A developer behind the iPhone port of the FPS classic DOOM recently spoke out regarding the port project as well as iPhone development in general.
Developer Psychochromatic explains: “Looking at the hardware specs, I knew iPhone would be able to play a simple game like Doom no problem as it was open-source and already ran on the click-wheel iPod running Linux. I knew Stepwhite, who I work with on Mac projects, and as he’d just bought himself an iPhone and was working with the unofficial tool-chain I jokingly told him he had one week to port Doom to iPhone, and all it had to do was run; he didn’t have to implement controls. One week later, he proudly linked me to his Doom port homepage.”
The first build of Doom saw 15,000 downloads on the project site alone, even without a way to control the game. Once controller input had been included that version received over 25,000 downloads.
Behind the ease of development lies the iPhone’s inherent support for a full scale OS. “The iPhone runs OS X. It’s a full UNIX system in your pocket, with brilliant Objective-C frameworks that make coding beautiful and powerful applications a dawdle,” explains Psychochromatic.
Psychocromatic is not the first developer to expound the virtues of the iPhone’s rich, versatile, open development environment. While writing iPhone apps was once a challenge, Apple’s release of the free iPhone SDK has made such projects “trivial."
Apple’s iTunes App Store launches in June and the list of games that will be available at launch grows daily. Stay tuned to keep up to date on just what download to expect on launch day.
