| It's a long night and it's boring. Let's talk about iPhone game development and chat. I. It is a good time to enter the cocoa touch game market.
It is the value of art to maximize the addiction of as many audiences as possible.
As the ninth art with a strong commercial nature, sales are an important criterion for judging the merits and demerits of a game. Although the sales volume of a good game may not be high, a game with a high sales volume must be good.
In pursuit of high sales, "market" is an unavoidable topic. A good game is sold well because it caters to the market or creates a market.
<World of Warcraft> and <monster hunter> are two classic market creations. the former drives sales of video cards and increases the Memory price. The latter directly increases PSP output.
To create a market, people without an iPhone (iPod touch) bought an iPhone to play a specific game. This kind of work is not available on the Apple App store. although this indicates that the game market of the cocoa touch platform is not yet mature and core players have not yet entered it on a large scale, it also shows that the current cocoa touch game market is still in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods of competition, far from the era of World of Warcraft in the PC online gaming market.
Since it is a time of chaos in the spring and autumn, it means that the entire market has passed the wild period of individual developers, and is gradually maturing. in addition, the launch of the iPad that uses the iPhone SDK is now an immediate start. It is a good time for us to take advantage of the world and become a startup investment by Wang Hou. At this time, we cut into the cocoa touch market, just right. 2. The path to "chuangshi" is not available
Although most of the people who participate in the drama have a dominant presence in the world, there are still ten years of tolerance before Goujian became a dominant player. What's more, they have integrated the entire market? <World of Warcraft> after ten years of accumulation, the series created the myth of today. <monster hunter> the great success of captom originated from the fc era, so far, over 20 years of experience in game development has been closely related.
Obviously, if you want to create a high-quality product that creates the market, there is no big capital, and there is a huge accumulation, it is difficult to do it. even with the abundant capital investment, as well as hundreds of experienced planning experts, program experts, and the determination and perseverance of a year of silence, it is hard to say whether investors are willing to put all their eggs in one basket to bear the risk of Zero output for a whole year.
"Creating a market" is only a myth after all. Do not dream about it before you become a god. this is an obvious reason for outsiders. however, online game developers, especially experienced developers, often make such mistakes. such failure cases are frequently staged on the big stage of the Chinese online gaming market.
Camera games, Lei Feng games, anti-Japanese games, and online games of the RTS ...... Looking at the list of new games in 17173, there are many such games that are completely out of the market and blindly pursuing unique Referer works. although these alternative works stick to it, it is not a different path. however, in fact, most of the works were hit by a few playmates in the early stages of the market, and they were gradually silenced.
The Dark Island studio, which has made <bodegate> and <waste soil> and other classic works, is also on the road to "chuangshi. as a game developer, if you have a dream of "Creating a city", ask yourself, "are you better than the black island? "If the answer is no, you will probably be more steadfast. Iii. cater to non-low-level follow-up in the market
Since we have no idea how to create a market, we have to "cater to the market.
The essence of "catering to the market" is to cater to the needs of consumers, and the needs of consumers can be reflected in the current hot selling works. therefore, this produces a low-cost approach, that is, "follow suit", or even a lower-level "skin change ".
Although "follow-up" has the advantages of low planning cost and low risk, it is difficult to make a lot of money by drinking the rest of others. this approach is desirable for individuals/small team developers who lack funds or new teams in new companies who lack practical experience. after all, you can gain experience and have a low chance of losing money.
For a team with ample funds and sufficient practical experience, "follow-up" is not necessary. Instead, you should analyze the selling points of popular works in large quantities to find out the context of the market. 4. What is the context of the iPhone game market?
As an iPhone developer, I have been paying attention to the top100 list of App store games. Based on long-term observations and experiences shared by our colleagues, we can see that most of the Games resident in top100 are as follows:
1. Shooting class.
2. Category class.
3. tower guard, dashes.
4. Sports, chess and cards, and other real-world types.
5. transplantation of the classic sequel or popular works on other platforms.
6. Most of them have rankings.
7. TV series, movie changes, and popular elements ).
Both 1 and 2 indicate that the player is keen on outstanding work. 3. It indicates that players are keen on highly-manipuled works. 4 and 5 indicate that players are keen on easy-to-use works. 6. It indicates that players have certain requirements on the game community.
In summary, the hot selling works have the characteristics of outstanding play, good handling, easy to use, and strong community. 5. Verification of the four features of App store hot game: outstanding play, good control, easy to use, and strong community"
"Only analyze the market, do not analyze the audience", this is the same as when stock trading "only analyze the market, do not analyze Listed Companies", are not desirable.
