From the iPhone OS 4 event we saw that Apple pauses games at a very low level and distinguishes them from non game apps i.e they have a 3 second countdown when restarted. To allow Apple to have a confident ability to do this means that apps must use Apple's APIs.
I'm hoping to run weekend development camps in Singapore teaching people how to use GameSalad and building up a strong local community that hopefully will spur the creation of more creative apps using GS. Obviously this recent prohibition news can be viewed as a great damper to my plans.
However! In the course of gaining partnerships for my endeavour, I've reached out to Apple's Asia Pacific Technology Evangelist who is stationed in Singapore and he has not only been responsive to my emails (replying in a day and linking me up with people within a week), he has in fact gone out of his way to check what GS is about and has linked me up with a leading Apple Reseller to work on my education plans, putting in very favourable words. Here is a direct quote from him in an intro email sent to an Apple Reseller on my behalf:
"Good to get to know you. I wrote to Jimmy a couple of days ago to introduce Joash Chee to explore a training plan for a third party tools on making iPhone applications. My organization (Apple Worldwide Developer Relations) does not have plan to roll out Apple conducted training due to the limited resource here. We do however encourage third party conducted training with their own syllabus.
I am cc'ing Joash here and I think he has a pretty good idea to run an intro level tools training for iPhone development."
He wrote this only after asking me for more information on GameSalad. I won't take this to be gospel from Apple HQ, but I sure hope it means that Apple's going to be lenient with GS at least.
OMG...Beyond the Tech...that is some of the funniest stuff I've read on a forum board in a while.
Look... Adobe has probably $300,000,000 wrapped up in Flash CS5. If they get blocked....you can be assured that they will not take it lying down. They will fight tooth and nail and look for any way to make it into the iPhone market. If they don't...it will be ALL OVER the news...and will be a war like none other within Wall Street.
This is big money we are talking about. Adobe has billions of $$$ at stake.
Now if Adobe Flash iPhone pushes get blocked...then GameSalad pushes will get blocked too. If Adobe gets a workaround in place...others will follow the lead.
This is big corp blue-chip power war stuff. All we can do is watch it play out and sit in the wings and wait. Go on doing what you are doing and just wait for the results. Unplug your hair dryers and such. We just don't know at this point.
Come the 22nd...you should start to know....but even then...it may not be until summer until a clear direction is established.
This is corporate [ edit ] TURF war...and its a fight over who controls the mobile tech market...which is the next great horizon since the birth of the PC. This is VERY cutting edge power play stuff...you are seeing the next decade take shape right now. Just watch and enjoy the fireworks display. If we get burned...well...give it time...there will be other things pop-up quickly. This industry moves at lightning speed.
@scoreless Dude, that is inspiring stuff you're doing there with the young'uns. Good on you sir! You have my respect and admiration, for what it's worth
Adobe has gained lot's of hype and momentum the past few months, they're definitely not going down without a fight. But blocking engine is absolutely ludicrous. Hundreds, maybe thousands (probably thousands, I really don't know) of games use the Coco2D framework. Unity is huge, people won't take that laying down... ugh, I know Apple like to monopolize everything they own, which is why they make both their own hardware and software, but it's going too far when they're taking control over the playing field that they made explicitly for 3rd party developers. Especially with Flash, you don't say "Ok, go ahead" and shut them down after having them spend hundreds of millions of dollars in development and marketing.
adent42Key Master, Head Chef, Executive Chef, Member, PROPosts: 3,170
Another day, another few logs on the fire. Hurray for rivalries! Dunno if it's much consolation, but our original 3 statements stand, with a slight modification.
1) We're still looking into it. 2) We still don't think it will be a problem. 3) We're clever. And clever people always have a plan.
Well... it's not technically true. Clever people don't ALWAYS have a plan. But if they don't, they can come up with them very quickly. Keep the faith!
