Jack Nutting wrote:
Well, my initial motivation for asking that question was that i love pygame, and thanks to cydia, the dev-team etc. i already *have* Python on my iPhone, Python 2.5.1 is easy to install, in a apt-get install python manner. Then I realised, that SDL is already there, too, e.g. "Galcon" is ported (http://www.galcon.com/news/2008/07/18/galcon-iphone-awesome/). The most amazing thing is that it is available from the iTunes AppStore!On Fri, Oct 3, 2008 at 5:45 AM, Greg Ewing <greg.ewing@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:I'm quite disgusted by Apple's whole approach to the iPhone, and because of it, I currently have little interest in buying an iPhone or attempting any iPhone development. The restrictive atmosphere would just suck all the fun out of it for me.I can see where you're coming from. I cut my teeth on game programming with pygame, I love python, and I'd love to be able to write iPhone games with python.
Well, i personally like pygame more than Objective-C (i say that without predicting the furure).However, the fact is that what you *can* write with, Objective-C, is not too shabby at all. Compared to the previously available widely-spread mobile development technologies (j2me), Objective-C is a breath of fresh air. Considering that the system has libraries for image-handling, input, opengl, and audio, you've got a pretty high-level interface to most of what pygame/sdl gives you right from the start. The only major bits of pygame-style functionality that aren't present out of the box are things like sprite groups and collision detection, which I implemented myself for the game I'm working on in just an hour or two.
I would not make the mistake to develop for the Android *instead of* the iPhone, but i would like to broaden the possibilities pygame has by supporting every possible platform. (All your base!)My recommendation is to forget about the iPhone and get behind Android instead. And let Apple know clearly why you're doing it. Maybe if they see that they're turning large numbers of their friends into enemies, they'll rethink their attitude. Or maybe losing enough iPhone sales to Google phones will do it. Perhaps.
The NDA has heen dropped on Wednesday. See this information: http://developer.apple.com/iphone/program/ . I am not sure what implications that has, i am not sure if you are allowed to develop "Apps that execute code that has been downloaded" or whatever. But there are Toolchains available for alternative developments that do not even use apples SDKs.So far, Apple's position on the iPhone has been a continual loosening/expansion of what is possible. For example, remember that less than a year ago, the official Apple line was that the only officially-sanctioned development was going to be web apps, but there's clearly been a huge about-face there. I am pretty hopeful about the prospects of Apple removing the onerous clause that rules out language interpreters in the iPhone
I think it would be exciting to have pygame on the iPhone - and i thought maybe it is just a question of adding some files to a repository. I thought maybe it has already been done.
Regards, Georg Gogo. Bernhard