Android RenPy?

[EwanG]

Saw this article on Google this morning about the Android OS getting full scripting support, including access to many of it's API's, and found myself wondering if that would make it any easier to port to...

http://google-opensource.blogspot.com/2 ... pting.html#

[jack_norton]

I think (not sure) a problem of android is that it runs on several different HW configs. So you could have lots of different screen sizes and it would make it a pain to support (I'm not 100% sure of this though).

[PyTom]

This is... awesome.

EDIT: At least it will be, if they expose more of the API.

[Counter Arts]

What parts do you need? I'm just curious that's all...

[PyTom]

Right now, there doesn't seem to be a way, from the python api, to draw pictures to the screen.

[Counter Arts]

Darn it...
I suppose it's not really possible to alter some java classes for adapting those draw methods and maybe overriding some interperter methods. Maybe you can but I would wait awhile.

Well, I still can't wait until ren'py iphone is ready. But I suppose the first step is working out all these bugs in the current version right?

[jack_norton]

Well iphone renpy will be a nice toy, but nothing to make serious money with (because of iphone itself being the most crowded platform on earth).
http://www.stromcode.com/2009/05/24/the ... -hype/149/

[Counter Arts]

While I somewhat understand "race to the bottom", what about the factor of "If you make it too cheap then people would believe that it's the quality of the price given."

Anyone hear of the price of a perfume bottle example?

[jack_norton]

The problem is exactly that one. YOU CAN'T even think of putting a game on iphone for more than $0.99 unless is a professional game with full 3d and insane production values (AAA quality). I tried with my game and results were terrible. I have lots of contacts among indie devs and many were surprised that my game would still sell 2-3 copies a day at $4.99. I can laugh at iphone income, if I compare to the pc/mac income I get from the same game that I ported (The Goalkeeper).
So a game 4 years old on pc/mac with basically no exposure, sells more than the same version on iphone. Great platform, eh

[Jake]

While I somewhat understand "race to the bottom", what about the factor of "If you make it too cheap then people would believe that it's the quality of the price given."

Market impressions and expectations depend on multiple factors, though, and one of those factors is the price of the rest of the market. New products are constantly compared to a baseline of other, existing products when their 'value' is ascertained, rather than considering the materials and effort and so on that goes into them.

So nobody stops to think "Hey, £10,000 is an awful lot of money for a car - it's essentially a collection of metal and plastic that happens to go forwards or backwards when you use the controls, and they buy in bulk and mass-produce them on an assembly line anyway, the materials and labour cost is probably measured in the hundreds..." - new cars in the same style from every other manufacturer are £12,000, so the £10,000 model is considered cheap. A fast-food cheeseburger costs £1: not because the man on the street has performed a careful analysis of the costs involved in cattle farming and cheese production, the logistics involved with distributing the meat and cheese around the country and the watts of power used to make and cook the burger... but because that's what McDonalds charges, so if your burger costs £2 it had better be a damn sight better than a McDonalds burger. Which admittedly isn't difficult.

So when an iPhone application comes along it isn't considered in terms of how many man-hours of R&D went into it or how good it is at its function until it's first been considered compared to all the other millions of iPhone apps... since everything else on the planet (statistically speaking) costs $1, something that costs more than that stands out as 'expensive'. Since it's expensive, it has to justify being expensive, because there's probably a hundred other OK-ish apps which do more or less the same thing as yours which do sell for $1 - especially when your app is a game.

It's true that if you price your thing too low in any market then people will be suspicious of the quality - if you sell a car for £100 or a burger for 10p people will wonder what's wrong with them. But it's not because a good burger can't physically be made for 10p, it's because that's so much cheaper than the other burgers that are on sale.

[farvardin]

maybe it's possible at the beginning to be able to parse the renpy code, for having the CYOA part of the game, even without sounds and pictures.

It would be a pity not to have the multimedia parts, but being able to play some renpy games on Android would be cool indeed.

[DaFool]

Whoa, Ren'Py on iphone, serious?

I mean making a VN in iphone should be pretty simple compared to other types of games and apps (won't probably have to spend hundreds on a game engine), but making a one-click export option should be even better. It would be nice to have Ren'Py-style save/load and options feature on portable VNs. I'm already starting to wonder how one can save at certain branch points in the translated VNs that have just been released.

I wouldn't mind at all even if the Ren'Py iphone exporter will be a commercial option (since getting going through the process of acquiring hardware and getting approval from Apple is still costly and time consuming). It's not that the devs releasing games for the platform think it's a wise investment... it's an even better investment for all the middleware game engine companies that profit from the goldrush by selling their tool to all the wannabes. And more resources that could be cycled back into Ren'Py development isn't a bad thing at all.

At this point it's just a matter of platform support and accessibility. It could be Zune HD for all I care, or even PSP Minis. (Nintendo at this point is in serious need of a hardware overhaul though, for both its portable and home console).

[jack_norton]

Considering the actual miserable iphone market state I think a iphone renpy port makes even less sense than a Flash one. Just a link to show how disappointed people are, and they're fleeing in mass from a closed-platform (strange, who could have guessed that a closed-platform would be BAD!?):
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2009/ ... mpaign=rss

I stopped completely developing for iphone/XNA last september and I'm very glad I did it. Wasted time.

[Spiky Caterpillar]

I wouldn't mind at all even if the Ren'Py iphone exporter will be a commercial option (since getting going through the process of acquiring hardware and getting approval from Apple is still costly and time consuming). It's not that the devs releasing games for the platform think it's a wise investment... it's an even better investment for all the middleware game engine companies that profit from the goldrush by selling their tool to all the wannabes. And more resources that could be cycled back into Ren'Py development isn't a bad thing at all.

I doubt the iPhone devtools developer market is really all that worth pursuing - I could easily enough turn Science Girls' tilemap into something that would work in other games, but by the time Apple, AT&T, PyTom, and Spiky Middleware all get their cuts, there's probably not enough left over to pay for the actual game developer's midnight coffee. And I'm bad enough at marketing things that I think *will* ultimately please the customer that I doubt it's worth my while to try to focus specifically on iphone devtools.

That being said, I'd actually *like* to do something that runs on a smartphone - but while I've gotten Science Girls to sort-of run on an emulated Nokia smartphone, I don't know anyone with the real phone to test on.

[pkt]

Why not use Jython?