For whatever reason, Android's high-performance
Native Development Kit introduced back in the
Cupcake days never got a ton of attention despite the subtle hints that it'd give devs the low-level access they needed to create killer, graphically rich, immersive environments ready to compete with pretty much any other gaming device you could shove in your pocket. Of course, at the time, every phone in the market was running an older, slower ARM11 core -- so maybe the new generation of ARMv7-based devices we've got hanging around now like the
Nexus One and
Droid are the catalysts we need to get this party started in earnest. Japan's HyperDevbox studio has just shared the news that its ExZeus Arcade shooter makes full use of the NDK, your microSD card, and a custom sound driver to bring a gaming experience hotter than pretty much anything we've seen on Android thus far; the only catch is that you need Android 2.0 or up and a phone with a dedicated GPU to get it going. It's available now in the Market for a seemingly reasonable $3.99 -- and let's let this serve as a reminder to other game studios that they've got the tools and the horsepower to rock Android hard. Follow the break for video of ExZeus in action.
posted March 4th 2010 6:39PM
Downloading it now!
@vintoe
Downloading....as soon as someone uploads the apk. ;)
@vintoe
Looks great for an arcade game, however for 3D android gaming, I think I prefer armageddon squadron better because arcade games have too much of a linear gameplay for me. Nevertheless a great app and good example of how apps should be made by HyperDevbox studio!
@Evan
Hmm... I've had my share of questionable software downloads, but if we want android gaming to succeed, we want these developers to make a boatload of cash, so they can shove it in the other dev's faces.
Maybe shell out the $4 for this one, we should commend these devs for risking their time for a market that is not yet as developed as the iPhone market, and show them it's worthwhile!
-Taylor
@Taylor Yes Taylor
You never cease to amaze me. Most people that would have told the dude to buy the app instead of *cough*downloading it*cough* would have immediately jumped on a high horse and given a long winded rant on how its theft.
Kudos to you.
@Taylor Yes Taylor
you are so freakin right man, for 4 dollars its not so bad. I would definitely pay it, unless it was like 30 dollars then thats a different story...
I support your thoughts and opinions, Lets all buy this game instead and shove money int their pockets so they can work on more games XD
@Taylor Yes Taylor
FOUR BUCKS! WHAT A DEAL!
This looks as good as almost any PSP game, certainly better than any PS1 game and it's on your freaking phone! We used to pay 40 bucks for games like this and we couldn't carry them in our pocket, I think 4 bucks is the perfect price point for these kinds of games, and I hope other developers take their cue from HyperDevbox. And like someone else said, the game doesn't look phenomenally entertaining but it comes with the arcade territory.
Now if we could just get some standards on android phones so HTC will stop using those crappy screens with faux-multitouch on them, we'd be set to beat the iPhone!
This is by far the most polished game I've ever seen on Android. We need more devs like these....NOW!
What's the short list of Android phones with a dedicated GPU?
AWESOME! I've been waiting for a game like this :) Good this the vogue has a dedicated GPU in Android!
I know the droid and the passion/bravo had dedicated gpu's
@darksharpie Anything with an MSM7225 to start (the Tattoo).
That game looks pretty good, and this is coming from an iPhone user.
@bahgger Since it uses pretty much the same GFX from PowerVR that the Iphone does, it should be able to acheive the same quality. The only thing missing on Android is a decent software stack.
@CoCoKooL
Well, the phone that's used to play the game looks like a HTC HD2 or something, so it's probably got a higher resolution than the iPhone too
@bahgger Pretty sure that's a droid. So yes, higher res than iPhone
@bahgger Yep. I think this thing would look great on Samsung's super oled screens, too bad Samsung is not an android fan.
@CoCoKooL They have the Samsung Moment with an AMOLED screen :)
that game has a great soundtrack :)
where am I going to store it on my G1? Srsly? After you put on all the google apps you dont have room for anything...Much less games
@therodt
The G1 can't run it anyway.
@BigJayDogg3 Yeah, dang
@therodt
RTFA, it specifically says this game stores it's resources on the SD card.
Looks pretty cool. I've been delving into the NDK a bit myself(it's the only way to hack OpenGL ES 2.0 into working on the Droid/N1). Working on a game of my own that I'm trying to port from XDA to Android(thus far I have the shaders up and running but haven't gotten my display code to actually work). At any rate, I think we'll see much better games after Google announces official ES 2.0 support.
@MarcusMaximus What do you mean? Are you porting from DirectX to OpenGL ES API? I don't get what you mean by got the shaders working... Do the shaders compile but you don't have a renderer?
@MarcusMaximus I have to agree with you in regards of OGES2.x it's a shame that Google does not support it out of the box, i hop eventually it gets SDK support, i also hope their VM gets a bit faster.
@CoCoKooL Oops, meant XNA not XDA(too much visiting xda-developers...). But basically yes, XNA is fairly similar to Direct X, so that's close enough to what I'm doing. HLSL and GLSL aren't really all that different, so with some slight alterations(which actually took a while because the N1's ES 2.0 library returns garbage when you ask it for compilation error messages) I was able to get the shaders to compile. In addition, all my classes for my game objects were in C#, so porting them to java was pretty painless. The hard part has been the actual drawing code, which needs to be done in C for ES 2.0. As you can imagine, it's radically different from what I was doing before and thus far that seems to be the point of failure. My shaders are compiling and I'm fairly sure that because they compiled, they should work, since the port was so straightforward and they work beautifully in XNA.
