Iphone darwinia or multiwinia

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Snowy_River
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Postby Snowy_River » Sun Dec 26, 2010 10:56 pm

xander wrote:...On the other hand, since this topic was posted, IV have released the source code for *winia. So if anyone with programming ability agreed with you, they could certainly create the port themselves (though they would likely have to get permission from IV---I don't know how restrictive the license is).

xander


As it turns out:

Darwinia Source Code License Agreement wrote:Without the express written permission of Introversion, you will not distribute, in any format any version of the program targeted on any platforms other than MacOS, Microsoft Windows (for the PC) or Linux. For the avoidance of doubt you may not develop a version of the program for the Xbox 360, PS3, Wii, Apple iPhone, Apple iPad or any other platform other than those specifically stated above without the express written permission of Introversion.


So, yes, at the very least, permission would be needed for distribution. Given the nature of this paragraph, as well as the rest of the document, I doubt any iOS developer would want to touch this with a ten foot pole. Which relegates it to hobby work. If I really wanted to tinker with it long enough to get it to run, then I could do it, but just for myself.

Really, this reads more like "we're reserving the right to port to these platforms, so don't try to go there." So, that brings us back to the original discussion of having IV do the port themselves.
-Snowy
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Postby NeatNit » Sun Dec 26, 2010 11:27 pm

Close, but no. It just means you'd need IV's permission, which you are almost sure to get if you contact them and explain. (I'm sure they'd still want part of the profit, but it still is very likely to get permission)

The only real barrier is the hardware limitations, but if you can find someone/something to work those through, I'd love to see the result.
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Postby bert_the_turtle » Sun Dec 26, 2010 11:28 pm

Snowy_River wrote:Regarding searching, please help me to understand this point. I'm here on the Darwinia forum and I click the search link. I type in "iPhone" and hit search. I get two results, namely this thread and the other thread by the OP that is almost identical. Okay, so I go back and try "iPod". Same result. I go back and I try "iOS". I got nothing before, and now this thread comes up because I have been mentioning the iOS in my posts. So, please tell me how I should have used the search function to find all of the previous discussions on this topic. Clearly I'm missing something.
Ah, that's a bit of an oddity with the forums here. There are, in fact, four different forums. One for each released PC/Mac game (Uplink, Darwinia, Defcon, Multiwinia) and the general forum with the lounge and Subversion. (Edit: Five! Five forums.) Searches are local. So if you search here, you won't find the posts made for iOS versions of the other games or iOS versions of Darwinia made in the Lounge. It's a bit weird. We usually only yell at newcomers for not using search if we know a proper search for the forum they're posting in would have yielded results. Ignore DinoSteve.

The developer terms of use also don't allow you to distribute a standalone binary that can run without you having bought a regular version of Multiwinia/Darwinia first; a standalone version for iDevices would be impossible without talking to IV directly first.

Regarding the devices' power, yeah, they have a dedicated GPU that may even be strong enough. But the CPU certainly isn't, heavy optimization would be required. It could be possible. A lot of the optimization would be in OpenGL calls which all need to be rewritten anyway; iOS only supports OpenGL ES.

I personally think the biggest obstacle would be the UI. The games are designed for a keyboard/mouse combination. You move in 3D and turn around in 3D. You need to control at least five degrees of freedom, maybe you can get away with four if you automate the camera height. That's too much for the tilt sensors. The touchscreen will be busy enough distinguishing between formation change commands and move commands. I don't think it can be done without the awkward fallback solution of onscreen buttons and touch areas for movement. A game can survive not being pretty and not running fluidly, but it can't survive bad controls. If you have a good UI concept, feel free to share, but I'd say we'll sooner see a version supporting Kinect than a really good iOS version.

Hey, wait. Kinect+Freenect PC drivers+Darwinia Source. I have all that. The Laws of the Internet require that I spend at least the duration of one shower thinking about how to combine them.
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Postby Snowy_River » Sun Dec 26, 2010 11:53 pm

Yup. I read the license agreement in totality. I'd say it's even money as to whether they'd agree, even if I had a functional version working already and could show them that everything was beautiful. In that case, i have to invast all the effort up front. Short of that, and they're risking me producing a clunky, awkward version that could reflect poorly on them. So, I doubt it would be a slam dunk to ask for permission, even with revenue sharing.

As far as the UI is concerned, I've played a number of games that manage to have really quite functional UI schemes, without going to tilt sensor controls. Personally, with a few exceptions, I really hate games that use, or over-use the tilt sensors. While most (if not all) of the schemes that I mentioned utilize some form of on screen touch areas or buttons, I'm not sure this is such a bad thing, if it's handled well.

To get into the question of how I would configure a UI for Darwinia, I'll have to go spend some time playing it again to refresh my memory on it's controls. (It's been a few years since I've played the game. My interest in it has been rekindled by the release of the movie Tron Legacy and the digital world made me think of Darwinia.) That said, I will give it a try.