"If I’m very clever- and I’m more than clever, I’m brilliant- I might just save the world. Or rip it apart." - The Doctor
FYI, don't panic if we don't reply to this thread over the weekend, cause, you know, it's the weekend. See ya'll on Monday. (Yes, ya'll. We're based in Texas. Yeah.)
I had to give it up - found it boring, pointless after a while (Shock Horror) and bad for me - True!
I was constantly getting annoyed with myself for not actually doing or achieving anything for the entire weekend (Neglected Washing, doing dishes, general Hygene.... I could go on!)
It even began to effect private work commitments just so I could play.
WOW = Bad!
GS is good for me however....that's another story.
Haha, I feel it too JGary But I could never go back. To addictive!
Note to everyone: WoW (World of Warcraft) is an addictive online game which will lead and control your life. It is a game which is simply to good to be true. Unfortunately every expansion pack has pulled me back, but has helped lead my constant compassion for games.
None the less, we must stay strong! For GameSalad I mean, geez, went off on one there sorry.
Anyway, Im repeating this but as numerous people have said I think we are being a little bleak about this. We must stay optimistic and Apple isn't doing it to annoy uss they are just trying to keep some consistency in quality in their apps and make sure compatibility is constant most important. Throwing in apps which are built upon un-native languages can could cause issues. However if GameSalad is built upon the language they allow in the new agreement then we ok!
So if apple banns GS, then does Gendai have an plan B? It it confirmed that there will be an android exporter comming? I realy like how GS works. And would hate to see it die.
Might this be a part of the problem?
"Y'see, the real promise of Flash CS 5 or Unity 3D is that developers don't need to commit to the App Store. They can write their application once and deploy it anywhere they like. This is bad for Apple. If an app can be deployed anywhere, then developers can easily start porting their apps to Android or Windows Phone. Once they start doing that, one of the iPhone's strong selling points -- the huge size of the App Store -- disappears. Every platform has the same apps in the store, and they all run in the same way."
I think if Apple is concerned with the App store then it will be that it keeps control over the direction of the apps.
For instance if Flash games and apps come the App store then it will be Adobe that will have control since they own Flash. Apple has taken a lot of heat for breaking just a few apps, so imagine if Apple breaks the whole platform of Flash apps.
I wish I saw some clarification from Apple on this, not speculation by devs. If they want total control they have a responsibility to be super clear on what the rules are.
Please keep in mind, just because GS hands you back an XCode bundle does not me you are all XCoded up and good to go. There could be an interpreter in there parsing the gameproj's files. The interpreter would be written in Obj-C/C/C++ but it could be interpreting your gameproj XML files. I'm sure it is mostly meant for Flash and maybe some third-party stuff to take down the competitors but to make it seem fair, they could very well apply it to us, Corona, Unity, etc. You'd think Apple would want more apps but maybe they are starting to get a bit more concerned with quality too - you know with the Apple image and all.
A post from the Corona boards sums it up pretty well:
You don’t need to be a lawyer to interpret this agreement. It comes down to this:
Whatever Apple decides they don’t want in their store, they kick out of their store, regardless of whether they have a reason in their developer agreement. And they’re telegraphing to developers that they only want games written originally in Objective-C/C/C++/JavaScript.
That “original language” clause excludes Corona, as does their “compatibility layer” exclusion. The standard Corona libs (the “compatibility layer,” if you will) can be trivially detected in a binary the same way you can detect a virus or trojan: Using a signature. So Apple COULD ban all Corona apps, at any time, if they so desire. This is absolute and utter evil, but also absolutely true.
So IMHO it comes down to whether Corona is worth their time to exclude–and this is a ticking time bomb for anyone who uses any compatibility layer, at this point. Which is sad, since I only just discovered Corona, and would love to use it or something like it to write games on iPhone and Android. But that’s exactly what Apple wants to prevent: Making it easy to write games on another platform. It’s all about control. It always has been with Apple.
