Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 1. Operating Systems - Mobile
and Otherwise
Developing games for mobile requires many decisions to be taken. Two very import-
ant ones concern the platform to develop your game for and the tools you are going
to use.
Will your game be developed for a single platform or many? Which are the most pop-
ular operating systems of today's mobile phones? Which are the best tools to work
with each of them?
In this chapter, we will describe what an operating system is and we will provide an
introduction to the most important mobile operating systems (OS).
We will also introduce the reference tools and software to develop games for each
mobile platform mentioned.
In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:
• A general discussion on operating systems
• Mobile operating systems
• Android development
• iOS development
• Windows Phone development
• Java ME development
• BlackBerry development
Operating systems
An operating system (OS) is a collection of software that manages device hardware
and provides common services, which allow programs to run on a device, be it a mo-
bile phone or a personal computer.
The operating system acts as an intermediary between programs and the computer
hardware, and thus, operating systems can be found on almost any device that con-
