iPad HD
14/04/10 22:25
Since the recent announcements of various iPad game
titles there have been a lot of opinions about the
pricing of the games that have been written as
specific iPad versions of current iPhone games and
worries that devs are trying a money grab from their
customers.
As a developer who’s been working flat out for the last couple of months on an enhanced version of his game for the iPad, I’d like to give the developers’ side of the story and give some information on why it might be worth you spending your hard earned money on an iPad specific version of your games.
I’ll put the whole developer needing to feed and clothe himself argument aside for the moment. If you saw the sort of rubbish I eat and my taste in fashion you’d probably want to stop me spending money on it for my own good anyway.
The technical side though is important to you as gamers. The iPad’s going to be giving you a great set of options for your games. For starters pretty much all your iPhone games should work on it anyway and can be scaled up 2x to be mostly full screen. This is great as it means you don’t have any real need to buy any iPad specific games if you don’t want to.
However. These games won’t be optimised for the iPad as they’re designed for the iPhone’s screen and where they use the accelerometer they’ll not have the iPad’s size and weight taken into account, so they might not play quite as well as you’d expect (some actually may benefit from this if you typically found them too twitchy on the iPhone).
Because of this, most game developers are writing iPad versions of their games to take advantage of the higher basic spec, different screen size and features. In most cases this involves a lot of new work, way beyond a simple ‘upgrade’. For instance the artwork for a 1024x768 game is a lot different from a 480x320 game and requires a completely different scale of work. Most of the game has to be re-written to take account of the new artwork as well as the changes in control and system features. The difference in aspect ratio (the iPad is 4:3 while the iPhone is 3:2) changes how a lot of the game’s art needs to be designed and for some types of game can even require careful game design changes. Plus, with it being a funky new device, most of us have been working hard on adding new bits that take advantage of the iPad (some of this will feed back into improving the iPhone versions too, so it’s win-win). It isn’t just a case of porting it to another iPhone OS device. The work involved is the equivalent of writing a console or Mac/PC version of the game.
All this takes time, resources and talented people and of course that costs money. Even if we were working for free, this would be taking us away from writing another iPhone game, so at the end of the day the iPad version is costing money to develop.
Apple gives us two options for releasing the iPad version of our games. We can do what they call a Universal Application build, which bundles the iPad and iPhone versions together in a single download or do an entirely separate iPad version with its own place on the App Store.
The Universal build does have one advantage for the gamer, it’s effectively a free iPad version if you have the iPhone version. As a dev, that’s not too crazy, we could treat it as a promo for the iPhone version and hope the minor sales bump on the iPhone side covers the costs. However it doesn’t exactly help developers consider serious updates to the iPad side of things if it’s not paying the bills and an iPad version doesn’t promote the iPhone version that much.
The downsides of a Universal build however are more immediate and why ultimately we decided to go with a specific iPad version of our games.
The biggest issue is that when you buy a Universal build of a game off the App Store you have to download *all* of it, with the resources for both the iPhone and iPad version. It’s all one application, so if you don’t have an iPad (and to start with most iPhone/iPod Touch owners won’t of course), you’re stuck with the download sizes of the games you want doubling, tripling or quadrupling in size. The developer could compensate for this by simply upscaling the iPhone artwork when it’s playing on the iPad but then you might as well just play the iPhone version using the 2X option on the iPad.
With an iPad specific application, we can sit down and write the game specifically for the iPad. We don’t just copy the code over, double the size of all the graphics and call it done. We work out how the game will play the best on the new device and re-design elements and code to suit. This means that you as a gamer will get the best version of the game for your shiny new iPad. All the artwork gets re-designed for the new screen size (and new aspect ratio) and we’ve developed new improvements and tuned the game for the iPad.
Because it’s not bolted onto the iPhone version, our iPhone only customers don’t have to download all the extra data so we’re not penalising them for a version of the game they can’t play and the iPad gamers get a spanking new version that’s written for their device.
In our case we’re using the Plus+ network so we can even add cross platform advantages. In Flick Fishing for instance, your awards and high scores are shared across the iPhone and iPad versions, so you can hop between the two without worrying if the giant fish you caught on one version will count on the other and you can compare your scores against all iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad players. (In a future update your save games will also be able to be shared between the devices).
At the end of the day we’re trying to create games that are the best you as a gamer can play and keep ourselves in Monster Munch and bell bottom flares. The iPhone is the best bang for the buck you can get in terms of gaming at the moment and the iPad is going to work out to be just an even better gaming platform with some incredible games designed for it.