Finally, on the search question, that's just weird. I could understand it if it was local from inside the forums, but given the fact that I did my searches from the Darwinia board index page and it didn't show me any threads except those in the General forum... Well, like I said, that's just weird.

P.S. Thanks for the kinder responses. It gives me hope that this forum might be an interesting place to have some decent discussions after all... ;)
-Snowy
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Postby NeatNit » Mon Dec 27, 2010 12:20 am

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Postby xander » Mon Dec 27, 2010 2:48 am

Snowy_River wrote:Now, to the other points. Regarding the date of the thread, it was started just before the release of the iPad, and after the iPad had been announced. Therefore, the iPad could certainly have been part of the conversation from the beginning.

I think that we are going to have to agree to disagree on this one. The iPad had been announced, but no one actually had one, or knew how well it would behave or sell. It was not a part of the conversation at the time, and there really was no reason that it should have been. That being said, I think that the only argument that doesn't apply to the iPad is screen size.

Snowy_River wrote:Regarding searching, please help me to understand this point. I'm here on the Darwinia forum and I click the search link. I type in "iPhone" and hit search. I get two results, namely this thread and the other thread by the OP that is almost identical. Okay, so I go back and try "iPod". Same result. I go back and I try "iOS". I got nothing before, and now this thread comes up because I have been mentioning the iOS in my posts. So, please tell me how I should have used the search function to find all of the previous discussions on this topic. Clearly I'm missing something.

Search functionality on the forums is not great. As bert says, it requires searching across several forums, and is unreliable at best. However, as I linked in my above post, Google gives pretty good results, especially when the search term "site:forums.introversion.co.uk" is included. It is not ideal, but it works.

As to searching, how was anyone to know from your post that you bothered to look? You can get a lot of mileage by prefacing a post with "I tried searching, but didn't find anything."

Snowy_River wrote:--==<snip>==--

bert addressed this section pretty well.

Snowy_River wrote:Finally, regarding the developers, while they may have said, repeatedly, that they were tired of *winia, I had never heard of that.

That is part of engaging in the culture of the forums as a whole. Read, for instance, the blog section. Long story short, Multiwinia was never really supposed to exist. IV wanted to port Darwinia to the XBox, but Microsoft requires a multiplayer component. IV were going to cobble a multiplayer element onto the game, and release Darwinia for XBox in 2007ish. It actually took three years to complete, and ended up being a disaster in terms of sales.

Of course, I didn't really expect you to know this. My intention was to inform you of the fact that IV are pretty much done with *winia. I was probably a little short with you---I was reacting largely to your apparent arrogance: your first post started with a tirade about how awful the community here is.

Snowy_River wrote:One last point on the topic of netiquette, it is rarely considered poor netiquette to bump an old thread when there is legitimate discussion still to be had. So, while through my initial lecture/rant I may have made something of an ass of myself, bumping the thread really didn't.

IF you had started by saying that you had tried to search, and had not begun by telling us how poorly we behaved in this thread, I probably wouldn't even have mentioned the fact that you bumped an old thread. However, you came in here and lectured us on proper etiquette with your very first post, without displaying any understanding of the context in which those posts were made. I reacted accordingly.

Now, it seems that you aren't as much of an arrogant ass as you first appeared to be, so I apologize that I was short with you. Live and learn.

As to the likelihood of an iOS port, IV aren't going to do it. Ambrosia might, and they are probably the people to talk to (though I doubt that they are interested, either---I get the impression that Darwinia and Multiwinia were kind of losers for them). The only real chance that *winia have of seeing iOS is some interested developer making a pitch to IV. As sad as that is, it is probably the reality.

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Postby Snowy_River » Mon Dec 27, 2010 5:58 pm

xander wrote:
Snowy_River wrote:Now, to the other points. Regarding the date of the thread, it was started just before the release of the iPad, and after the iPad had been announced. Therefore, the iPad could certainly have been part of the conversation from the beginning.

I think that we are going to have to agree to disagree on this one. The iPad had been announced, but no one actually had one, or knew how well it would behave or sell. It was not a part of the conversation at the time, and there really was no reason that it should have been. That being said, I think that the only argument that doesn't apply to the iPad is screen size.


Sure, any discussion of the iPad would have been speculative. My only point is that it was known to be an iOS device with a bigger screen, so the question of running Darwinia on such a screen on the iOS platform could have been had, as a possibility, when the thread was started. However, we can simply agree to disagree on this point, too. :)

xander wrote:
Snowy_River wrote:Regarding searching, please help me to understand this point. I'm here on the Darwinia forum and I click the search link. I type in "iPhone" and hit search. I get two results, namely this thread and the other thread by the OP that is almost identical. Okay, so I go back and try "iPod". Same result. I go back and I try "iOS". I got nothing before, and now this thread comes up because I have been mentioning the iOS in my posts. So, please tell me how I should have used the search function to find all of the previous discussions on this topic. Clearly I'm missing something.

