Posted: 22nd Nov 2011 20:23
The procedure to make an .APK android file for a tier1 program, is beyond the capabilities of 99,9% of the people in the world


Unfortunately I have to agree.
I never thought I would say this: iOS development is so much straight forward when compared to android!
Posted: 22nd Nov 2011 23:58
The sad fact is that we're now back to the situation in the 80s when we had about a dozen utterly incompatible platforms with different processors, operating systems, interfaces, admirers, haters - the whole "my thingy is better than your thingy" scenario.

In an age when we can ride virtual horses though wonderful landscapes we are now reduced to retro 2D games running on mobile phones of various shapes and sizes. In theory this should be easy, but what we're seeing is a rats' nest of incompatible flashy rubbish consumer devices that don't multi-task.

None of the manufacturers want cross-platform development. They want killer apps that will sell their units. There never will be a simple answer to this - there will be new phone-like gadgets coming out of Korea or probably China with another new system. We're back to chaos, and we have to get used to it.

As I said before - develop your game and make it great. If necessary pay somebody else to complete the final stages of the port. If you started from scratch learning all the compiler operations and SDKs for all these platforms you'd either go mad or be working for TGC (or both!).

Accepting the 99.9% figure, there are about 6 million people who can manage the job. That should be enough.
Posted: 23rd Nov 2011 7:07
Luckily for me I'm now one of them. I managed to make my first working .APK file yesterday

Yes, it's hard, but it should be possible to make a simple tool that do all the hard work automatically, and spits out an .APK file from your Tier1 code. The player is the same, and only the names, APK-key, media and bytecode is unique for each project, so a wizzard that ask for those, should do it.
Posted: 23rd Nov 2011 8:07
Jim Hawkins, the gadgets coming out of Korea/China have already been there for the past year - they are all Android based!

Developers are using Unity to great success to make AAA cross-platform games. No one seems to be complaining, and with Tegra 3 out this month, tablet games can now have desktop like quality visuals - no more 2d retro rehashes.