IPhone is a phone number first, iPod touch is an MP4 phone number first, followed by a handheld computer and a handheld game machine. as mentioned in the first part of this article, few users buy cocoa touch devices to play games, at least for a short period of time.
Obviously, the cocoa touch device is intended for low-end players. What is "low-end players "? None of the people who have never played or do not like <World of Warcraft> (although I did not create this division method, it is very accurate ). for example, your aunt, your Uncle (joking), my grandfather, and my cousin.
My grandfather was over 70 years old and often played PC games for chess, Zuma and Plants vs. Zombies.
If my grandfather wants to play an iPhone game, such as <Assassin's Creed>, he cannot understand it. if you do not want to learn how to manipulate the data, it is very time-consuming to integrate the historical background. sports may play. After all, there are things in reality, and you know what it is. racing cars are about who runs fast, and shooting is about who gets the right shot. My grandfather only needs to learn how to speed up, brake and turn, and how to throw. hot game features "good control" and "Easy to use.
My cousin is 12 years old. He can be familiar with Warcraft and CS. occasionally playing games with an iPhone and opening a game similar to Another game, <dow.jump>. this game is easy to use. I think it's interesting to think that I have jumped higher than once. popular games have the characteristics of "outstanding play.
As for "strong community ability", I will not take my relatives as an example. Looking at the "stealing food" popular in the offices of various companies, the importance of community-based games can be seen.
It is easy to say, but what should we do? 6. Make full use of new features
The cocoa touch device does not have a physical keyboard. It can be operated by a virtual joystick, gravity sensing, or clicking and dragging.
The "virtual joystick" is the most simple design, but it requires a large area of screen display, the worst sense of body, suitable for games transplanted from psp, nds and other traditional platforms.
Compared with other gaming platforms, it also features "Gravity sensing" and a new feature unique to the cocoa touch platform.
"Gravity sensing" has the best somatosensory experience and does not occupy the display area of the screen at all, but has the worst flexibility. It can only control the movement of the role.
"Click-drag" type "class mouse control" has the highest flexibility.
In pursuit of good game control, gravity sensing should be used as much as possible with "Click-drag", and "virtual joystick" should be used as the lowest possible means. 7. One-sentence originality
Describe a game with outstanding play, often with only one sentence or even one word. for example, he jumps down -- <a man goes down Layer 3>; jumps up -- <dow.jump>; 2D flight shooting -- <lightning>. in addition, the name of <Plants vs. Zombies> is the description of the game.
If you find it difficult to describe the game you designed with a simple sentence, you need to think about whether the play points of this work are hidden too deep. the iphone game <Bubble War> I developed at OBE is a good negative example. Even if I want to describe it myself, it will take a long time. 8. Use existing models to create typed games
<Interstellar> players can play <Warcraft>. It is easy to get started, because these two games belong to the same role as RTS. similarly, <CS> players who are playing It can be seen that using existing models and playing typed games can greatly reduce the difficulty of getting started. if you have designed a game of unknown type, you have to think about it. Do you need to spend a lot of time learning to play this game? If necessary, you don't have to do it. If not, is there any similar game on the market? If so, is the same type of game selling well? If there are no games of the same type on the market, is it true that players do not need such games at all, or are you opening up a type of game to be sold soon? 9. Facebook, twitter, and rankings
Adding the above three items to the game will improve the game's community. openfeint has encapsulated them and added openfeint to the game. 10. Technical needs
After clarifying the planning direction, we need to consider how to implement it.
Games on any platform are nothing more than "rendering right at the right time" for programs. cocoa touch platform is also true.
Game rendering on the cocoa touch platform is basically implemented by two technologies:
1. Quartz.
2. OpenGL ES.
The first technology is implemented using Objective-c, which is closely integrated with the official iPhone SDK and easy to use, but can only develop 2D games.
The second technique is implemented in C language. It requires programmers to have basic advanced mathematics and computer graphics, which can be 2D or 3D.
Both 1 and 2 are the most basic technologies. Although you can control the rendering efficiency by using them to write games, the development cycle is relatively long.
Therefore, using the graphic rendering engine is a good choice.
Cocos2d is currently the best open-source and free 2D game engine on the iPhone platform. It can be used in combination with the physical engine box2D and the openfeint mentioned earlier. cocos2d has been used in j2_based mobile games or for layer, sprite, frame programmers who are familiar with objective-c can get started within one week. <Bubble war> it is implemented using cocos2d. It takes only two days to get started, and 12 days to get started.