Aaron Fothergill
Strange Flavour Ltd.
As a developer who’s been working flat out for the last couple of months on an enhanced version of his game for the iPad, I’d like to give the developers’ side of the story and give some information on why it might be worth you spending your hard earned money on an iPad specific version of your games.
I’ll put the whole developer needing to feed and clothe himself argument aside for the moment. If you saw the sort of rubbish I eat and my taste in fashion you’d probably want to stop me spending money on it for my own good anyway.
The technical side though is important to you as gamers. The iPad’s going to be giving you a great set of options for your games. For starters pretty much all your iPhone games should work on it anyway and can be scaled up 2x to be mostly full screen. This is great as it means you don’t have any real need to buy any iPad specific games if you don’t want to.
However. These games won’t be optimised for the iPad as they’re designed for the iPhone’s screen and where they use the accelerometer they’ll not have the iPad’s size and weight taken into account, so they might not play quite as well as you’d expect (some actually may benefit from this if you typically found them too twitchy on the iPhone).
Because of this, most game developers are writing iPad versions of their games to take advantage of the higher basic spec, different screen size and features. In most cases this involves a lot of new work, way beyond a simple ‘upgrade’. For instance the artwork for a 1024x768 game is a lot different from a 480x320 game and requires a completely different scale of work. Most of the game has to be re-written to take account of the new artwork as well as the changes in control and system features. The difference in aspect ratio (the iPad is 4:3 while the iPhone is 3:2) changes how a lot of the game’s art needs to be designed and for some types of game can even require careful game design changes. Plus, with it being a funky new device, most of us have been working hard on adding new bits that take advantage of the iPad (some of this will feed back into improving the iPhone versions too, so it’s win-win). It isn’t just a case of porting it to another iPhone OS device. The work involved is the equivalent of writing a console or Mac/PC version of the game.
All this takes time, resources and talented people and of course that costs money. Even if we were working for free, this would be taking us away from writing another iPhone game, so at the end of the day the iPad version is costing money to develop.
Apple gives us two options for releasing the iPad version of our games. We can do what they call a Universal Application build, which bundles the iPad and iPhone versions together in a single download or do an entirely separate iPad version with its own place on the App Store.
The Universal build does have one advantage for the gamer, it’s effectively a free iPad version if you have the iPhone version. As a dev, that’s not too crazy, we could treat it as a promo for the iPhone version and hope the minor sales bump on the iPhone side covers the costs. However it doesn’t exactly help developers consider serious updates to the iPad side of things if it’s not paying the bills and an iPad version doesn’t promote the iPhone version that much.
The downsides of a Universal build however are more immediate and why ultimately we decided to go with a specific iPad version of our games.
The biggest issue is that when you buy a Universal build of a game off the App Store you have to download *all* of it, with the resources for both the iPhone and iPad version. It’s all one application, so if you don’t have an iPad (and to start with most iPhone/iPod Touch owners won’t of course), you’re stuck with the download sizes of the games you want doubling, tripling or quadrupling in size. The developer could compensate for this by simply upscaling the iPhone artwork when it’s playing on the iPad but then you might as well just play the iPhone version using the 2X option on the iPad.
With an iPad specific application, we can sit down and write the game specifically for the iPad. We don’t just copy the code over, double the size of all the graphics and call it done. We work out how the game will play the best on the new device and re-design elements and code to suit. This means that you as a gamer will get the best version of the game for your shiny new iPad. All the artwork gets re-designed for the new screen size (and new aspect ratio) and we’ve developed new improvements and tuned the game for the iPad.
Because it’s not bolted onto the iPhone version, our iPhone only customers don’t have to download all the extra data so we’re not penalising them for a version of the game they can’t play and the iPad gamers get a spanking new version that’s written for their device.
In our case we’re using the Plus+ network so we can even add cross platform advantages. In Flick Fishing for instance, your awards and high scores are shared across the iPhone and iPad versions, so you can hop between the two without worrying if the giant fish you caught on one version will count on the other and you can compare your scores against all iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad players. (In a future update your save games will also be able to be shared between the devices).
At the end of the day we’re trying to create games that are the best you as a gamer can play and keep ourselves in Monster Munch and bell bottom flares. The iPhone is the best bang for the buck you can get in terms of gaming at the moment and the iPad is going to work out to be just an even better gaming platform with some incredible games designed for it.
Aaron Fothergill
Strange Flavour Ltd.