A quick review of why mobile gaming is different from traditional gaming: • Low Budget • Small Development Team • Technology is within reason and is manageable, no need for special equipment such photo imaging equipment • Based on open standards • Mobile phones by default are ready For MultiPlayer Gaming
Development ToolsSome available platforms for mobile game development are: • Java 2 Micro Edition TM by Sun MicroSystems - http: //wireless.java.sun.com• MoPhun - http: //www.mophun.com• Brew - http: // www.brew.comThis not to be confused with mobile operating systems such as PalmOS and SymbianOS, these operating systems themselves support environments like J2ME.This book will focus on J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition). with that being said there areseveral software development kits you can use To help ensure your game will run ondifferent manufacturers and different models of mobile devices you will mostly like beusing more then one SDK The main J2ME SDK is available from Sun Microsystems athttp:.. //wireless.java.sun.com.
As well there are few IDEs available for J2ME development. Some of these IDEsprovide full integration options with other development kits. For example Sun OneStudio Mobile Edition can easily be integrated with SprintPC J2ME SDK, SDK fromSun, SDK from Nokia and SDK from Siemens.
What Else is Out There? Aside from the regular tools and IDEs provided by various software organizations, manufacturers and carriers there are other tools / software packages that may be of interestto you.3DThough presently most games are presented with only 2D graphics due the constraints ofmobile Devices there are high. as well. as well as thetechnology improves 3d Will BE Common as it is now on Both Gaming consoles and pcdesktop.
There is JSR in progress that supports 3D graphics for J2ME. It is quite possible with thenext release after MIDP 2.0 3D JSR 184 Mobile 3D Graphics API for J2METM to find outmore visit http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id = 184: As well the widely used OpenGL now as mobile version named OpenES with focus onproviding 3D graphics for mobile handsets, for more information visithttp:. //www.khronos.org/embeddedapi/index.html The company FatHammer, http: / /www.fathammer.com, has integrated the OpenGL ES-accelerated OMAP platforminto their X-Forge 3D Game Engine SDK.There is also the MoPhun 3D engine available at http://www.mophun.com.As you can see 3D is may not be quite here yet for mobile devices but it is sure on itsway.Beyond Stand-alone GameAside from developing stand-alone games there are various other technologies that willenable you to develop multiplayer games.By default with J2ME you are able to communicate over HTTP / https. Another Optionis to Communicate Using The Jini The Surrogate J2ME A rchitecture. As well if the carrierssupport socket communication you are able to implement socket networking betweengames. However, it takes a lot more then just the communication protocol, there needs tobe a gaming server that can handle and provide various features, some of these featurescould be But Not Inclusive To The Following: • Game Lobby • Game Rooms • Track User Intertion
• Authentication • Chat Rooms • Instant Messaging • Monitoring and statistics ToolsThe Game Room itself acts some like a mediator / traffic cop that relays information backand forth to the clients and to the respective game in play.It is definitely a lot of work to implement this . However, there are other companies thatsave you the trouble with their already pre-made game servers: • DemiVision -http: //www.demivision.com (recently acquired by JamDat.com) • MformaTM - http: //www.mforma .com • Xadra - http://www.xadra.com • Butterfly.net - http://www.butterfly.net • Terraplay - http://www.terraplya.comside from producing games for Wide Area Networks you can production . games for personalarea networks, technology better known as Bluetooth The idea is the same has a gameover HTTP but within a confined local area Some great links to Bluetooth and J2MEare:. • Zucotto Wireless - http: //www.zucotto.com• RococoSoft - http://www.rococosoft.comtwo Other Technologies That Can Bring Mobile Gaming A New Twist Is P eer to Peerfamously advertised by the success of Napster. For more information on Peer to Peerusing Java visit http://www.jxta.org and http://jxme.jxta.org/. Another interesting P2Ptechnology developed by Apple is Rendezvous that enables Automatic Broadcasting anddiscovering Services Between Clients / Servers.
