Developing a Game - Android or iPhone?

Just to clear a few things up...

Flash as a web plugin is no longer being developed on mobiles. Now this is where people usually switch off and get on the Flash is Dead bandwagon. Instead, Adobe have moved their focus onto developing Air for Mobile (air targets all major mobile platforms and desktops) - ios, Android, Windows, OSX, but not Linux distros as of Air 3.0 :(.

See: http://gaming.adobe.com/ for a bit of research, includes a few examples of some top quality games such as Machinarium, Angry Birds for Facebook etc to prove the platform is still very much alive.

So to answer OP, from my point of view targeting Air for Android is the best bet as if you wrote your game correctly you can easily (ios is a bit of a fiddle) publish to all platforms.

The current beta release of Air (Air 3.2 RC) brings hardware accelerated graphics to mobiles so you should be able to leverage some decent speed.


Heres a few sites that has some decent tutorials, including decent blitting techniques etc that should help you with your game:
http://www.8bitrocket.com/category/tutorials/tutorial-flash/
http://www.emanueleferonato.com
 
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My course is Multimedia Design, the only programming/scripting we do is with Flash so thats why I decided to go with Flash/AIR for this project.

I will be creating for Android now, easier for testing etc thanks for the recommendations.

Thanks very much Magik5! will definitely look at them!

Again thanks for the replies guys! very helpful! Lets just hope I don't hang myself during the process of making the game :/
 
If you want to make the most money (and not bothered about flash)... Then Windows Phone is supposed to be the best platform...

Sounds a bit counter intuitive but there is less competition and generally games are a bit more expensive on WP.
 
For a university project, use Android, it's as simple as that, however, personally I would try and use both via software emulation on a desktop PC. I know that emulating Android devices is a piece of cake as everything is available free from Google, I'm assuming it's possible for the iPhone too, I can't believe Apple would be so closed minded as to not allow potential developers a free platform to work on! Being non-device specific is a very good trait in any university computing project.

However, from a specific platform perspective, as somebody who has gone through the process of developing many university computing projects (got a bit hooked on doing degrees a while back) I can offer this as advice to consider when picking platforms/software libraries to work with:

1) Does more than one manufacturer make hardware that supports the platform? If not and your platform breaks, the chance of you procuring a new development device is lower if you are limited to only one manufacturer as normally they will charge a premium due to their captive market.

2) Is all the software and the platform open source, well documented and licensed for free use in an academic context? Don't under estimate the importance of this, commercial solutions often have easier starting routes, they are designed like this to make them appear the friendly option so customers will pay, but once you are used to things, that open source alternative you ignored because it seemed a bit more daunting is a much easier sell to academics. If somebody asks how something works and all you can say is "I don't know, I just dragged a button in from the side of the screen over there" then many people in academia won't be too impressed, if you can say "Well I dragged a button in from over there but I believe everything is available and documented here [insert location here]" you'll usually get a free pass.

Hope that helps a bit, don't get sucked into doing everything on your Apple device simply because you love using it, as an academic tool, the free, open-source option is always preferable and covering all bases by doing both via emulation is the ultimate solution.
 
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BiGT- said:
Thanks for that manic_man, I will definitely be doing it for Android :)
Click to expand...

No worries, I think that's a sensible move. Download the Android SDK, it provides a pretty easy to use device emulator. The learning curve is a little steep if you aren't used to the usual Linux/remote working ethos, but it soon clicks.

The nice thing of course is that your examiners will be able to go away and try out your work for themselves on the emulator even if they don't have an Android device to hand.
 
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