Sorry to update this thread after so long, but I've run across something that might be of interest to budding Windows iPhone developers. I ran across a toolkit not too long ago called Airplay (http://www.airplaysdk.com/). You can actually run it through Windows using Visual Studio (in fact, they only this month released a Mac version of the kit), and one of the supported platforms is iPhone. Unfortunately you still need a Mac to ultimately make a build that can be run on an iPhone, though Airplay support told me that v4.1 of the SDK, which was just released, is supposed to fix that problem. I haven't fully explored that yet, or the SDK as a whole for that matter, but the little I have perused looks quite interesting. If someone else tinkers around with this, please share your findings. Thanks!
Another option is to look at using the Dragon Fire Sdk. They claim you can build an App store ready app completely on a Windows machine, using Visual Studio. Looks kind of interesting: http://www.dragonfiresdk.com/
That does look interesting. Unfortunately, it's not available yet. The other thing that's appealing about Airplay is that it supports target platforms besides the iPhone, in case you want to branch out. Guess I might just have to look into both of them
We develop our games on windows using GLBasic : http://www.glbasic.com/ You still need to have a mac to do the last compile on xcode though...
I've downloaded GLBasic several times. I'm a VB guy, so the thought of being able to code an iPhone game in a BASIC language is very appealing. There's still that whole issue of needing a Mac at the end that's a problem for me, though. That's why these other two options are quite intriguing. By the way, I went to your Twitter feed and followed the link to the game play video, but I get an error and can't watch the video.
As far as I know, MAC usage is an obligation by Apple to do (atleast) the last compilation for IPhone. I remember autohor of GLBasic was talking about this and just for that reason, after you code and test your game on windows, you have to take the generated XCode project to MAC and do the compile at there to load into IPhone / IPod Touch. About the video, I just checked and it's ok. Somebody else had reported the same a few days ago. It's just hosted on YouTube and I assume that you had a concidence with a problem on YouTube itself as otherwise it plays fine (apart the bad quality!).
I know exactly what you're talking about, and Airplay seems to concur with that (at last for now). Dragonfire claims that you don't need a Mac at all, however. Guess we'll find out! I was finally able to watch your video - looks pretty neat. Guess if I decide to go with GLBasic I'll have to come to you with questions
I'm sure they have to give up once they are noticed by apple. I also checked these frameworks before and believe me GLBasic is the easiest to start, for example, I could code the splash and main menu within an half an hour, it was that easy. Though, my background on game programming in C64 with assembly and nowadays C#/VB:ent helped as well but the point in here as you understood is that it requires little effort to learn to code on it if you already know how to code in any other language. For your questions, you are always welcome . GLBasic community and the author itself is very kind on providing help as well so don't hasitate on that part to ask something in their forum.
Dragonfire makes this claim because you submit your app to THEM at the end and they take care of the App store submission piece. You aren't technically getting around the need for a Mac, they are just using their own Macs on the back end to do the final compile and submission for you. m
Well that solves that issue. Thanks for the insight. I had missed that part (but then I hadn't really studied the web site all that closely yet). It's still a potentially nice option for those of us who don't have a Mac and can't afford one.
I have been seriously kicking around the idea of kicking off a open source project similar to game salad. However if I decide to do this, which is looking fairly likely, I am going to shoot for full cross platform right out of the gate. That would include mac, windoze and linux using a mix of python, wxpython and compiling against cocos2d for iphone functionality. You would still need a a account to publish from but the compiler server would send the binary, copy of the xcode project complete with source.
This may also be an alternative - http://www.macincloud.com/ Not sure though - I considered it for a bit, then just got a mac - so I've not actually tried it
