Mobile game application development environment for 3G mobile phones

Source: Mobile Phone Design

With the development of 2G and 3G mobile communication technologies, wireless games and other entertainment businesses play an increasingly important role in promoting market development. How to develop wireless games and reuse existing game resources as much as possible has become one of the focuses of the industry. This article proposes two new development solutions for the application and defects of virtual machines (VMS) in Wireless Game Development.

 

After the completion of wireless network construction, content providers and application developers of telecom networks generally believe that long-term stable business is the key to ensuring lasting profits. Many analysts believe that the entertainment business will become the mainstream business in mobile communications of G and 3G. Therefore, we must pay attention to the research on Wireless Game application development platforms.

 

Games have high hardware requirements. Developing a wireless game solution is technically complex. It requires developers to have a deep understanding of the game platform. Otherwise, they cannot provide the expected quality of the game. Taking the wired field as an example, games are largely the source driving force behind hardware development. One of the driving force of PC development is to meet the needs of running the latest and largest games.

 

In the wired field, programmers usually use C or C ++ to develop games, and then use highly optimized compilation software to compile programs into machine code. The fixed-point computing capability of the game machine is quite powerful-the integer computing capability of a general pc cpu or a general console CPU is about 100 times better than that of mobile phones. In addition, the PC/console CPU also contains a floating point computing unit and an image processing chip, which are not available for both mobile phones.

 

In the wired gaming field, although the power supply is not short, game developers still use ansi c/C ++ to develop games because these two languages can generate fast and compact code, they are also seen as standard gaming languages. Any chipset and CPU have a dedicated C or C ++ compiler, so the code written in ansi c/C ++ is more portable, which is critical in game development.

 

Game Development in the wireless field is different. Most start-up wireless game development companies adopt virtual machines (VMS) -- Java VMS or custom Java VMS -- for development, both VMS translate scripts into machine languages for execution at runtime. Using VM to develop games is a commendable practice that makes cross-platform development possible. In this way, the game content can run on all platforms only once. However, with the development of this field, many mobile game development companies in order to be unconventional, to avoid royalty or to make up for Java's defects in image performance, they finally developed their own Java and APIs. It is said that there are 44 different Java and API versions.

 

Because there are too many versions, the overhead of VM development methods has become very high. First, when the game platform is changed, the game content must be rewritten, so the time overhead increases. Second, because the use of VM reduces the code execution speed, the game performance decreases. Finally, because the number of times the VM needs to run the processor increases, the battery usage time is shortened.

 

In this way, we only get poor quality games on mobile phones, while games on Nintendo's GameBoy advance can achieve amazing performance. The irony is that GameBoy advance's processor and most mobile phones are actually using the ARM7 processor.

 

However, this does not mean that virtual machines are useless in the wireless field. Java is able to develop its strengths in data-based applications, such as personal information management (PIM) applications, mobile commerce, mobile learning, and mobile community. These applications involve a large number of database transactions. The key is that the mobile game industry has begun to learn not only from the experience of Wired game development, but also to develop technologies on its own. It strives to propose a technology suitable for game developers, which not only satisfies wireless game platform developers, but also gives gamers the best experience in the game.

 

So what is the best solution? There are two solutions that can satisfy the industry.

 

1. A software API is used as the hardware and operating system extraction layer. At the same time, it is necessary to provide the API with a secure execution environment and a secure application on top of private or public critical infrastructure. APIs are written in C/C ++, so they can be transplanted or integrated into all major mobile operating systems and operating platforms, and allows you to re-use the content originally written for a fixed device to a mobile device. In this way, different content providers have a unified SDK and Development framework. They can address hardware in their own languages to achieve high performance.

 

2. In the VM environment, a software graphics accelerator is used to accelerate the execution of all graphics commands in Java. This solution not only accelerates the running of the game, but also accelerates any other Java applications involving graphics. Unfortunately, even using this method cannot achieve the performance of games written in C ++. Designing efficient and low-cost development solutions for game developers is not easy, but it is always a good choice.

 

Players always want to transplant high-quality game content in the Wired game field to the wireless game field. To achieve this goal, the mobile industry must adopt a "development" approach rather than a "Revolution" approach to game development. They must listen to the needs of content developers and allow them to take familiar tools into the mobile field, using which they can transplant their developed games to the mobile field.

 

In the end, players do not care too much about running the game's software and hardware, but they will certainly be able to distinguish the quality of the game applications and game content from a large number of mixed games.

 

Ttpcom has established an industrial standard through the GPRS platform, developed a development platform for edge, 3G, and wireless games, and provided integrated GSP/Bluetooth solutions. More than 100 terminal designs using ttpcom software and hardware technologies have obtained authoritative certifications. In addition, ttpcom provides complete mobile phone and module design for manufacturers who want to quickly launch their products and are unwilling to take development risks. For more information, visit www.ttpcom.com.

 

With the improvement of the GSM, GPRS, edge, 3GPP or CDMA network infrastructure, people have gained more ways to download games, it also provides unprecedented development opportunities for mobile game applications and development.

 

Author:

Danielle Jones

Gael Rosset

Ttpcom Co., Ltd.