TOOLS // MOBILE DEVELOPMENT | BUILD BEYOND THE RINGTONE
Each is vital to the mobile ecosystem, and not all are au fait with the minutiae of high-end tools, licensing models and advanced techniques around. “Not all developers have experience
working on high-end console games,” confirms Chris Doran, founder of lighting specialist and Enlighten creator Geomerics. “You have to take extra steps to wrap up your technology as simply as possible for people who just want to get a game out. Our philosophy remains to expose as many hooks into the tech as possible, but to set them up with sensible defaults, so developers don’t have to worry about some of the options if they are happy with what they are getting.”
THINK OF MOBILE, and audio output isn’t the first thing that springs to mind. That is, unless you’re somebody like
Brett Paterson of game audio firm FMOD. “We’ve been actively supporting mobile developers for nearly a decade now, mainly starting with early Windows CE support and Microsoft smartphones in the old days,” confirms Paterson. “We support as many platforms as possible, counting around 15 now, so iOS, Android and Windows Phone are natural fits. We don’t have to do a lot of work to adapt because FMOD is an optimised, low-overhead runtime engine.” Most of the work on mobile platforms
for audio specialists like FMOD is in fact focused on handling phone call and other OS-based interruptions that disrupt audio; certainly a new challenge, and absolutely a new opportunity. “Alongside providing FMOD for free
for titles that are not commercial in nature, supporting this many platforms lead to FMOD being the most widely used audio engine available right now,” continues Paterson. “If a games developer wants to support
five platforms, and you only support three, then they’ll look elsewhere. We pride ourselves in covering all bases, and think it has been quite important in the success of our library.”
traditional console and PC developers can leverage their triple-A development skillsets and technologies to deliver games of unprecedented quality.”
FOLLOWING THE TALENT Gamble highlights an important point. To an extent, part of the migration of triple-A tools and techniques to mobile is a reaction to individual developers with a history in traditional games moving into making content for mobile, and bringing with them an expectation and skillset best served by established middleware. Tech giant Autodesk is one of those
responding to console developers reinventing themselves in the mobile space. Just recently it has repackaged its ubiquitous UI tool Scaleform for mobile, in part as a direct response to the needs of the countless developers who have used the solution in other sectors. “Scaleform’s a mature middleware
technology that’s been in over 1,000 games,”
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offers Autodesk’s Kevin Booth, business lead of Gameware EMEA. “As a result we have a number of developers with plenty of experience with Scaleform in the traditional space who are now moving into mobile. It’s not just new start-ups in the mobile space, but even established triple-A developers. Those guys are used to high-quality tools like Scaleform. As they move over to the mobile space, it seems a good idea to give them the tools they are familiar with.” And so it is that the tools follow the people
making games, with a role call of middleware’s biggest names moving in on mobile in recent years and months, including the likes of Havok, xaitment, Geomerics and FMOD to name but a few. But those companies and many others are
acutely aware that the mobile space is filled with perhaps the richest variety of studio models seen on any platform. There are nimble microstudios, well-funded start-ups, grassroots indies, in-house publisher dev houses and the iconic lone bedroom coders.
PUSHING THE PLATFORM Despite the open-minded efforts of companies like Geomerics, the potential – and limitations – of mobile hardware remain of paramount concern for tools companies looking to fuel and support the mobile boom. But, as it turns out, sometimes mobile middleware serves as a great way to test and push the abilities of the hardware. “Havok technology has always been a great
way to assess a platform’s power and ability,” says the company’s head of product management Andrew Bowell. “Products like Havok Physics are all about using a platform’s CPU and memory bandwidth in the most efficient way.”
Mobile devices are now at a point
where traditional console devs can leverage their triple-A skillsets and tech.
Mike Gamble, Epic Games To that end, as Havok ports its famed
Physics solution across to a new mobile platform, the outfit’s tech team devote enthusiastic energy to exploring how many rigidbodies or ragdolls they can throw into a given scene. “For the more recent mobile and tablet
platforms we have been pleasantly surprised as to how well they handle 3D physics,” continues Bowell. “We’re excited to see what sort of innovative gameplay Havok Physics on mobile or tablet can deliver.”
MONEY MATTERS It’s clear then, that the potential of mobile is vast. But tools firms must make money to survive, and as such the pricing of mobile middleware for the aforementioned variety of studios has become a fine art. “There are alot of people breaking into mobile games development, but many of them have come to expect world-class tools for free,” suggests Frank Kane, founder of real-time sky and 3D cloud rendering middleware provider Sundog Software. “While democratisation of game development is a great thing, it does present challenges for the monetisation of tools and tech.
AUGUST 2012 | 65
Top-to-bottom: Sundog Software’s Frank Kane, Brett Paterson of FMOD, Geomerics’ Chris Doran, Renaud Charpentier of The Creative Assembly, and Unity’s David Helgason.
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