OK so new question. I like to do the easy work first to get inspired. I don't wish to get in detail of my game. But I will build a city in Sketch-Up. Now I also need to design a ship like plane. Do I also build that but in a separate Sketch Up Pro file? And it would be nice if people posted some good FREE 3D game engines with good physics. Later on I will upgrade to Unity if I make the app but Unity Indie with iPhone Basic is $600! Thanks Also; when building in Sketch Up; do I build size by how it looks or by the real life measures? One more thing; can I use things from the Google Warehouse thing?
Yup, the SDK is free to download. And you can test your code in a simulator. But you need to pay $99 per year to become a registered iphone developer, to be able to test the code on an actual device and to be able to put the app on the app store... The language is Objective C. Don't know the answers to the other questions.
Per year?! I though it was pay once thing. Hmm... maybe I will post a teaser see if ppl would actually buy it before paying. Anyway; I will wait for other ppl to answer the other questions. Thanks
The SDK is free to download but the $99 is to sign up for the portal so you can test on an actual device and release free or paid apps on the App Store. The SDK is in Objective-C. The engines available will generally be written using a mix of C/C++ and Obj-C. It doesn't really matter what language you program in as you can abstract that from the actual SDK layer. You always need some amount of Obj-C however to interface with the SDK. Bugz used probably 5-10% Obj-C 'wrapper' code and the remaining was all written in C++. Google iPhone game engine to get a list of engines... Go to the Unity website to get the price for Unity... You don't come over like somebody who has programmed in low level language such as C/C++/Obj-C before, it's substantially different than coding in higher level scripting languages like Lua, Python ... and also web languages such as Javascript, HTML, PHP et al. Good luck.
OK thanks. I know HTML; a bit of PHP due to the Joomla system. But I closed my site. I am completly new to coding and when I saw ppl saying game engines where a different language i was like
OK so I like to do the easy work first to get inspired. I don't wish to get in detail of my game. But I will build a city in Sketch-Up. Now I also need to design a ship like plane. Do I also build that but in a separate Sketch Up Pro file? And it would be nice if people posted some good FREE 3D game engines with good physics. Later on I will upgrade to Unity if I make the app but Unity Indie with iPhone Basic is $600! Thanks Also; when building in Sketch Up; do I build size by how it looks or by the real life measures? One more thing; can I use things from the Google Warehouse thing?
Given the fact that your developing an app that will cost the consumer a minimum of 99¢ to purchase per unit sold or free with promotional revenue incentive, the cost of "licensing" the right to publish your app over a service that exclusively and effectively reaches your customer base, is a minimal hit to the wallet. This form of authoring to an ever and rapidly growing platform base is about as cheap as its going to get in a cost effect manner. I really don't see it as Apple teasing people with job opportunity. I see it as Apple saying "Hey, if you can develop, we'll hook you up with a entrepreneurial avenue to make lots of money" with minimal loss if it doesn't work out. Try telling that to a development house that licenses a game or app SDK/Engine for hundreds of thousands of dollars, pays a publisher that much or more and barely breaks even. We've seen idev apps that make farting sounds exceed $35,000 dollars within weeks. A good metaphor would be. Your being handed a Ferrari that just lacks a key for the ignition. You have to be that key. Research, develop and market well. Any app can be a gold mine. $99 is just like stealing from Apple IMO.
I dont mind the 100 from apple; but thats about as much as I will budge for NOW. i dont have a lot of start up money; but when the app sells and i get money then i will update and make things better
@dannys95 I don't want to discourage you since it's great to have new devs starting up. But I would like to give a word of warning... the post makes it look like you have high expectations of what an engine and a physics module will do for you. I've heard good things of Unity's ability to allow game developers to get interactive stuff running with minimal coding (no first-hand experience), so it might be a good idea to look into it. There should be a free trial version. But if you're starting with something else, I don't think you can avoid learning OpenGL ES and the basics of 3D programming. But when it comes to physics, I have concerns that a packaged physics engine would be good to build the key elements of a game on top of. Most games that utilize Havok or PhysX do so for reactive elements that collide with the player and then just fly around convincingly, or are manipulated by the player. However, it sounds like you want the player character itself to be controlled by physics, and for that I would expect most developers to prefer direct control over, and therefore write their own code. It also sounds like you're planning to do a 3D environment where the player is able to fly around, and you want to the flying to feel "real" because you mention a physics engine. If you've coded a 3D flight model before, I'll just be quiet and sit in the corner, but if you haven't... it's not exactly trivial. Physics engines don't generally do anything other than give you colliders and forces, and that means you'll need to be prepared to spend an enormous amount of time setting up a simulation where something remains airborne despite gravity and behaves nicely (roll/pitch/yaw) according to player input. Also if you bring in 3D buildings from SketchUp, you'll still need to define the collision geometry for the buildings separately (or use the bounding boxes of your visual meshes, and you'd need to code that too). Since you mention that you have no previous experience in coding, it feels to me like you're biting quite a chunk for a first game. My humble recommendation would be to start with a 2D game concept: there are 2D physics engines available (but coding your own 2D Newtonian simulation wouldn't be that bad), the simulation will be much simpler to handle and performance on the device should be easier to manage. In any case, I wish you good luck with the project.
ok so i do not want to go into details since it might not be made. 3d buildings; 3d emviroment. u r flying around a little ship; like a platformer. you collect things. but then i toss a bit of katamari and clusterball in an update. but this is very ambixious and unlikely. thank u frand for the feedback. i dont know what i will do. we'll have to wait and see.
Considering what Unity does for $600 is unbelievable. My games were Unity made. You can check them out at http://www.mehware.com if you want. I disagree with the minimal coding statement, there is no "Make my game button/line of code". I had to write a lot of JS/C# for both my games. Also with that $400 for indie license allows you to make games for the mac, web browser, or widget. The $200 iphone basic license allows you to deploy to the iPhone with option-b once everything is setup correctly. And don't forget the $100 you have to pay to apple to become a part of the developers program. $700 is pretty low for such great technologies all things considered.
I know. But since I do not know where I stand on this project whether I male or not and am low on money I do want to blow $700. I think as a start up I should do a 2D game. I am handy with photoshop. Now I need a new idea.
You don't need a new idea. IMO your being too ambitious. I would try to make a pong game for the Mac as practice. That shouldn't hurt your wallet. Also You can get an indie trial of Unity.http://unity3d.com/unity/features/iphone-publishing - Click download trial, play around with it. I also recommend gamedev.net, nehe.gamedev.net for OpenGL basics. There should be free Obj-C tutorials around the net too.
