $160 10.4-to-10.6 package that's gonna include all of that iLife/iWork/iWhatever stuff, but that's not happening until September and I don't wanna wait until then. I don't use the Mac for everyday productivity stuff anyway, so the iWhatever stuff isn't that big a benefit.
Also I need more memory. The Mini's got 512mb which'll run 10.4 and 10.5 but won't run 10.6. 10.6 isn't a must-have to develop iPhone, but most stuff on the Mini runs about as fast as an ox pulling a U-haul trailer right now, and 2gb memory upgrades are now cheap ($35 shipped), so I have that in the mail and will mess with the plastic spatulas (no, really, you need plastic spatulas to open a Mac Mini) when that arrives.
And I'll likely get a new processor too. This is a first-gen Intel Mac Mini and contains a "Core Solo" processor (AKA a Celeron, but Apple can't call it that after their old campaign to rebrand Celeron as "Decelleron" when they were still pretending that PowerPC chips were faster). I looked it up and the chip's not soldered in and you can slap a dual-core into the original Intel Mini and it'll recognize it. Only problem is that the Mini is put together a bit like that magic-demon-puzzle-box thingy in "Hellraiser" and you gotta disassemble the whole danged thing to get to the processor.
And Shelly's pestering me to be vigilant about the process so my mind don't wander. So the process thus-far is as follows. . .
1. Come up with fabulous mobile game idea (already done)
2. Document idea (will do by Friday)
3. Install OSX 10.5 into Mac Mini so I can install iPhone development stuff
4. Install 2gb memory upgrade when it arrives so the Mini won't be quite so pokey.
5. Develop iPhone app in C, most likely using Cocos2D for the presentation layer. I'm not wild about the process, but it's undoubtedly mature (squillions of games having been developed, used, and deployed with this system), so I won't complain much.
6. Simultaneously with 5, order a dual-core processor for the mini, re-disassemble and install processor. Hopefully the Mini will then be even further from pokey than in step 4.
7. Finish iPhone app.
8. Get app approved by content police.
9. Deploy and sell game for free or a very low price (this is my "getting my feet wet" project so I'm not shooting for big big profits with this go-round).
10. Return to step one and repeat process with a larger-scope game, eliminating the upgrade steps as my Mac Mini is now hopefully quite beefy enough to develop reasonably.
Speaking of processor upgrades, I had a really weird thing happen on Shelly's machine. It just got slow. And not just a little slow. A lot slow. We're still not sure exactly what the deal was, but it just got really slow. At first I thought it was software. Perhaps something got installed that was running in the background and hogging up all the CPU. But it never seemed to improve. Sometimes we'd get a brief respite, but it'd inevitably go right back to being slow again.
Just for grins, I ran that Windows Experience Index that came with Vista, and the CPU was scoring itself as 2.2, which is almost comically slow. As a comparison, the Celeron in my cheap laptop runs at a 3.9. The identical system (my machine across the room) had a CPU index of 7.1. Clearly something was wrong. A quad-core machine shouldn't get a 2.2.
Finally I got a light bulb above my head. Shelly's computer is pretty-much identical to mine. I plugged Shelly's drive into my computer and booted it up. Given that my computer is pretty-much an identical machine to hers, it should give similar results. And the Windows Experience CPU index registered 7.1, which means that the problem was NOT software. If it was software, it would run slow no matter what machine it was plugged into.
So a couple of hours and a motherboard later Shelly's computer was back together, happy as can be and running quick as a quad-core machine should run. No idea what'd be happening to make it get slow like that. But it's one of those things that you can only wrestle with for so long before you just have to replace stuff until the problem goes away.
Bleah, expensive problem. Anyone want a slow motherboard?
Also I replaced the CPU on my laptop. Just for grins, I googled to see what I could do to make my little $350 "Wal Mart Special" Acer laptop faster. And it turned out that my laptop is about the most upgradable one on the market. Everything's accessible from a panel on the bottom, and it runs dual-core CPU's just fine. So I ordered myself a dual-core CPU and prepared to disassemble the whole danged thing. The whole process ended up taking about ten minutes, and my little cheapo disposable laptop is now pretty quick.
So I'm getting a little more life from the cheapo computers.
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| Organizing handheld pains | |
Posted - 6/2/2009 10:46:01 AM | Okay, still not developing for the iPhone yet, but I'm closer. Things have gotten both clearer and more fuzzy. So I'm making myself a table with the available technologies on it. . .
Technology: Objective C
Portability: Nil. If I write an iPhone game for the iPhone, it stays on the iPhone forever. If I wanna later move that game to Android or Blackberry or Windows Mobile, I rewrite it.
Pros: It's Apple-approved
Cons: I friggin' hate Objective C
Price: $99 for the developer program (and I presume this $99 will still be necessary for all the other technologies below.
Technology: Torque
Portability: Maybe. I haven't seen anything saying that Torque will be available for other portables, but it's certainly do-able.
Pros: Available right now
Cons: Requires a 5-second ad for Torque to display before the game starts
Price: $500 for the iPhone engine. $250 for Torque Game Builder.
Technology: FlashGap or Appcelerator Titanium (yes I know they're different in that FlashGap uses the existing browser and Titanium bundles its own browser, but they're conceptually similar)
Portability: Quite good. Titanium hasn't nailed down their mobile plans yet, but I'd be surprised if it didn't include pretty much everything. It's currently desktop-only but I suspect that'll change.
Pros: Would probably be the simplest way to get my games up in a hurry.
Cons: Apple is denying FlashGap applications on general principle, and that's a big deal-breaker. No word about Titanium yet, but if I don't get word that they're working with the content police that they won't be FlashGapped, then I'll have a problem.
Price: Free
Note: There's an Appcelerator Titanium beta launch-party here that promises to have "A Big Surprise". Whether the surprise is something at the party or is something having to do with Titanium isn't clear. Here's hoping I'm pleasantly surprised.
Technology: Haxe for iPhone
Portability: It's apparently using GCC as its compiler backend and SDL as its display-layer, so provided SDL gets ported, it will likely get ported too.
Pros: Would probably be the simplest ways to get my games up in a hurry. . .that's actually compiled and would be approved by the Apple content police.
Cons: Is just a proof-of-concept now. Has a truly frightening build-chain to get from Haxe code to iPhone native.
Price: Free
Technology: Unity3D
Portability: Haven't heard any indication that it's moving to other platforms, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did.
Pros: Seems like the most mature of the lot and there have been some very impressive games done with it.
Cons: Is 3D all the way, but I've seen 2D stuff done with it (presumably just very thin 3D objects). You have to open your game with an ad for them unless you pay 'em another $2500
Price: $200 for the IDE and $400 for the iPhone engine
So, did I miss any technologies? I know there are a few "infant" technologies out there, like a Ruby and a Python interpreter, but those looked pretty far from mature and even if they were, they'd likely suffer the same problem as FlashGap. Haxe would fire on all cylinders if it wasn't just a proof-of-concept.
The other question is what to develop first. Shelly's of the opinion that I go with Android first and do iPhone second just so I could be a bigger fish in a smaller pond. Of course, this would affect the list above pretty greatly. It'd also be quite a bit cheaper. Far as I know, there's not an Android development technology yet that costs money :)
Comments are welcome.
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