There’s a good chance that Apple will ignore Corona, at least at first, and that they’re just targeting Flash (and possibly Unity3d–already heard through the grapevine that they HATE the fact that Unity3d exists for iPhone). But I’m not going to take the chance myself.
In relation to the rest of this post. Apple listed JavaScript as one of the approved languages. Soooo... how about just swapping out the Lua bits of GS for JavaScript? There exists plenty of JavaScript compilers.
I don't know if GameSalad will support Android in the future. Would be great. But honestly - in my case- it doesn't really matter. As good Googles Android turns out to be, for me -and I guess for lots of other people using GameSalad- support for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch is quite simply a killer feature. If I couldn't use GameSalad in the future for creating games for Apples devices, I would probably lose interest, as I'm eager to create content for the devices I love - and these are Apple devices. So I really hope Gendai is doing their best to work this out with Apple. ;-) This isn't more than a new hobby for me, nontheless I hope this will turn out good for us all.
I think it is kind of stupid of Apple to think that Devs will only exclusively develop for iTunes.
more than likely...they will build for iPhone first...then if they get a successful title, they will use a portion of the profits and then push it to Android and Microsoft and maybe even Palm. At least that is what we plan to do if our native apps are successful.
To think that banning intermediary translators will promote dev loyalty to Apple is ludicrous. If anything, it will only create more mud in the appstore of a bunch of experimental and unsuccessful titles in the appstore and the other stores will have a higher percentage of quality apps...or clones of only the successful appstore titles.
My point is...we push everything to Apple first...then if anything gets over 10K downloads...we immediately translate it to other platforms. And since most of the new XCode programmers out there are C# or C++ crossovers...for them to revert back to their original formats would be a snap.
Well if GS did convert to Objective-C, C, and C++ everything would run so much faster! XML and Lua are good but Objective-C, C, and C++ would have way better performance.
@Rebump: No way that Apple is concerned about this so-called "quality". The more apps they have, the more they get to boast, and if they really were concerned about content, and the effectiveness of an app, they wouldn't allow stuff like "Korea Ad Girl Wallpaper" or "Toilet Sound Machine Extreme" (I'm not even kidding).
And as much as I'd like GS to support Android, games aren't as feasible and accessible as the iPhone. With the iPhone, there's one model, one mode of input, you know that it's gonna work. With Android, there are over 40 phones on the market, all with different battery lives, some with a touchscreen, some without, buttons, no buttons, you get the idea. All the different models, along with the app size cap make it a very difficult platform to develop on if you're not writing utility apps.
Comments
see why even sober we're "still talking about this"? ;~)
and I totally agree with you, it's impossible to update 185k+ apps by when 4.0 gets released this summer.
I'm putting the final touches of my game tonight, I'll submit and pray for the best.
From the iPhone OS 4 event we saw that Apple pauses games at a very low level and distinguishes them from non game apps i.e they have a 3 second countdown when restarted. To allow Apple to have a confident ability to do this means that apps must use Apple's APIs.
I'm hoping to run weekend development camps in Singapore teaching people how to use GameSalad and building up a strong local community that hopefully will spur the creation of more creative apps using GS. Obviously this recent prohibition news can be viewed as a great damper to my plans.
However! In the course of gaining partnerships for my endeavour, I've reached out to Apple's Asia Pacific Technology Evangelist who is stationed in Singapore and he has not only been responsive to my emails (replying in a day and linking me up with people within a week), he has in fact gone out of his way to check what GS is about and has linked me up with a leading Apple Reseller to work on my education plans, putting in very favourable words. Here is a direct quote from him in an intro email sent to an Apple Reseller on my behalf:
"Good to get to know you. I wrote to Jimmy a couple of days ago to introduce Joash Chee to explore a training plan for a third party tools on making iPhone applications. My organization (Apple Worldwide Developer Relations) does not have plan to roll out Apple conducted training due to the limited resource here. We do however encourage third party conducted training with their own syllabus.
