Mobile 3D Game Development: From Start to Market (Charles River Media Game Development)
It is a good time to be a mobile game developer. Not only is there a large installed base of phones, but the development tools needed to develop for the platform are free. More than 350 million Java(TM) -enabled cell phones are in the hands of users throughout the world, making the Java Mobile platform the most disseminated video game capable platform on the planet. Until now, however, there has been limited technical information on how to develop these games, but with Mobile 3D Game Development
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(out of 4 reviews)
List Price: $ 49.99
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Noah from PhoneDog.com takes a look at mobile games at CTIA San Francisco ’07. He has no skills but is still impressed by FIFA Soccer on an N81 and Madden NFL 08 on a RAZR 2.
Video Rating: 4 / 5
How Can Anyone Offer Mobile Games Absolutely Free
I have been a mobile gaming freak ever since the day I bought my first mobile phone few years back. Those were the days of mobile games like Snakes and Tetris that came built-in my Nokia phone. But now the times have changed and so has mobile technology. Over the last few years mobile technology has grown at an unbelievably high rate. Today mobile phones have grown from a mere communication device to the heights of popularity by integrating advanced features like media players, mega pixel digital cameras, internet access, and every other entertaining feature you can think of.
Taking advantage of the advances in mobile technology, the mobile gaming scene is also picking up. The force or technology behind this revolution in the mobile gaming world is Java, a computer programming language, which enabled the development of extremely advanced mobile games, games which you could only play on computer or high end gaming consoles.
All of the recently introduced mobile phones come with built in animated games for our entertainment. But the number of games provided by the manufacturer is limited to only a few, and if you are a mobile gaming freak like me you must have always been on the lookout for new mobile games. But the big question is how we actually get new mobile phones that will satisfy our desire for mobile gaming.
It’s not only the mobile technology that has made breakthrough advances; the world of Internet has also seen a complete change from the days of just using it for sending and receiving mails and surfing boring sites to making all our purchases online. You must have seen tens or hundreds of sites offering mobile games. But it’s not possible to buy all of the games as that would put a lot of burden on our pocket.
You must have also seen plenty of sites claiming to provide free mobile games, but as soon as you land on their site all your hopes are shattered to see all the hidden charges. So how do you actually get cell phone games that are absolutely free? Since I have been a big fan of mobile games, I searched the whole internet to find a provider that offered free mobile games with no hidden charges. I was amazed to find one such provider HOVR (www.hovr.com), which offers all the cell phone games absolutely free without charging even a single penny directly or indirectly.
By now you must have started to think about the big question around which this whole article was written “How Can Anyone Offer Mobile Games Absolutely Free?” I contacted guys at HOVR to clear all the mysteries behind their concept of “free downloadable mobile phone games”. And this is what they have to say:
“Hovr is the world’s first ad-supported consumer based mobile content provider spearheading the evolution of a free mobile content based social network across Mobile platforms. Hovr provides loads of @#$%les from a dozen world class mobile game publishers, all available to users at no cost. The ability to embed advertising into games and applications allows Hovr to deliver free content without compromising your user experience. Hovr’s software-enabled technology adLogic, delivers targeted advertisements that are personally relevant, and therefore of more interest to you.
At Hovr, when we say free, we mean it. We don’t charge you a penny for the cutting edge mobile content, mobile games and other mobile applications we provide and distribute.”
I must say I was pretty impressed by this concept and their promise of providing absolutely free cell phone games. Hovr lets you directly download free mobile games to your mobile phone or computer. You can point your phone browser to http://wap.hovr.com to directly download free games to your phone.
Mike Nicholson
MOMA Mobile Gaming Console (Side View)
Image by viagallery.com
MOMA Mobile Gaming Console (Side View)
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Review by Short Dog for Mobile 3D Game Development: From Start to Market (Charles River Media Game Development)
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This book is really very well written and the only one I know on the market of its kind. It’s great if you are moving from 2D to 3D J2ME games. I gave it 4, instead of 5, stars firstly, because all the art work is done for Maya, Lightwave, or 3DS. These are very expensive modelling tools. The authors could have used an excellent alternative, Blender, which is just as powerful but free. Secondly, the authors use NetBeans. A better choice might have been Eclipse with the EclipseME plug-in since I believe the Eclipse community is bigger and perhaps more resourceful. Thirdly, there are a number of small errors in the book, particularly in Chapter 7. Finally, speaking of Ch 7, the book is rough going with the math. It’s almost as if the authors were afraid to go into more detail knowing many people might be turned off by 3D math. But this seems to me just the place to slow down rather than breeze through the subject. For instance, they don’t explain how or why matrix inversion is used nor how it can fail. Then, they go through all this math and don’t give example code or even a snippet, of how to use it, for instance, the Transform class. That’s too bad. They had this tiger (called 3D math) by the tail and let it go. Actually, to cover more of the math and details of mobile 3D I would recommend Hofele, C., “Mobile 3D Graphics”, as a companion text. Hofele is also very good although the focus is less on mobile games than mobile 3D.
Review by Joshua Newnham for Mobile 3D Game Development: From Start to Market (Charles River Media Game Development)
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Very easy to read and a great way to get started in developing 3d games. Unlike alot of other j2me game developer books it is specific for games and not so much J2ME itself, it provides a create resource for the whole process from developing the game to creating the models.
Recommend to anyone interested in getting started for J2ME 3d game development.
Will be looking forward to your next book.
Review by J. S. Harbour for Mobile 3D Game Development: From Start to Market (Charles River Media Game Development)
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This book gets right down to business of creating Java ME games without any fluff. By the end of chapter 3, you will be on the way to creating a reusable game class containing a game loop, and chapter 4 gets right into the 2D graphics capabilities of Java Me with an example game. The rest of the book is devoted to 3D game development in Java Me, based on OpenGL ES (M3D). I was extremely happy with this book, and am using it in my mobile course now. This was a welcome find and a good alternative to the misleading Java ME Game Programming book by Flynt.
Review by Pappalardo Simona for Mobile 3D Game Development: From Start to Market (Charles River Media Game Development)
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This book is a very good introductory manual to 3D mobile game development,
with a clear explanation on basilary concepts. It provides a summary on basic
3D mathematical concepts. This is excellent to refresh this topic but not for
learning but, on the other hand, it is not the aim of the book.
The 3D examples have been made with 3DStudio and LightWave but not with Maya
which would have been appreciated considering its use in real world 3D
applications.
The chapter on distribution of the game on the market is really interesting. It
provides practical examples on possible distribution channels on the market.
For instance, the creation of a paypal-enabled web page created to distribute
and sell the mobile game on the market has been really appreciated.
Unfortunately, the porting of the game on the various target devices has been
discussed with superficiality, without any detail, too much generic with very
little usefulness.
It would have been nice to see some screenshots of the implemented games as
examples in the book, just to have a general idea on the final game appeal.
Overall, I highly recommend this book since I effectively learned the basic on
3D mobile game programming.
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