Rage on iPhone 4, Mobile gaming to the next Level

[MrX8503]

http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/12/carmack-blows-minds-with-id-softwares-rage-running-on-iphone-a/

Check it out, id got Rage running on iPhone 4 at 60fps. There's a video and its quite impressive.

The only other Android phone that can run Rage would be the Galaxy S series. Unfortunately because of fragmentation, I'm not quite sure if id would spend the time to port it over to Android.

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

Wow, A Mazing.

 

[cheezy321]

Very impressive.

And it works on an iPhone 2G

 

[pm]

I've never even heard of Rage and I watched the video on the link and it started off with this huge epic battle with vehicles and incredible graphics and was super smooth and thought "THIS is running on an iPhone!?!"... and then I realized it was an ad for Halo Reach... which was obviously not running on an iPhone.

Still, it's impressive. Really smooth and the graphics look nice. About the only thing is that I've never really liked first-person shooters on my iPhone. They can look nice and all, but the controls are awkward and this makes the gameplay (to me, anyway) frustrating. It makes me wish Apple would come out with a controller for it or something.

 

[jpeyton]

Unfortunately because of fragmentation, I'm not quite sure if id would spend the time to port it over to Android.

PCs are pretty fragmented, no?

iD ports it to whoever has the numbers. Right now that is the iPhone. In about a year, Android will be on as many phones/tablets as iOS and iD will do the obvious.

 

[ChAoTiCpInOy]

Remember, most of the stats for Android are in the US. The worldwide market is a lot bigger...

 

[TheStu]

PCs are pretty fragmented, no?

iD ports it to whoever has the numbers. Right now that is the iPhone. In about a year, Android will be on as many phones/tablets as iOS and iD will do the obvious.

I see Android's current fragmentation as something akin to the early days of 3D on PCs. Where games were optimized for things like 3DFx for example. In fact, the same game run on my existing system and on a Pentium 3 with VooDoo card will (and does) look better on the Pentium 3.

So, if they invest time and energy into optimizing for the iPhone hardware, doing the same work for the GPU in <insert Android phone here> and then more work for the GPU in <insert OTHER Android phone here> is probably not that appealing.

Plus there is the resolution issue. iPhone has 2, how many different resolutions are there on Android devices?

I think that the fragmentation will become less of an issue once all the active devices are at a certain baseline, but right now, I do think that it is an issue.

 

[tatteredpotato]

I see Android's current fragmentation as something akin to the early days of 3D on PCs. Where games were optimized for things like 3DFx for example. In fact, the same game run on my existing system and on a Pentium 3 with VooDoo card will (and does) look better on the Pentium 3.

So, if they invest time and energy into optimizing for the iPhone hardware, doing the same work for the GPU in <insert Android phone here> and then more work for the GPU in <insert OTHER Android phone here> is probably not that appealing.

Plus there is the resolution issue. iPhone has 2, how many different resolutions are there on Android devices?

I think that the fragmentation will become less of an issue once all the active devices are at a certain baseline, but right now, I do think that it is an issue.

We've been through it with the PC and were doing it now with phones. These companies learned how to do this the first time around so I don't see it taking as long for "fragmented compatibility" to become common.

 

[tatteredpotato]

I've never even heard of Rage and I watched the video on the link and it started off with this huge epic battle with vehicles and incredible graphics and was super smooth and thought "THIS is running on an iPhone!?!"... and then I realized it was an ad for Halo Reach... which was obviously not running on an iPhone.

Haha, talk about misleading.

 

[MrX8503]

PCs are pretty fragmented, no?

iD ports it to whoever has the numbers. Right now that is the iPhone. In about a year, Android will be on as many phones/tablets as iOS and iD will do the obvious.

Completely unrelated. You can pop in a new video card into a PC. I want to see you do that to a mobile phone

 

[BenSkywalker]

The only other Android phone that can run Rage would be the Galaxy S series.

You got me on this one, can you explain out in detail how the Droid X and Dell Streak are slower then the iPhone 2. Perhaps it's just my crazy tendency for following technology, but to me it seems like that statement is an obnoxiously over the top trolling lie

Edit- Forgot to quote the OP's link-

Not impressive enough? He says it still "runs great on an original 2G iPhone" as well.