Search functionality on the forums is not great. As bert says, it requires searching across several forums, and is unreliable at best. However, as I linked in my above post, Google gives pretty good results, especially when the search term "site:forums.introversion.co.uk" is included. It is not ideal, but it works.


Saying it's not great seems quite true. I've never had to use Google to search a forum before. It makes one wonder if they admins shouldn't replace the search link with a link to Google with the "site:forums.introversion.co.uk" pre-pended.

xander wrote:As to searching, how was anyone to know from your post that you bothered to look? You can get a lot of mileage by prefacing a post with "I tried searching, but didn't find anything."


Fair point. Whether I did that at the beginning or made the comment later in my post, it would have been appropriate for me to mention that I did try searching at some point in my post. Mia culpa.

xander wrote:
Snowy_River wrote:--==<snip>==--

bert addressed this section pretty well.

Snowy_River wrote:Finally, regarding the developers, while they may have said, repeatedly, that they were tired of *winia, I had never heard of that.

That is part of engaging in the culture of the forums as a whole.


As noted, I came here looking for a place to discuss this idea. I did a search and found essentially nothing (this thread and the other by the OP), so I thought I'd throw in my $0.02. Getting my feet wet, so to speak, with a new forum.

xander wrote: Read, for instance, the blog section. Long story short, Multiwinia was never really supposed to exist. IV wanted to port Darwinia to the XBox, but Microsoft requires a multiplayer component. IV were going to cobble a multiplayer element onto the game, and release Darwinia for XBox in 2007ish. It actually took three years to complete, and ended up being a disaster in terms of sales.


Interesting. I read some discussion of the creation of the XBox version, but never heard of that aspect.

xander wrote:Of course, I didn't really expect you to know this. My intention was to inform you of the fact that IV are pretty much done with *winia. I was probably a little short with you---I was reacting largely to your apparent arrogance: your first post started with a tirade about how awful the community here is.


Again, fair point. Thank you for your efforts at information sharing, and I again apologize for my harsh opening.

xander wrote:
Snowy_River wrote:One last point on the topic of netiquette, it is rarely considered poor netiquette to bump an old thread when there is legitimate discussion still to be had. So, while through my initial lecture/rant I may have made something of an ass of myself, bumping the thread really didn't.

IF you had started by saying that you had tried to search, and had not begun by telling us how poorly we behaved in this thread, I probably wouldn't even have mentioned the fact that you bumped an old thread. However, you came in here and lectured us on proper etiquette with your very first post, without displaying any understanding of the context in which those posts were made. I reacted accordingly.

Now, it seems that you aren't as much of an arrogant ass as you first appeared to be, so I apologize that I was short with you. Live and learn.


Thank you.

xander wrote:As to the likelihood of an iOS port, IV aren't going to do it. Ambrosia might, and they are probably the people to talk to (though I doubt that they are interested, either---I get the impression that Darwinia and Multiwinia were kind of losers for them).


I wonder if part of Ambrosia's loss is the fact that they are charging twice as much for it as Introversion? In general, I like Ambrosia's software, but sometimes it seems to me that they take a heavy-handed approach to pricing. It may be part of their software model. Making most or all of their software shareware, so that you can keep using it whether or not you pay for it, if you're willing to put up with being nagged about it, means that some significant portion of their user base probably never pay them a dime. So, the rest of their user base, those of us that pay to use their software, are really paying for all the free loaders, too.

Then there there is their mildly annoying practice of release almost identical programs for iPad and iPhone/iPod, making users who own both (like me) choose between buying it twice and only having it on one system (or using the iPhone version on the iPad in screen doubling mode - which isn't that great). Don't get me wrong, when there is a significant difference between the iPad and the iPhone versions, I'm quite willing to pay for the higher res version for my iPad. It's just when developers put out apps where just about the only difference is that they've rendered the graphics a little bigger, that's when I get annoyed.

xander wrote: The only real chance that *winia have of seeing iOS is some interested developer making a pitch to IV. As sad as that is, it is probably the reality.

xander


Yeah, well, it seems like an unlikely prospect, all around. I'll continue to hope that someone might step up. I might even talk to my friend about it. But it does seem unlikely, even if the port process would be an easy one, which it does seem that it would not.

It's too bad, too. I have a thought on how the UI could work, or at least the beginnings of one. Moving could be accomplished through swiping: up/down = forward/back; right/left = turn. Tilting the camera could be handled through some light use of the tilt sensors: neutral position keeps the camera tilt where it is; tilt away from the neutral position to begin rotation; return to the neutral position to stop rotation. Interaction with the Darwinians would be achieved through a tap / tap-and-hold interface. The processes that can be run would be interacted with through the circular badges that represent them on the left edge of the screen. All in all, I think it would be a relatively simple, elegant and intuitive UI that would keep the look and feel of the PC based game.

Food for thought, anyway.

(One gripe that I do have right now is that I can't manage to play Darwinia from my iPad via VNC. The UI doesn't respond properly to the VNC signals. So, for now, if not forever, I can't play at all from my iPad...)
-Snowy

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