Androidpimps – all about android games

Qualcomm Developer Programm

Due to Apple’s “one device for all target groups” policy, the perception has changed dramatically in terms of device diversity in recent years. “Diversity” changed to “fragmentation”. Forgotten are all the years, where developers had to adapt their software several times for different Symbian OS phones. Often people overlook the fact that many devices also bring many target groups, which bring many new ideas to the table, which can then be monetized.

After the newest boom of mobile apps, which are existing for over ten years now, a lot of small and big developers could reach new markets. Through the huge device diversity it became easier to find a customer base.

If you want to start to develop mobile apps you will have to ask yourself a few questions. For example which system and which plattform should I choose? At first the OS doesn’t matter, the processor architecture is more interesting. The biggest market share in that regard has Qualcomm, which supports developers, who can and want to invest a sum in the „Snapdragon Mobile Development Plattform“.

The MDP MSM8660 (that’s the name of the current version) consist of a high class developer smartphone and professional tools, bundled with a lot of documentations.
These give young developers with a easy way in. Senior developers will find useful information on how to further optimize your games and apps for the Snapdragon-CPU.

But what exactly is Snapdragon and why should developers invest time into this plattform?
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Popularity: 2% [?]

Last week the Evo3D launched officially in Germany, a lot has happened since I checked out the first 3D phone from LG at MWC earlier this year and with Sense 3.0 and the new mobile display resolution the HTC Evo3D looks like a evolution of the Optimus 3D on paper. Let’s find out, if the last 6 months were kind to mobile 3D gaming and if such a device is worth to have now.

Let’s take a look at the Hardware first.
I really like the HTC phones, they always feel sturdy and robust. The phone has a decent weight to it and could be too heavy for some, but I prefer phones with a little weight to it over cheap plastic.
The backside comes off easily when you need it to and won’t pop off by itself. There is a real camera button on the device, that is at the top of it’s class. It just feels right to have a dedicated metal camera button on the lower right of the phone.
Sadly that’s the only good thing when it comes to buttons. The system buttons are all touchscreen buttons, that are often pressed by unintended clicks if you just hold the phone in landscape mode. My biggest gripe with the phone is that it doesn’t have a trackpad or a trackball. I’m so used to this navigation that every phone without a trackball + touchscreen just feels crippled and I will probably cry crocodile tears if the Nexus Prime is announced with only software buttons.

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Popularity: 6% [?]

Last week Madfinger announced their new game for Android and demonstrated in on a Tegra 2 tablet.
Now Unity tell us more about the technology behind it, the new features for mobile will come to Unity in version 3.5 and will then be available to all Unity developers.
Here’s the video:

For more information, visit the Unity Blog
and if you missed it, here’s the game running on actual hardware:
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Popularity: 3% [?]

Nvidia demonstrated their newest Tegra Chip at Computex, which finally is powerful enough to bring games in the quality of current generation retail console titles to Android. After the Glowbnall demo from a few days ago, today a video surfaced that shows a port of Lost Planet 2, a Unreal Tournament 3 like testlevel from the Unreal Development Kit and the Glowball demo on real hardware. It’s great to see effects like cloth animation and dynamic lightning on Android and shows the huge leap in graphics.
No word yet on when the first hardware will be available, but they could come at the end of the year with a healthy dose of Ice cream sandwich.

Source: Engadget

Popularity: 2% [?]

Yesterday Sony unveiled their new smartphone for gamers, while the phone itself is nothing new, thanks to countless leaks, having the device in the hand and seeing official games for it is something that surprised a lot of people, because the games all ran super smooth and the fun of playing mobile games increased tremendously, just because you have real buttons.

The device will be available in Europe from nearly every carrier in March and will launch in America this Spring through Verizon. So let’s start with the hands – on, so you can decide for yourself, if this could be your next smartphone.

As a reference game, we will start with the PS 1 Emulation:

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Popularity: 3% [?]

