Is the little guy up to it?
Monkey Archive Forums/Monkey Discussion/Is the little guy up to it?
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| Hi All, It's been far too long... Is the Monkey up to the task of creating commercial games on iOS and Android? Are there any Android specific gotchas? I've tried the New Star Soccer on iOS but it's a real memory hog and quickly becomes unplayable... Have those sorts of issues been ironed out? I've been messing around with MadeWithMarmalade and MoSync, how does Monkey stack up? Thanks in advance, Tim. |
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| Do others report the same issue with New Star Soccer? It seems too popular to have such a serious bug. |
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| Even if it does it's probably not a Monkey issue. The GC is a bit crappy but it does at least release memory. |
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| OK, so discounting the NSS observation...... |
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| >Is the Monkey up to the task of creating commercial games on iOS and Android? Yes. >Are there any Android specific gotchas? Yes, as there would be with any language. >I've been messing around with MadeWithMarmalade and MoSync, how does Monkey stack up? Why don't you tell us what these products offer that you believe Monkey doesn't? From previous reading Marmalade has a superior set of libraries and overall development environment, but it is much more expensive and mainly targeted at C++ coders. I've never even heard of MoSync. |
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| Well, since native code is accessible from Monkey, theoretically many things are possible. Only, is the developer up to the task? ~hrdnutz |
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| Tim, are you playing NSS on an iPod by any chance? The last update seems to have messed something up and I need to look into it. |
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| IPod touch 4th gen with iOS6 - mind you I've not played it in a while. |
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| I'm also playing on an iPod 4G with iOS6.1 and have noticed a little slowdown now I'm in my 5th season, but nothing major - just when calculating results and fixtures etc. I just assumed it was because I am always playing it, minimising it, playing it, minimising it etc and the OnResume was reloading things, didn't realise there was a bug. However if it spacks out in my 10th season I shall be annoyed, I need my daily fix haha! |
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| I think so ... :) I had also been away from Monkey for a while (well over a year.) I created/released one Android app with Monkey and while I did like the SDK, I felt it had too many rough edges and needed to mature. It's improved quite a bit and I feel good about the decision to use it for my next app (for iOS/Android/OSX): Been using it almost daily for the past 2-3 months, getting all the basic game-framework functionality done, building misc native code extensions and integrating required 3rd-party SDKs. So far everything has gone pretty smoothly. As far as how Monkey compares to Marmalade: Marmalade is definitely a more mature, feature-rich SDK than Monkey (Marmalade's SDK has been around for over 10 years), but it's also a much more complex one and that complexity is a big part of what caused me to move away from it, after developing my most recent app with it, and return to Monkey. With Monkey you code to a small, essential-functionality-only collection of modules using a BASIC-like high-level language. You have easy access to the underlying platform for creating custom extensions should it be required. In addition, all the source code to Monkey is available allowing for misc tweaking/fixes. With Marmalade you code, using C/C++, to what could be thought of as the "Marmalade OS". This OS has hundreds of different functions & classes which attempt to provide all the functionality any type of app might require. The underlying target platform is completely abstracted away, so to create custom extensions the Extension Development Kit (EDK) must be used (which at first glance seems like an easy process but quickly turns into an overly-complex, error-prone and hassle-to-update one.) Also, save for Marmalade developed extensions, the SDK is completely closed-source. While there are few areas in which I'd love Monkey to be more like Marmalade (ex. The build & runtime settings which can be configured via text files is much more extensive in Marmalade than Monkey) overall I prefer Monkeys simpler, ligher-weight nature. |
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| Im getting back into monkey and blitzmax in a big way after not using it for a while and monkey has developed into something quite usable. At the moment im playing with networking and trying to get to all going on linux. |
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| @EdzUp: Are you creating the server with BlitzMax? I am looking into Python and Twisted atm for this. |
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| The newer versions of .net are pretty nice for making servers. C# or VB get it done pretty easily. |
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| @MikeHart: yeah im looking into getting blitzmax as a server to talk to monkey for games this will allow me to make multiplayer games, yeah i will make a online server at some point but once its all dont i want a robust cross platform solution that will make it all work :) |
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