Penumbra App

[Yuhaney]

OK, looks like graphic problem is solved, but what about my idea about the gameplay?
I mean, how it would be possible to make the gameplay on iPhone same as in PC version (grap, move and throw) with only one touch screen and no buttons at all..?

If I think fast I just can't imagine how's it gonna work.
Someone else could try to explain... :

[graykin]

Frictional Made a flash game based on Portal? If we're thinking about the same one... really?

My bad, I meant "they" in a general sense--I wasn't referring to Frictional Games. Armor Games, I believe, made the Flash Portal game.

I was saying maybe it would be possible for someone like Armor Games to make a Penumbra Flash game, kinda like what they did with Portal.

[Kedjane]

OK, looks like graphic problem is solved, but what about my idea about the gameplay?
I mean, how it would be possible to make the gameplay on iPhone same as in PC version (grap, move and throw) with only one touch screen and no buttons at all..?

If I think fast I just can't imagine how's it gonna work.
Someone else could try to explain... :

Yeah, that's the main problem for pretty much all iPhone games. Cube uses a virtual d-pad in the bottom left corner, the accelerometer to turn around (you just tilt it right to turn right and then stop tilting it to stop turning, you don't have to turn around 180 degrees in reality to do so in the game) and three virtual buttons in the other corners to shoot, jump and open the menu/switch weapons. If the game was FPS it would pretty much have to use that or two virtual d-pads to walk/look around and the other buttons to jump/use. Perhaps touching stuff on the screen and swiping to move them around or use only scripted physics like moving cranes around and such.

[Tommy Gun]

Eh, dementiums pretty crappy, story is rubbish and the weapons are very dull. pistol, shotgun, baton. etc. though the puzzles are cool and the controls are easy to master.

Have you seen silent hill for iphone? its utterly terrible, its in first person, and you tap the enemy to fire, have to tilt the iphone into a certain posistion to reload, and flick the screen in the direction you want to walk.
Its almost impossible to use in short.

A ds would work quite well, but with the expense of kind of funky controls.Trust me, there are so many tried and failed fps games for phones and psp's. They simply dont work out.
For phones, they even made counter strike, and a sniper game. not suprisingly, the company is having trouble making a profit.

Psp's, let's be reasonable, good gaming capabilities for 3rd person games, we have resistance retribution, killzone liberation, tekken. All work well on psp.
But as soon as you get a fps, you sacrafice graphic capabilities, the controls are small and unwieldy. And with only one joystick.. well, not easy going.

Nintendo Ds- Ok, it can work, i mean, halo was going to be on ds until nintendo got greedy. It still has the ability to work, but, the graphics are pretty low on portable gaming scale and the shaders are terrrible (in my opinion) And besides, nintendo has all that cutesy wutesy stuff like nintendogs, mario and mario kart, they want their console to be seen as a family friendly thing, while playstation has a history of violence (excuse the movie referance)

Wii- definately could work, and well.

Playstation and xbox, essentially the same thing, they both could run the game well, and maybe pump up the graphics.

But then there's the whole problem of converting it to a recognizable format, changing it to flash, cutting bits of the game,redoing the textures. Whole mountain of problems, which is mainly why small time game developers stick to a specific gaming platform.
Frictional stays with pc, and we love ya for that fg :

[Kedjane]

Eh, dementiums pretty crappy, story is rubbish and the weapons are very dull. pistol, shotgun, baton. etc. though the puzzles are cool and the controls are easy to master.

Have you seen silent hill for iphone? its utterly terrible, its in first person, and you tap the enemy to fire, have to tilt the iphone into a certain posistion to reload, and flick the screen in the direction you want to walk.
Its almost impossible to use in short.

But then there's the whole problem of converting it to a recognizable format, changing it to flash, cutting bits of the game,redoing the textures. Whole mountain of problems, which is mainly why small time game developers stick to a specific gaming platform.
Frictional stays with pc, and we love ya for that fg :

Haven't played Demenium, I was just using it to show what a gameplay screen could look like.
Haven't played Silent Hill for the iPhone either, but it's pretty lame. That doesn't mean FPSes have to be lame on phones, check Cube out. Works except for terrible lag but all the middle-ish maps on the second page works lag-free. At least the ones I tried. Imagine Cube with lower walking speed and way less focus on action, that could work. Or perhaps all action could be removed. In that case the entire screen except for a d-pad and an inventory button could be used to manipulate physics objects. The iPhone can't handle a lot of that, but it could probably handle something Half Life-ish. Half Life didn't have any great physics puzzles from what I can remember, but some standard throwing-crates-into-the-water never really gets old.

Also, if they made an iPhone App they could naturally make it from scratch or borrowing some engine. Converting HPL 2.0 would be lots of trouble.

[Tommy Gun]

Haven't played Demenium, I was just using it to show what a gameplay screen could look like.
Haven't played Silent Hill for the iPhone either, but it's pretty lame. That doesn't mean FPSes have to be lame on phones, check Cube out. Works except for terrible lag but all the middle-ish maps on the second page works lag-free. At least the ones I tried. Imagine Cube with lower walking speed and way less focus on action, that could work. Or perhaps all action could be removed. In that case the entire screen except for a d-pad and an inventory button could be used to manipulate physics objects. The iPhone can't handle a lot of that, but it could probably handle something Half Life-ish. Half Life didn't have any great physics puzzles from what I can remember, but some standard throwing-crates-into-the-water never really gets old.

Also, if they made an iPhone App they could naturally make it from scratch or borrowing some engine. Converting HPL 2.0 would be lots of trouble.

You're right, converting is always a problem. You could probably get umerous low req fps games on your phone, i've seen videos of quake and doom on peoples smartphones.
And i myself haven't playedcube, might look into it though. Iphone is a smartphone, and that means it doesn't nessacerily need to run "java" which powers multimedia on most mobiles.
But mainly, its getting controls to work which are the problem.