I am cc'ing Joash here and I think he has a pretty good idea to run an intro level tools training for iPhone development."
He wrote this only after asking me for more information on GameSalad. I won't take this to be gospel from Apple HQ, but I sure hope it means that Apple's going to be lenient with GS at least.
Look...
Adobe has probably $300,000,000 wrapped up in Flash CS5. If they get blocked....you can be assured that they will not take it lying down. They will fight tooth and nail and look for any way to make it into the iPhone market. If they don't...it will be ALL OVER the news...and will be a war like none other within Wall Street.
This is big money we are talking about. Adobe has billions of $$$ at stake.
Now if Adobe Flash iPhone pushes get blocked...then GameSalad pushes will get blocked too. If Adobe gets a workaround in place...others will follow the lead.
This is big corp blue-chip power war stuff. All we can do is watch it play out and sit in the wings and wait. Go on doing what you are doing and just wait for the results. Unplug your hair dryers and such. We just don't know at this point.
Come the 22nd...you should start to know....but even then...it may not be until summer until a clear direction is established.
This is corporate [ edit ] TURF war...and its a fight over who controls the mobile tech market...which is the next great horizon since the birth of the PC. This is VERY cutting edge power play stuff...you are seeing the next decade take shape right now. Just watch and enjoy the fireworks display. If we get burned...well...give it time...there will be other things pop-up quickly. This industry moves at lightning speed.
@scoreless
Dude, that is inspiring stuff you're doing there with the young'uns. Good on you sir! You have my respect and admiration, for what it's worth
QS
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep
Web: https://quantumsheep.itch.io
changed it to Turf war...rather than "civil" war.
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep
Web: https://quantumsheep.itch.io
1) We're still looking into it.
2) We still don't think it will be a problem.
3) We're clever. And clever people always have a plan.
Well... it's not technically true. Clever people don't ALWAYS have a plan. But if they don't, they can come up with them very quickly. Keep the faith!
"If I’m very clever- and I’m more than clever, I’m brilliant- I might just save the world. Or rip it apart."
- The Doctor
FYI, don't panic if we don't reply to this thread over the weekend, cause, you know, it's the weekend. See ya'll on Monday. (Yes, ya'll. We're based in Texas. Yeah.)
Think positive everyone!
All my games on Google Play
you know you're still playing :P
I was constantly getting annoyed with myself for not actually doing or achieving anything for the entire weekend (Neglected Washing, doing dishes, general Hygene.... I could go on!)
It even began to effect private work commitments just so I could play.
WOW = Bad!
GS is good for me however....that's another story.
Note to everyone: WoW (World of Warcraft) is an addictive online game which will lead and control your life. It is a game which is simply to good to be true. Unfortunately every expansion pack has pulled me back, but has helped lead my constant compassion for games.
None the less, we must stay strong! For GameSalad I mean, geez, went off on one there sorry.
Anyway, Im repeating this but as numerous people have said I think we are being a little bleak about this. We must stay optimistic and Apple isn't doing it to annoy uss they are just trying to keep some consistency in quality in their apps and make sure compatibility is constant most important. Throwing in apps which are built upon un-native languages can could cause issues. However if GameSalad is built upon the language they allow in the new agreement then we ok!
Positive thinking!
Might this be a part of the problem?
"Y'see, the real promise of Flash CS 5 or Unity 3D is that developers don't need to commit to the App Store. They can write their application once and deploy it anywhere they like. This is bad for Apple. If an app can be deployed anywhere, then developers can easily start porting their apps to Android or Windows Phone. Once they start doing that, one of the iPhone's strong selling points -- the huge size of the App Store -- disappears. Every platform has the same apps in the store, and they all run in the same way."
(http://fbindie.posterous.com/the-new-iphone-developer-agreement-has-nothin)
For instance if Flash games and apps come the App store then it will be Adobe that will have control since they own Flash.
