Nokia has just published a 14-minute video documentary about the making of the N-Gage's surprise hit Hooked On: Creatures Of The Deep, which contains interviews with the game's creators and more information about how the game was made. The official video is in Quicktime, but if you can't get it to work try watching the Flash-based video below instead.
Read on in the full article.
It's quite interesting to see the early design sketches for the game, but you'll have to press pause if you want to see them in detail as they disappear quite quickly.
thats a great documentry , i hope mike smith works with idreams again b/c they did a good job
I have it on reliable authority there is a HD version of COTD lurking beneath the surface of said computer casings at said company's HQ. They wanted to release it at launch but because of the non-accelerated phones it was considered a bad marketing move at the time. So, Wait.. Waait.. Waaait a few months.......
Bonobo, I'm not quite sure what you mean by "HD", all the phones have the same screen resolution whether they have a graphics chip or not. I assume you mean a version with higher resolution 3D textures?
They wanted to release it at launch but because of the non-accelerated phones it was considered a bad marketing move at the time.
That's not quite true. The reason there have been no accelerated N-Gage games so far is that accelerator support isn't part of the current N-Gage SDK. Developers simply can't add hardware acceleration even if they want to.
However, Nokia has said the next SDK version will include accelerator support, so that's when we may start seeing the first games with support for such hardware.
You've got to bear in mind though that people don't buy phones for games, and it could be that models without hardware will far outsell models with it. If that's the case, there wouldn't be much incentive for developers to support the hardware.
These aren't games consoles, games are not their primary function. Any graphics hardware would be wasted on most phone users because they wouldn't run any apps that needed it.
Agreed on the lack of handsets with HW acceleration being a lack of incentive for developers, but that's Nokias fault, really. If more handsets had it, I can guarantee that the developers would use it (it's less effort than hand-optimising a renderer).
And HW acceleration isn't just for games. I'd love to see smooth flowing user interfaces, similar to the iPhone OS, if not in Symbian OS itself, then at least in applications such as GPS where alpha transparency can be useful. From development experience, I know that these are far easier to put together in OpenGL than with raw pixel-processing.
I wonder if HW acceleration would speed up GPS applications too? I'm thinking probably not much, as I suppose most of the work is done in searching through the map database to see what's visible rather than rendering.
Look, just to make things clear, I'm not saying HW acceleration will never ever be needed by the mainstream user, just that it's not currently needed.
Until that changes, 3D chips are a waste of money and space for most phone users, so they'll tend not to appear in most phone models.
I've got nothing against having 3D hardware in phones, it could do a lot of good in the long run to have it become a standard component, but I just don't think its time has come yet for the mainstream user.
A good analogy might be the DVB-H mobile television chips that appear in certain models like the N96 and N77. At the moment these are a waste of money for most people because the coverage areas of DVB-H transmissions are so small. For example in the UK there's no DVB-H at all, so anyone in Britain who buys an N96 is paying for components they cannot use, and carrying those components with them too.
However, if DVB-H becomes a well-established standard in the future, if there's coverage of the majority of people, and if a lot of people start actually using it too, then maybe all phones should include DVB-H receivers.
And HW acceleration isn't just for games. I'd love to see smooth flowing user interfaces, similar to the iPhone OS
You don't hardware acceleration for interfaces, the main processors on current S60 phones are fast enough to that on their own.
AFAIK you don't need hardware to do alpha transparency either, Nokia's done some stuff in that area on the latest version of the interface for their internet tablets (which don't have graphics accelerators).
I wonder if HW acceleration would speed up GPS applications too?
It depends how complex the 3D rendering is, but as things stand you wouldn't really need it to render any quicker than now. As you said, the main delay is in locking on and receiving the map data onto the handset.
Things could change in the future of course. If future navigation software had extended data (such as rendering elevations of the landscape and major buildings in real time) then 3D hardware might be more useful.
At the moment though that kind of stuff doesn't appear in mainstream satnav software, so there just isn't any need for the hardware.
Agreed on the lack of handsets with HW acceleration being a lack of incentive for developers, but that's Nokias fault, really
What's the biggest phone game platform now? It's Java, not because it's technically good, but because it's on the cheapest phones.
The one thing third party publishers want is game sales, and the main way to get game sales is through userbase.
The best way to get a large userbase is to make the phones as cheap as possible, which means leaving out unnecessary hardware such as 3D chips.
Please don't take it personally, it wasn't an attack on you, I was actually agreeing with you and adding that it's a chicken/egg scenario.
Developers won't take advantage of it until enough handsets have support for it, Nokia won't add handset support for it until enough things need it.
Accelerometer thoughts for COTD2 (if released)..
- Wrist flick of the phone (held upright) in front of you to cast. More flick- more distance.
- Hooked on? Tilt ur phone towards u to reel in. More tilt- more pull.
-Rotating ur boat left & right.. U guessed it!
The 'birds eye view' locational map could even be navigated by holding ur phone horizontally & tilting it a la Marble Madness. Want to drop anchor? A little vertical shake will sort that out.
Am sure this has more than been likely been mentioned before.. But hey ho it would be cool.
I'm all up for interesting accelerometer usage (I'm not sure this is planned to be part of the next SDK, but it would be interesting if they abstracted analogue handset controls as I've mentioned in a previous post).
The "striking" action to get hooked on, the casting and the reeling would be great (although reeling is currently a digital control, analogue would add more to it. Handsets with a naviwheel could use that as a great virtual reel too!).
I'm not sure about the birds eye view navigation though, that seems a bit too forced for this game. On handsets with a d-pad, that works well, on handsets with a touchscreen, tapping on the place you want to move to would work.
Anyway, by the time COTD2 comes out, all phones will have 3D accelerators and the movement between locations will be like playing Wave Race 64. Right? :tongue:
Returning to the topic, the 'Making Of' video is excellent. I thoroughly enjoyed the game (and am enjoying even after it's finished). Excellent idea by Nokia, though they need to release some more worthy games.