blitzmax for android or iphone?
BlitzMax Forums/BlitzMax Beginners Area/blitzmax for android or iphone?
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| Is it possible to program in blitzmax and create a game for the android or apple app market? |
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| Simple answer: no iOS has many limitations on development from apple. They have loosened up a bit but it's still pretty tight. On top of that the testing environment etc. is very locked into Xcode. An of course everything has to be done on a Mac... Android is looser, however it's based on java which is not fully compiled. You van build c under java for android using the ndk but it's an absolute nightmare. Both platform primarily target arm architectures as well rather than x86, and both use varying OpenGL es implementations rather than desktop OpenGL. Bmx2 could possibly provide basically bmx language and be able to build for something that might be portable to android and or iOS in some way. Right now your best bet is probably to learn a new language or 4 and get started with a graphics or game library (preferably a cross platform one like cocos2d) to not have to start from scratch... Depending on your experience level and comfort with other languages there are plenty of paths to get up to speed on with or both platforms. Game development on both are actually comparatively easy because you don't have to wrestle too much with the platform itself unless you want to since you just need a graphics context and to understand the structure of the code and language. |
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| Well thanks for the great answer ima747. Ive just been starting out with blitzmax learning the basics I was just curios is I was going to be able to do something like that. I plan on learning c next so that will prob help me out alot more. |
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| C/C++ will give you a great foundation for just about anything IMO. It's conventions are widely used in other languages and many other languages are structurally quite similar as well. Java, PERL and PHP for instance are all very very close to C in structure and therefore quite easy to transition to. Objective C (iOS's target language) is structurally VERY different than C as it's Smalltalk based, however it is technically an extension of C in the same way that C++ is, so you can actually write C/C++ inside of Objective C and they co-mingle perfectly. If you're new to Programming in general Blitz is a fantastic place to start due to the helpful community, verbose built in documentation, and general simplicity of the language. IMO C is the most valuable language to know simply because it sets you up for so many other languages so well in addition to being easily integrated with many other languages (even Bmax...) |
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| Monkey will let you compile for android and iphone. |
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| There are a few other languages and game kit systems that can cross compile for everything but they all have problems (and advantages), such as: Pro: Unified development for even more platforms than bmax Con: The more unified the development the less OS specific and native the resulting experience. This is apple's primary claim for refusing flash, it muddies the experience into something generic and not standards compliant. Pro: Most are streamlined to just relevant tools etc. for game development. Con: This means if want you want to do is outside of the tool set you're out of luck (UNITY for example, great for making a 3D game, darn near impossible to do anything else with) You are also tied to the middle man for supporting future features and so forth. Until the tools are updated to support a feature (say GPS, or camera) it's out of reach. Some tools let you jump out to native code, but that defeats the purpose of using something in the middle... To each their own. There are plenty of reasons to go with an (even more than bmax) universal development kit, but I prefer tighter control especially on very resource critical platforms like mobile phones. The things that try to help always get in my way :0) |
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