Last Tuesday Google invited german developers to the MOC in Munich and one session led by Dan Galpin (Google Developer Advocate for Games) was very interesting for Android Game Developers (and high interest gamers). For example did you know that every game could backup the savegames over Google services and no one has done it yet? Or that you can share assets between applications through intents? Even more known services like cloud-to-device messaging haven’t found the way into games yet.
There were a lot of more interesting tidbits and while there wasn’t anything new to report, a lot of the old stuff isn’t commonly known, I didn’t know that widgets can’t be moved to SD.
So to learn more about Android games and the possibilities, check out the talk, I filmed it spontaneous with the Nexus One, so excuse the sound quality and my shaky hand, holding your hand up for 30 minutes is no easy feat, but at least I had the best seat in the entire hall.
Part 4 is especially interesting, where he gives out a Wish List for future Android game features.

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Popularity: 3% [?]

A few months ago rumors started to spread about a PSP Android phone by Sony Ericsson and while these rumors sounded very convincing (since every gamer expected such a device since Sony formed it’s partnership and brought their first phone together to the market), finally some real screenshots came to light over at Engadget.

What you see here is a mobile gamers dream come true, a real D-Pad, real buttons, two optical trackpads to emulate analog sticks and shoulder buttons deliver complete control over your games, just like on a real gaming handheld. No lousy D-Pad like the N-Gage, real buttons on the side of the touchscreen, so you don’t accidentaly press them like on the Nexus One, the design just looks flawless for gaming. A second menue button under the D-Pad and the placement of the back button on the left side of the system keys will ensure, that you don’t need to rearrange your grip to reach all keys. The Touch Panel on the backside also ensures, that you can touch anywhere on the screen without blocking the view or letting go of your controls.

I’m pretty sure, I am looking at my next phone here, this is the killer gaming device I expected from Microsoft for their Windows 7 launch, which never came and makes their device lineup look pale for gamers. Even if Sony wouldn’t go all out (like the rumor mill says) and not builds a real gaming store for this device, I would need one of those for the massive amount of Android games, that would profit from better controls. The dual analog Sticks combined with the shoulder buttons will make building first person games reasonable for the first time on a mobile device, not even the original PSP could deliver that.

The device, which codename is “Zeus” has the following rumored specs at the moment:
1GHz Qualcomm MSM8655 (like the G2, but 200 Mhz faster)
512MB RAM
1GB of ROM
a screensize around 3.7 to 4.1 inches

We’ll let you know as soon as we have more solid info about Sony’s plans for Android, but whatever they are, if we get such a sexy device out of it, then Sony is on the best way on the road to success. The only thing I wish for on this device is a 3D screen from Sharp, which would make playing First person shooters a lot of fun and since Sony is on the forefront of bringing 3D into households, I hope they cease this opportunity and build it in, I don’t care if it bumps up the price point and so would a lot of gamers. Let’s hope for the best and pray to the gaming gods, that our wish will come true, since our last one for a PSP Phone seems to be fially getting heard.

Source: Engadget

Popularity: 3% [?]

Today I visited Green Robot, who were kind enough to let us take a good look on the Galaxy tab and test out it’s gaming capabilities. Since the Galaxy Tab is one of the hottest gadgets at the moment, we won’t bother you with a device review, because you can already find good user impressions on the net, I recommend engadget in english and golem in german.
Instead we will focus on it’s gaming capabilities, which could very well be the secret weapon for the 7 inch tablets, give tips for developers on how to optimize for the device and show some videos of popular android games running on it.

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Popularity: 9% [?]

Since Scoreloop announced in May that they have a rapid growth on Android with over 300000 new Android Users per week, their software is used in more and more games, that’s why Androidpimps decided to pay them a visit, because we wanted to hear straight from the source, what Scoreloop is exactly and what it does for gamers and developers. CEO Marc Gumpinger sat down with us and was willing to answer all our questions, that’s why we asked him to one part gamer questions and one part technical questions, that will be more interesting for developers, who think about integrating Scoreloop into their projects.

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Popularity: 5% [?]

We early adopters know all to well about all the good stuff the Android market provides, at the moment everyone has the possibility to to buy an app for 24 hrs., back it up and then return the installed version. While this is fine and dandy for indie developers, who update their game frequently and have some sort of copy protection through that, it is a major drawback for the big players in the industry, that polish their games a lot further and release them as a one shot (a good example would be Gameloft, who deliver high quality games, but don’t update them very often).

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Popularity: 5% [?]