So basically, where I am right now is a very impressive completely black screen.
@MarcusMaximus So you are missing a renderer. There are a few open soruce renderers that support OGLES2.x see http://www.openscenegraph.org/ also irrlicht and ogre have been ported.
@CoCoKooL Ya, I prefer doing such things myself, especially since this is just a side hobby for me that hopefully I'll be able to make a little bit of side income off of eventually. I like figuring out these kind of things for myself, since it gives a good chance to learn a lot, and gives a good feeling of accomplishment. Plus, immediately after getting the shaders working I started looking at houses to buy so the whole renderer part has been due more to a lack of time, rather than an inability to get it working. Thanks for the suggestion, though, it's always interesting being able to talk to people who actually know what I'm talking about with this stuff.
@MarcusMaximus Good luck with your project! I am also interested in this kind of stuff. Plz, don't forget to post any progress. I have done some similar software development using OMAP3 devices but using linux and powerVR SDK not Android.
Do you have a blog or twitter account that i can track?
Good luck house hunting :)
@MarcusMaximus
Android doesn't support opengles 2.0?
That's downright embarrasing -- even Symbian S60v5 supports it, though there are like no actual 3d games that use it for symbian heh.
@CoCoKooL Ack now you probably won't ever see this but yes, I have a Google Buzz account I use to post updates on where I am with development: MarcusMaximus04. I haven't posted there in a while because of the whole house thing but when I do make progress, that's where I'll post about it.
@DoctarPeppar Yup, it's a sore point of how Android currently resembles Windows Mobile with its lack of supporting modern hardware. Even iPhone fully supports OGLES 2.0 + FPU in the OS, besides Maemo ...
Ugh, the vid look pretty nice. I've got plenty of game on my iphone and I never really like them because I prefer to play game on my PSP over the iphone and only in tight condition where I use my iphone to play Solitaire or game that didn't make me look stupid playing in public :D
Had it for a few days after I saw it on YouTube. Great game!
I've been addicted to homerun battle 3d...
This has been out for a few weeks. Runs very well on both Droid and Nexus One. The app only uses a little bit of space on the internal memory. It downloads about 50MB of game data to the SD card to save space.
no free version for a test drive?
@shizzledmg Sure there is, buy it and then return it within 24 hours. It never even charges your credit card.
@MarcusMaximus
i have to pay first to play a demo? sounds kinda complicated.
however, i'm not going to pay for a demo even if there is a refound option.
what a pity :/
@shizzledmg Sort of. It doesn't actually charge your credit card at all until the 24 hours is up, so "refund" is really the wrong word. Plus, it's not a demo, it's a full version of the game, so you can see what the full game is really like, rather than seeing a stripped down version. At any rate, up to you what you're comfortable with.
@MarcusMaximus Most games don't have 24h gameplay period so you can probably finish the game before the 24h runs out Haha
@CoCoKooL No blog or twitter(not entirely true, I have a twitter but don't use it), but I do have a google buzz account I use primarily for updates on my project(s). marcusmaximus04. Haven't updated it in a while since, like I said, I've been busy with other stuff, but then updates come, I'll post about it there.
The problem with Android devices is they have very little in device storage memory, most have less than 512Mb for App storage and system files. Windows Phones have the same limitation. So the App developer has to make use of in device memory and a removable flash card for more storage and has to worry about memory problems and removal of the flash card. It is a pain to deal with all those memory issues.
Android phone developers need to start putting some built in storage memory into their devices like Apple does, which has 8GB in their smallest iPhone. Removable flash cards just don't work the same for Apps as built in storage and developers are not willing to put the entire App on a removable card for fear of theft.
@garysturn
Actually this game got it right...the system install is under a meg...the rest (about 57MB) is installed to the SD card.
@garysturn
Google has said they are working on building in support for that to Android. Seems like they are planning on doing it pretty soon. I'd much rather have expandable memory, though probably a gig or two of internal would be good. I don't like *not* having the option of expanding with apple's products. If I end up with some extra cash its nice to just be able to buy a bigger memory card, not shell out for a new phone.
-Taylor
@garysturn
That's a pretty big generalization about WinMo phones. Some come with 4GB of internal storage space (like the original Touch Diamond).
For what it's worth - I've never had an issue with loading apps on my storage card.
@garysturn
You do realize there was a 4 gig iPhone, right?
@BigJayDogg3
And I have never run into an issue with storage space. Maybe I just don't keep enough useless apps on my phone?
It looks gorgeous. I wonder though if these are the types of games that people are going to play on their phones. I think of my mobile as a standing in line or waiting for my wife to come out of yoga type of game machine. These are 5-10 minute periods and, for me, they're best filled with casual games. Oh well.. more games is good
@MisterK
That is why save states are such a wonderful thing. I will play a genesis or snes RPG while waiting for stuff then when I have to go I can just close and save the state then come right back to it...so any and every game becomes casual.