Unity3d is currently the best 3D engine on the iphone platform. You can download the SDK for free. However, if you want to release a program, you need to pay more than $ seven hundred for it. 11. Development Environment requirements
1. if conditions permit, it is best for each programmer to have a cocoa touch device for testing and real machine debugging. the iphone simulator on the computer and the operating environment of the real machine are slightly different in some uncertain aspects. In some unfortunate circumstances, these nuances may be fatal. in addition, the number of frames, handling, low memory, low power, call response, vibration, camera and other functions can be tested only on the real machine. there must be at least one iphone in these testing machines to test the program response after the phone call.
Iphone: 3500 RMB
Ipod touch: 1500 RMB
2. computers that can run the snow leopard system.
To save costs, you can choose to install "black apple" on compatible machines, that is, pirated Apple systems. for more information, see "vision" forum. however, black apple is very unstable and has strict hardware configuration requirements. As the version is updated, various problems may occur. it can be used as an internship for trainees. It is best to use it for routine development.
A better choice is Mac Mini or Macbook. The former is a desktop, RMB five thousand (excluding the display), the latter is a notebook, and RMB seven thousand.
Of course, you can also choose a more upscale MacBook Pro (eight thousand five hundred yuan) or the most luxurious iMac (about 10 thousand yuan ). it is worth mentioning that iMac is often seen by industry personnel as a symbol of the company's strength.
3. IDP (iPhone developer Program). $99 per year. do not register it as $199. Otherwise, you cannot publish products on the app store.
4. VPN... wall testing for Facebook and Twitter. 12. Artist requirements
Good hand-drawn skills, proficient in photo shop, will use 3dmax or Maya, will use zbrush of course better. iPhone performance is limited. 3D games can afford low models of less than 500 faces. Therefore, a good hand-painted level is required to show details.
The requirements of iPhone games for art resources are "small quantity and high quality". The workload of artists is not large, but the wide range of products, such as UI, icon, source image, and model, must be completed by the same person. 13. Planning Requirements
Planning is the most difficult position for the game team. Here, I cannot comment on it, but at least one proficient in English 14. Program Requirements
Essential qualities:
1. proficient in object-oriented thinking. At least you can use object-oriented thinking to parse game programs.
2. proficient in objective-C.
3. high enthusiasm for the gaming industry (iPhone platform programmers are more likely to make money by making applications than making games. If they are not enthusiastic about the gaming industry, they will not be able to make money for a long time)
4. At least one of the following technologies is proficient
Cocos2d, unity3d, or OpenGL.
The above is required by a qualified iphone game programmer. such ready-made talents may be difficult to recruit. however, a qualified new employee can meet the requirements after two months of training.
Essential Qualities for Getting Started:
1. Familiar with object-oriented ideas.
2. Experience in using object-oriented programming languages, such as java or C ++, is preferred.
3. Understand C language.
4. You can use translation tools to understand English documents.
5. has a mathematical and physical foundation. at least have an impression on the vector and matrix. the more physical formulas you know, the better. At least you should be impressed with the physical engine APIs.
6. Strong learning ability and strong hands-on ability.
7. love games. 15. Personnel training
For a new person who meets the above entry requirements, the training steps are as follows:
1. if you are good at English, go to the official Apple website to get started. <Objective-c basic tutorial> (published by People's post and telecommunications press, RMB 49) for 10 days. if the test fails after 10 days, consider eliminating it.
2. learn cocos2d official documents for three weeks. within three weeks, you should have the ability to create a game of the level <super Mary>, <men are the next layer>. if not, consider elimination.
3. actually develop one or two simple 2D games and practice hands.
4. Brief learning <openGL programming guide> (published by Mechanical Industry Press, commonly known as "hongbao book"). Learn about the necessary concepts.
5. Learn about unity3D for iphone.
6. Eligible persons should be paid appropriately to avoid wedding dresses for others. 16. Salary price
Iphone development companies mainly focus on Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Chengdu.
Beginner iphone developers, requiring objective-c to get started, skilled in using the iphone SDK and MacOS systems. There are demos. The salary in Shenzhen is 4 k-7 k.
Senior iphone developers should be able to lead the team, master at least one Graphics Rendering Engine, Master openGL ES priority. Shenzhen salary: 8 k-20 k. |