Apple has taken a lot of heat for breaking just a few apps, so imagine if Apple breaks the whole platform of Flash apps.
A post from the Corona boards sums it up pretty well:
You don’t need to be a lawyer to interpret this agreement. It comes down to this:
Whatever Apple decides they don’t want in their store, they kick out of their store, regardless of whether they have a reason in their developer agreement. And they’re telegraphing to developers that they only want games written originally in Objective-C/C/C++/JavaScript.
That “original language” clause excludes Corona, as does their “compatibility layer” exclusion. The standard Corona libs (the “compatibility layer,” if you will) can be trivially detected in a binary the same way you can detect a virus or trojan: Using a signature. So Apple COULD ban all Corona apps, at any time, if they so desire. This is absolute and utter evil, but also absolutely true.
So IMHO it comes down to whether Corona is worth their time to exclude–and this is a ticking time bomb for anyone who uses any compatibility layer, at this point. Which is sad, since I only just discovered Corona, and would love to use it or something like it to write games on iPhone and Android. But that’s exactly what Apple wants to prevent: Making it easy to write games on another platform. It’s all about control. It always has been with Apple.
There’s a good chance that Apple will ignore Corona, at least at first, and that they’re just targeting Flash (and possibly Unity3d–already heard through the grapevine that they HATE the fact that Unity3d exists for iPhone). But I’m not going to take the chance myself.
I'm looking forward to 'Fembot' from gendai games - makes Android games, but oh my, doesn't it look like GS underneath?
Dr. Sam Beckett never returned home...
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Quantum_Sheep
Web: https://quantumsheep.itch.io
In relation to the rest of this post. Apple listed JavaScript as one of the approved languages. Soooo... how about just swapping out the Lua bits of GS for JavaScript? There exists plenty of JavaScript compilers.
I don't know if GameSalad will support Android in the future. Would be great. But honestly - in my case- it doesn't really matter. As good Googles Android turns out to be, for me -and I guess for lots of other people using GameSalad- support for iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch is quite simply a killer feature.
If I couldn't use GameSalad in the future for creating games for Apples devices, I would probably lose interest, as I'm eager to create content for the devices I love - and these are Apple devices. So I really hope Gendai is doing their best to work this out with Apple. ;-)
This isn't more than a new hobby for me, nontheless I hope this will turn out good for us all.
more than likely...they will build for iPhone first...then if they get a successful title, they will use a portion of the profits and then push it to Android and Microsoft and maybe even Palm. At least that is what we plan to do if our native apps are successful.
To think that banning intermediary translators will promote dev loyalty to Apple is ludicrous. If anything, it will only create more mud in the appstore of a bunch of experimental and unsuccessful titles in the appstore and the other stores will have a higher percentage of quality apps...or clones of only the successful appstore titles.
My point is...we push everything to Apple first...then if anything gets over 10K downloads...we immediately translate it to other platforms. And since most of the new XCode programmers out there are C# or C++ crossovers...for them to revert back to their original formats would be a snap.
Anyway...just a thought.
XML and Lua are good but Objective-C, C, and C++ would have way better performance.
-Gamexcb
And as much as I'd like GS to support Android, games aren't as feasible and accessible as the iPhone. With the iPhone, there's one model, one mode of input, you know that it's gonna work. With Android, there are over 40 phones on the market, all with different battery lives, some with a touchscreen, some without, buttons, no buttons, you get the idea. All the different models, along with the app size cap make it a very difficult platform to develop on if you're not writing utility apps.
Its just vague enough to allow or deny anything they want
and i really dont think they have it out for GS
From the outset they courted console and pc devs to port games.
http://developer.appcelerator.com/blog/2010/04/update-on-apple-sdk-4-0-and-tos.html
I Really hope GS does and will be OK too...they're clever people! ;~)
Nice find rdcube!