So now explain it out in detail how the iPhone 2 is more powerful then a Droid X or Dell Streak, delve into deep analysis please

 

[MrX8503]

You got me on this one, can you explain out in detail how the Droid X and Dell Streak are slower then the iPhone 2. Perhaps it's just my crazy tendency for following technology, but to me it seems like that statement is an obnoxiously over the top trolling lie

Edit- Forgot to quote the OP's link-



So now explain it out in detail how the iPhone 2 is more powerful then a Droid X or Dell Streak, delve into deep analysis please

I simply don't believe that it runs very well on iPhone 2G. Even if it does android and iOS are two different platforms. One uses objective c the other uses java. (correct me if I'm wrong). On top of this the iPhone 2g has a really low res screen.

If games like this are capable on the Android platform, I'm not seeing it. I'm sure it's possible cause the galaxy s hardware is powerful but something is holding it back. Could be a mix of fragmentation or programing language used.

Edit: how can my assumption of Rage may not be coming to Android be a lie? It's just what I think.

 

[tatteredpotato]

I simply don't believe that it runs very well on iPhone 2G. Even if it does android and iOS are two different platforms. One uses objective c the other uses java. (correct me if I'm wrong). On top of this the iPhone 2g has a really low res screen.

If games like this are capable on the Android platform, I'm not seeing it. I'm sure it's possible cause the galaxy s hardware is powerful but something is holding it back. Could be a mix of fragmentation or programing language used.

Edit: how can my assumption of Rage may not be coming to Android be a lie? It's just what I think.

All Android apps are launched from Java, however you can use the NDK to write C/C++ libraries that can be called from your Java application. Every app has to be initiated via Java though.

But lets get serious, Android is just as capable of iOS in terms of graphics from a software standpoint. The reason there aren't many games out yet for Android is the lack of a decent platform to start from. You have the OpenGL ES functions to call, but they aren't as developer friendly as something like XNA (not sure what the iOS environment is like for graphics).

 

[gorcorps]

I've never even heard of Rage and I watched the video on the link and it started off with this huge epic battle with vehicles and incredible graphics and was super smooth and thought "THIS is running on an iPhone!?!"... and then I realized it was an ad for Halo Reach... which was obviously not running on an iPhone.

Still, it's impressive. Really smooth and the graphics look nice. About the only thing is that I've never really liked first-person shooters on my iPhone. They can look nice and all, but the controls are awkward and this makes the gameplay (to me, anyway) frustrating. It makes me wish Apple would come out with a controller for it or something.

Same here. FPS on touchscreen only controls are pretty awful. Even if they can get it to feel almost right, you have your thumbs blocking a ton of the screen. It may be ok for an ipad but an iphone doesn't have enough screen to waste with FPS controls.

 

[Deeko]

The only other Android phone that can run Rage would be the Galaxy S series. Unfortunately because of fragmentation, I'm not quite sure if id would spend the time to port it over to Android.

*sigh* Newsworthy story of something impressive on the iPhone, quickly turned into pure trolling/flamebait without even getting out of the OP. Nice work, MrX. Nice work.

 

[gorcorps]

*sigh* Newsworthy story of something impressive on the iPhone, quickly turned into pure trolling/flamebait without even getting out of the OP. Nice work, MrX. Nice work.

Nevermind the fact that they said it works fine on the iphone 2G, which is slower than all the android phones and yeah... definitely fanboy toll BS

 

[MrX8503]

*sigh* Newsworthy story of something impressive on the iPhone, quickly turned into pure trolling/flamebait without even getting out of the OP. Nice work, MrX. Nice work.

Nevermind the fact that they said it works fine on the iphone 2G, which is slower than all the android phones and yeah... definitely fanboy toll BS

Where are those awesome Android games you speak of? I was merely making a statement that its unfortunate that its not being ported to Android. I'd like to see it on the Android platform, but its not going to, thus it being unfortunate.

Take your persecution elsewhere.

 

[pm]

All Android apps are launched from Java, however you can use the NDK to write C/C++ libraries that can be called from your Java application. Every app has to be initiated via Java though.

But lets get serious, Android is just as capable of iOS in terms of graphics from a software standpoint. The reason there aren't many games out yet for Android is the lack of a decent platform to start from. You have the OpenGL ES functions to call, but they aren't as developer friendly as something like XNA (not sure what the iOS environment is like for graphics).

