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Developing iPhone Games for Charity?
SamBaylus
Registered User new member
Registered User new member
Hi all! This is my first post and I'd just like to give a short background on myself then go right into it.
I'm 22 years old, a college drop-out, and a retail manager. For as long as I can remember, I've always been passionate about game design. I've lived a pretty comfortable and satisfying life so far, but I'm ready to do make a career out of my passion. I'd like to build a community geared around game development for the COMPLETE and TOTAL beginner. An online community full of newbies who band together to figure out game design step-by-step. Everyone contributes with what they know, or what they've just learned. Structured learning was never for me.
What I'd like to do with this is to be able to build up enough knowledge to be able to create games for the iPhone. I'd also like to donate the money earned from these apps to some sort of charity, and encourage those who learn from the community to create games that donate as well. I believe that the community would be successful for several reasons:
1. Even though there's countless websites and documents online that teach game design and iPhone application development, I still don't believe it to be taught well. I'd like to create a definitive and specific source for all beginners who're looking to make the jump into the field.
2. Not only is the community contributing to the collective knowledge, you're also fueling the fire for these apps to be made to give back to a good cause.
3. It's a good way for those in my position to take the leap: "How much longer are you stuck in that dead-end job for?" Time to make something of it.
So here's my question(s):
How do I make this successful? Does it sound like something that could happen? Would you be interested in something like this? Why or why not? What do I need to know going into it?
Thanks for the read and have a great evening!
I'm 22 years old, a college drop-out, and a retail manager. For as long as I can remember, I've always been passionate about game design. I've lived a pretty comfortable and satisfying life so far, but I'm ready to do make a career out of my passion. I'd like to build a community geared around game development for the COMPLETE and TOTAL beginner. An online community full of newbies who band together to figure out game design step-by-step. Everyone contributes with what they know, or what they've just learned. Structured learning was never for me.
What I'd like to do with this is to be able to build up enough knowledge to be able to create games for the iPhone. I'd also like to donate the money earned from these apps to some sort of charity, and encourage those who learn from the community to create games that donate as well. I believe that the community would be successful for several reasons:
1. Even though there's countless websites and documents online that teach game design and iPhone application development, I still don't believe it to be taught well. I'd like to create a definitive and specific source for all beginners who're looking to make the jump into the field.
2. Not only is the community contributing to the collective knowledge, you're also fueling the fire for these apps to be made to give back to a good cause.
3. It's a good way for those in my position to take the leap: "How much longer are you stuck in that dead-end job for?" Time to make something of it.
So here's my question(s):
How do I make this successful? Does it sound like something that could happen? Would you be interested in something like this? Why or why not? What do I need to know going into it?
Thanks for the read and have a great evening!
SamBaylus on
0
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1. A way of spreading info about your company
2. The backing of at least 1 person who is really good with Object C
3. A dev license
if you can get those, e-info spreads fast and your site should at least get a fairly steady following. I know I am looking to pick up object C in the near future and had already planned on donating at least some of the profits to a charity.
Perhaps if you choose to donate profits to childs play you could talk to mike and jerry about them mentioning it on PA's news section. I know a lot of programmers read it and I can't imagine a few wouldn't want to help out...
that would take care of the first 2. sadly though, the dev license would still be out of pocket... I would suggest making it a 50/50 split on games you make as it would help offset costs. I think anyone who used the site and sold games through your site should be able to choose how much of each sale they wanted
(min 50% to the charity) ultimately though they would have to place a huge trust in you and would also be placing a huge burden on you as you'd also be running the business end of it. (tracking sales, keeping up with payments, keeping up the website and forums) If you're the only one running the business this is almost a full time thing
I ask because getting apps through the approval process and into the store is hellacious at best. As well as the app store marketplace being an incredible tough space to sell in. You need to be in the top 25 or not have wasted your time.
You also have to deal with provisioning profiles for devices as well. You het a certain number of devices you can allow for your software to install to, including the simulator that comes with the SDK. Purchasing a license that allows you enough profiles for a volunteer community is going to be problematic.
There are a lot of issues with the iPhone from a dev perspective
I'm actually already a certified developer! I've got my provisioned licenses and all that jazz. Why did I pick the iPhone for development? Because it's modern, it's growing, and it's getting a lot of attention. I find it to be a really innovative device that's just reached the tip of its potential and it's (arguably, of course) one of the easiest routes to go from nothing to going commercial.
Can I make applications? That's a different question. I'm still learning, but that's the point of the community I'd like to create. Those with little knowledge and no starting-point can band together and find a way to make something more out of it, and a great chance to give back.
Maybe I should make some objective-C tutorials as videos to try and get some hype around it. There's many of these online already, but I really don't like how they're delivered. I'd like to go for both informative and entertainment. Think of Food Network's "Good Eats" combined with game development.
First off be aware that Objective C is *not* a beginner language. It has a unique and peculiar syntax and comes with most of the baggage that comes with regular C which is a short hop from straight up assembly language. And that's *before* you get to actual presentation layer development which is a whole different beast.
I've been programming for about 7 years now and Obj-C is probably the most challenging thing I've come up against in terms of syntax and code management, and I don't even do games programming for it.
I would recommend starting with another event-driven visual platform like Flash which has a simpler and more forgiving language (and certainly easier to write user interfaces for) to get you acquainted with the pitfalls of event driven programming. In that process you'll be able to do a decent amount of work for your end-result game and then when you are ready you can just move over your concepts to Obj-C.
All of the Objective-C documentation I've read from Apple is written for experienced developers, and I haven't found many reliable all-encompassing iPhone SDK resource sites, so I'd say you are really left to your wits to solve day to day problems.
Impossible? No. Time-consuming for someone with your experience? Oh yeah.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
I started game programming when I was young, using certain point-and-click game creators. As I got a bit older, I grew experienced in Game Maker. While the "Game Maker Language" is not a real programming language, it certainly got me accustomed to how a game works behind the scenes as well as all the basic programming concepts (variables, conditional branching, functions, file management, blahblahblah). I've been studying Objective-C for a couple months now and I know for a fact it's not out of my league. My main problem is that not enough sites or resources online really show to go from Objective-C to the hit games we see in the app store. For me, the problem isn't really comprehension of the material, it's finding the material in a way that presents the user information beneficial to game creation.
The iPhone SDK documentation on developer.apple.com is very wide in terms of scope so there's likely something related to gaming there, in fact I think there's a whole mini-section for it.
*edit*
Here: http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/navigation/GettingStarted.html - requires login, that has a lot of "how to's:" on common things.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
Lots of questions, all with really simple answers. I'd like to find a place to get these many but easy questions answered.
EDIT:
Oh yeah, I've read through a ton of the documentation. In fact I have all those How-Tos and stuff printed out on paper for easy reference. I know about each aspect of what the iPhone SDK does, but maybe I'm too dense to weave it all together.