Skip to Content

Submit your nominations for the Luxist Awards' Best in Decor
AOL Tech

opengl-es posts

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Software, Developer, iPhone

Torque Game Engine comes to the iPhone

by Mike Schramm (RSS feed) on Jul 28th, 2008


We've mentioned the Torque gaming engine from GarageGames here a few times before -- it's a pretty powerful 3D engine that makes developing great games on the Mac that much easier. And now, they've released a version of it for the iPhone, complete with support for multitouch input and even screen gesture recognition.

I am hardly a game programmer, but my understanding is that this sits on top of the OpenGL ES system in the iPhone -- you use the Torque engine to develop, and then the iPhone runs the games developed without any other special software. The benefits are that you can use the Torque Game Builder software (which is also available for many other platforms) to put together iPhone specific games, which makes it not only easier to develop native games, but to port games from those other platforms as well.

At any rate, this is good news for both iPhone game developers and players -- the easier it gets to create quality software on the platform, the more games we'll have to choose from.

[via IMG]

Tags: developers, development, garagegames, iphone, multitouch, opengl-es, platform, torque, torque-game-builder, torque-game-engine

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Gaming, Multimedia, iTunes

Touch Arcade interviews maker of iPhone Chopper

by Mike Schramm (RSS feed) on Jun 5th, 2008

Touch Arcade has a nice interview up with David Frampton, author of both the Mac game Chopper and its upcoming port to the iPhone. Apparently the game is feature complete and now in testing, so hopefully it'll be one of the first apps up on the App Store when it arrives, supposedly sometime this month.

The game will use the iPhone's accelerometer to control the little helicopter, and Frampton says it's both a blessing and a curse, in that it makes things more fun to control, but the iPhone also has to be held at a certain angle to center it out (they're planning to get around this by adding a way to calibrate it for different playing situations). He also talks about how the iPhone's OpenGL ES version works, and says that, despite our worries about battery life, the iPhone is able to churn out a pretty consistent FPS as well as keeping battery usage fairly low. To be fair, Chopper is probably on the low end of graphics potential, but we'll take any good news we can get here.

The game is still on track for a release in late June, and while even Frampton doesn't have details to share about the App Store's launch day, Apple's past support of this title means that if any third party games make it into the App Store, this one will definitely be there as early as possible.

Tags: app-store, chopper, david-frampton, design, games, interview, iphone, joystiq, majic-jungle, opengl-es, touch-arcade

Tip of the Day

Reply in the Mail.app with a specific quote.
Select the text you want quoted and then hit the reply button.
Only your selected text will copied to the reply email.

Learn More

Follow us on Twitter!

TUAW flickr Pool

www.flickr.com
 TUAW [Cafepress]

Featured Galleries

DNC Macs
Macworld 2008 Keynote
Macworld 2008 Build-up
Google Earth for iPhone
Podcaster
Storyist 2.0
AT&T Navigator Road Test
Bento for iPhone 1.0
Scrabble for iPhone
Tom Bihn Checkpoint Flyer Briefcase
Apple Vanity Plates
Apple booth Macworld 07
WorldVoice Radio
Quickoffice for iPhone 1.1.1
Daylite 3.9 Review
DiscPainter
Mariner Calc for iPhone
2009CupertinoBus
Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D
MLB.com At Bat 2009
Macworld Expo 2007 show floor

 

Most Commented On (7 days)

Recent Comments

More Apple Analysis

More from AOL Money and Finance

AOL Radio TUAW on Stitcher