I tend to stay out of the whole Android vs. iOS thing, but having coded a bit on both platforms about a year ago (Xcode IDE, and Android SDK w/ Eclipse) and gotten a simple kid's game to work to some extent on both emulators, I though the Apple developer environment was easier. And by "easier" I mean that it was more intuitive and I got things working quicker. A bit of it was that I personally like Objective C better than I like Java - personal opinion, you can tell me I'm on crack or something, but Objective C is closer to what I was taught when I learned programming and Java is... well, I don't like it as much.

So, to get back to the point, I wonder if the reason that apps and games and demos tend to show up on the iPhone first has something to do with the developer environment. Maybe this is what you are saying Obscure, but when you say "platform" I think of the hardware...

 

[MrX8503]

I tend to stay out of the whole Android vs. iOS thing, but having coded a bit on both platforms about a year ago (Xcode IDE, and Android SDK w/ Eclipse) and gotten a simple kid's game to work to some extent on both emulators, I though the Apple developer environment was easier. And by "easier" I mean that it was more intuitive and I got things working quicker. A bit of it was that I personally like Objective C better than I like Java - personal opinion, you can tell me I'm on crack or something, but Objective C is closer to what I was taught when I learned programming and Java is... well, I don't like it as much.

So, to get back to the point, I wonder if the reason that apps and games and demos tend to show up on the iPhone first has something to do with the developer environment. Maybe this is what you are saying Obscure, but when you say "platform" I think of the hardware...

Ah thank you for your input!

 

[Deeko]

Where are those awesome Android games you speak of? I was merely making a statement that its unfortunate that its not being ported to Android. I'd like to see it on the Android platform, but its not going to, thus it being unfortunate.

Take your persecution elsewhere.

Neither of us (in fact, no one in the thread) mentioned these "awesome games", which means this post is just more trolling from you. Seriously, do you just not realize that you're doing it, or are you just intentionally trolling? You are getting "persecuted" because you are doing exactly what we're accusing you of.

 

[Bateluer]

The only other Android phone that can run Rage would be the Galaxy S series. Unfortunately because of fragmentation, I'm not quite sure if id would spend the time to port it over to Android.

Wut? If it runs on the iPhone 2G, then pretty much every Android phone out could likely run it, except for some of the really entry level devices like the Moto Devour perhaps.

I'm pretty sure that both the OMAP 3640 based Droid X and Droid 2, as well as last gen's Droid 1 will run this just fine. Even with its weaker GPU, I'm willing to bet the Snapdragon powered devices would handle it just fine, maybe not as fast, but perfectly playable. Course, you'd need the hardware keyboard of the Droid 1 and 2 to really make it work though. Touch screen controls and you're obscuring a large chunk of the screen with your figure.

 

[tatteredpotato]

So, to get back to the point, I wonder if the reason that apps and games and demos tend to show up on the iPhone first has something to do with the developer environment. Maybe this is what you are saying Obscure, but when you say "platform" I think of the hardware...

Yea sorry, by platform I was referring to the OS and the dev tools provided by the companies (perhaps not the right terminology). I've used XNA, which is very easy to pick up, but all the samples for android used direct OpenGL function calls. I haven't played around with 3D graphics on Android much at all (and I haven't touched the iPhone SDK), but it seems like all that google provides is a Java wrapper to OpenGl. An API like that of XNA would make games much easier to make IMO.

 

[cheezy321]

Nevermind the fact that they said it works fine on the iphone 2G, which is slower than all the android phones and yeah... definitely fanboy toll BS

Since you know everything about this, please tell me why they didnt develop it on android?

 

[MrX8503]

Neither of us (in fact, no one in the thread) mentioned these "awesome games", which means this post is just more trolling from you. Seriously, do you just not realize that you're doing it, or are you just intentionally trolling? You are getting "persecuted" because you are doing exactly what we're accusing you of.

If you have nothing to add to the discussion then post in a different thread. Thanks. I want to talk about gaming on either the iPhone or Android platform.

You're just fishing for some problems, I don't want any of it.

 

[Phokus]

both the droid x and samsung galaxy s have similar GPU performance. I believe they are much better than iphone 4's as well.