Xamarin Built Distribution for iOS, Android, and Windows?

[Aurelius]

I am new to Ren'Py and all that it can do what with only 2 weeks experience on it, but I am amazed by its potential and what I was able to do with it so far. I love that it has a built in Android App build distribution and luckily I have an Android, but I wanted to develop a Visual Novel for iOS and Windows devices.

The markets themselves are hard to develop to unless you want to learn C# or Objective - C or recode the whole Ren'Py engine in that, however I found out about Xamarin today and wanted to know if a cross platform language would be feasible to have a multi purpose distribution builder for all devices?

http://xamarin.com/

[PyTom]

Rewriting Ren'Py in a different language isn't feasible. It's the result of a decade of effort. Even if rewriting it would take less time (since many problems have already been solved), we're still talking about multiple years of work - years in which Ren'Py would be standing still.

iOS seems quite feasible to target in a mix of C and objective C, in the same way that we target Android with a mix of C and Java. (Python is written in C, and so runs in most places C can.) I'm strongly considering working on an iOS port in the fall and winter, after accomplishing some preliminary work during the summer and fall.

Non-x86 windows devices do not seem to be a large enough market to be worth worrying about, at the moment.

[Aurelius]

Thank you for replying Py'Tom

True Windows does not have a large enough market to consider developing for, it would be nice to see some visual novels on that end before all heck breaks lose in the mad rush to develop in Windows when it becomes a thing.

That's excellent news about considering an iOS port. The only problem for me now is figuring out how to properly develop and test on an iPhone and ensure I have the correct licenses for commercialization.

[PyTom]

[quote="Aurelius"]True Windows does not have a large enough market to consider developing for, it would be nice to see some visual novels on that end before all heck breaks lose in the mad rush to develop in Windows when if it becomes a thing.[/quit]

Fixed that for you.

My feeling is that I want to spend time better supporting win32 when used on touch devices. (We already support windows on keyboard/mouse computers, obviously.) If winrt devices take off - and I kind of doubt they will, being the third mover and bounded on top by win32 devices - it's likely libraries like SDL2 will support it, at which point I'll consider porting Ren'Py.

But it's more likely Microsoft will abandon WinRT, like they have APIs like XNA and Silverlight (or alternatively, they'll open up the already-extant win32 on arm). So I don't plan to spend any time on the platform until that's shaken out.