Angry Birds gets pretty tough, jeez.
Aha! I came to this thread looking to see if anyone else was playing this, itās quite fun!
My username is Athryn, natch. Iāll send you a request.
Is Android going to get some love soon from developers? Iām looking at the list of Ipad games and Iām starting to get envious. You think with 300K activations daily, game developers would be lining up in droves to put out games for us.
The GameDev story game that people were raving about on the iPhone thread has made it to Android. Beyond that, thoughā¦ ?
To be honest, even with 300K activations a day, Android is still not a platform Iād recommend to any developer over, e.g., iPhone. Piracy is still pretty easy, the market is very unstable (e.g., earlier this month, most European developers experienced that all their sales to US customers - a majority of Android users - were blocked due to credit card failures. The problem started on a saturday and was not resolved until monday), and users are still accustomed to FREE.
I tend to view Rovioās decision to release Angry Birds for free as rather symptomatic of how bad the Android market really is.
By the by - Pirates and Traders: Gold! (the ad-free/donateware version of my game Pirates and Traders) was released earlier this month.
I, for one, feel awful about Rovio being forced into only making a million dollars a month in ad revenue from their Android app.
Game Dev Story is unbelievably addicting. Like āwoah, that was six hours?ā addictive.
Sure. The thing about ad revenue, though, is that it tapers off (the long-tail idea is more theory than practice). I rather suspect theyāve made a lot more money on iPhone, though, which is kind of the point. But weāll see which platform they target first with their next release - I would be surprised if that is Android, though.
I would rather pay for the fucking apps then deal with their shitty ads.
Also this thread sucks.
Also Android gaming sucks.
Itās lousy for developers and sadly reminiscent of the clusterfuck that was mobile gaming pre-iPhone.
Iāve had to pay for a ~$200/month deviceanywhere account just to test the new bug reports that come in every few days from another person with another oddball device with some unique screen resolution or special bug. Thereās really poor consistency from device to device and far too many devices. Google should have placed tighter restrictions on the hardware if you ask me, they totally missed the lesson of Appleās success with developers.
Also the sales channels are all pretty bad, and Google doesnāt offer enough ways to limit who can purchase your app (although they are improving this with some upcoming changes to the manifest).
Sales have been really unimpressive for us so far, and I hear the same from every other developer who has brought a successful iOS app to Android. Ad supported is the only way to go, people just donāt buy apps the way they do on iOS.
Sorry for the rant, I do hope it finds it feet and does well as a software platform eventually, I just felt the need to respond to your comment with some experiences as a developer.
Iād just like to have Dungeon Defenders on my Evoā¦ Iām still ticked that I bought it on iTunes and canāt play it on my current device (2nd Gen Ipod Touch).
Granted, I had a feeling that it would happen someday.
My last post probably sounded bitchier than I meant it to be. To me, it seems like a Angry Birds is in a good place- Rovio can push out little packs like theyāve been doing and keep it going for a long time. Of course, this is probably after the iOS version did all the bill payingā¦
Thanks for shedding light on the matter. At least now I know some of the reasons why the flow for Android games is so slow.
Iāve never really seen any major issues with the diversity of devices; granted, my games are low tech, but still, such reports always surprise me. Of course, my games are also native Android, and not ported over via the NDK (as I expect most iOS ports are), so that may be another explanation.
The big issue I feel that Android has is how awful the sales channels are, coupled with Googleās seemingly complete lack of interest in helping developers actually sell stuff. It has been improvingā¦ slowlyā¦ but it is nowhere near being good yet.
Nope, native Android. Java I know better than Objective C, so I was really looking forward to it when I got started.
I think it works great for the kinds of applications they had in mind when they developed the platform (functional software like apps). But for 2d games using open GL? Yuck, variations in specifics of open gl support (textures etc). Also, the variety of resolution means we can only really get the kind of crisp look we have on the iPhone by making unique assets for each resolution. Not to mention even daring to ask about resolution gets you admonishing lectures from android zealots in every dev forum about how you shouldnāt care.
Also, although this isnāt Googleās fault, but thereās also no even halfway decent framework for 2d games. Nothing coming even close to cocos2d-iphone for example.
I realize this is a bit of a niche in the app development world, but itās the one I know well, and I can promise it applies to a lot of other game developers coming from iOS to Android.
Does anyone know when dungeon defenders will be in the marketplace, so I can stop hitting refresh?
Nevermindā¦ found My answer on Twitter. Midday-ish.
Dungeon Defenders is coming out on Android? Yehey! That is great news.
Yeah, the OpenGL support could definitely be a lot better. Allowing phone manufacturers to do whatever they liked with that is one of the more boneheaded moves Google has done with the platform. Iām considering moving my games across to OpenGL myself soon using libGdx - I look forward to seeing what kind of bugs people run into then (not really).
Not to mention even daring to ask about resolution gets you admonishing lectures from android zealots in every dev forum about how you shouldnāt care.
I feel your pain.
Also, although this isnāt Googleās fault, but thereās also no even halfway decent framework for 2d games. Nothing coming even close to cocos2d-iphone for example.
Well, that at least can be remedied in time. Slick for Android seems like it could become quite nice, eventually. The problem with it, of course, is that it depends a lot on Kevin G (libGdx has fortunately picked up a couple of additional contributers).
I read that as āDesktop Dungeonsā and I think my heart skipped a beat.
But it is coming to Android as well; according to a comment in one of the blog entries on their site:
For what itās worth, all the EA games on the market are on sale for 99 cents. I got Tetris just for the hell of it.
Dungeon Defenders is up on the market.
I think Iāll be passing though, under the device requirements it says 256 MB memory at runtimeā¦ Iād probably have to be rooted to have that, so Iāll wait for more impressions before I bother.