Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
mobile
Smartphones, such as the iPhone, Android, and Blackberry, are great examples
of mobile devices. They're usually equipped to access the Internet, so online play
is available; and many mobiles have games installed on them when purchased.
Mobile devices are approaching the functionality of laptops. Most fall under
the overarching term
mobile Internet device (MID)
. Some of the companies that
create these are Acer, Asus, Casio, Dell, E-TEN, Fujitsu, and Group Sense PDA.
Some games are made specifically for these mobile devices (as you saw in
Chapter 2, “Gameplay Styles,” with the work Mobile Pie does); however, adapting
games to mobile devices has been a challenge for designers because of the tiny
amount of real estate available.
Designers have to find a way to set up the unit so a gamer can interface com-
fortably with the game. Initially, games for mobile phones were fairly low-end in
terms of graphics, animation, and speed of gameplay, simply because the phones
didn't have the computing power to run anything else.
Minesweeper,
shown in
Figure 10.3, was one of the popular earlier games these mobile devices could play.
the amount of space
that is visible in any
game (what you see
on the monitor) is
referred to as
real
estate
.
FiGuRe 10.3
Early versions of
Minesweeper
were quite simple visually.
