Android vs iPhone games

[andjarnic]

Hey all,

I am learning android development, but one thing I haven't been able to find any info on is a rough comparison of capabilities between android games and iPhone games. I know both support 2D and 3D graphics, but so far the games on iPhone look far better/smoother/more capable than the games on Android. That's not a truly fair statement tho, I've barely owned the Android Droid phone for 2 days, and have only downloaded a couple of games. To be fair, I realize that iPhone games out of the box have multi-touch, and until Android releases with it on all phones, it's not exactly fair to compare the input portion of games because most iPhone games use multi-touch and android games cant if they want to run on the all android devices. I have not found yet if Android 2.0 supports multi-touch..thus all android 2.0 devices will also support multi-touch IF a developer makes use of it in a give game (or app)... or is this still strictly a phone specific feature?

Anyway, is there any games any of you have played (or perhaps you're a developer for both platforms) and can say how well the same game looks and performs on the android vs the iPhone? I am interested in 2D and 3D graphics, as well as the audio capabilities.. meaning, a game with 3D opengl graphics and audio going.. is it as smooth on the android? I am also interested again as a budding android developer, to know if the java based games are "as good" as the objective-C games that run on the iPhone. Without getitng into a war of "java is slow" stuff.. we should all know this is far from true these days.

Thanks all.

P.S. I should add that I realize the iPhone 3G is faster than the T-Mobile G1.. and that the 3GS is much faster.. so for a closer comparison, let's consider 500Mhz+ cpus on android phones with 128MB or 256MB ram to compare to the 3GS (and 3G) models.

 

[Enk]

I haven't really seen any games on the Android that compare quality wise with the games I had on my iPhone. The droid DOES support multitouch. As long as the app developer adds it in. The google apps just didn't implement it for some reason. But as far as production value and graphics, I haven't really seen anything that compares. It's a little disappointing. I've played a ton of games on my iPhone, and actually kept it so that I could keep playing games on it. But the only game that comes close to being as polished as an iPhone game that I've played is Buka. And it's also released on the iPhone. Even the gameloft games that are released on both the iPhone and Android are lacking way behind the iPhone versions. I think that's the problem with having the userbase spread between many devices which have different capabilities and specs.

It's a bit sad that most of the apps and games for Android don't really compare to the iPhone. Obviously there are a a bunch that do, but most of the games and apps that I've bought and used seem very 'amateurish'. They don't have that polish and shine that make the iPhone games so nice.

I hope it will change soon, and I think it will. Now with the release of the Droid, hopefully we'll see more developers spending more focus on Android than they are now. As the user base for Android gets larger and larger we should start to see better stuff coming out.

 

[shatteredzman]

Okay a couple points about multi touch. The droid DOES support multi touch. Check out this video.
[video=youtube;cM1JSFXnQpg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cM1JSFXnQpg&feature=player_embedded]YouTube - Motorola Droid DOES Have Multi-Touch[/video]
I think google cannot use mutli touch as an OS feature due to copy rights with apple but it is fair game for developers.

About iphone vs android for games. Even the g1 was able to handle 3d graphics and the droid has slightly better hardware than the iphone 3gs(I think). There is no reason high quality 3d games cant be developed for the droid. There are already some ports like DOOM and some quake ports but I do not know how far along the quake ports are.

Here is a game called speedforge 3d.
[video=youtube;cK_d-8Cohvg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cK_d-8Cohvg]YouTube - Speed Forge 3D for android[/video]

Here is a 3d FPS called project chronos.
[video=youtube;TCIkVBe7_rI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCIkVBe7_rI]YouTube - Project Chronos - Gra fpp na telefon G1 Android[/video]

Various emulators. The music in most of the emulators can be a little choppy but for the most part the actual game play is pretty smooth. I dont have a droid yet but I have yeard the emulators work great on the droid.
[video=youtube;VbgovUIlCts]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbgovUIlCts]YouTube - Gensoid, Snesoid & Nesoid emulator apps for Android G1 (Help)[/video]

Keep in mind these games are all for the g1 and the g1 is a lightweight compared to the droid when it comes to hardware.

Oh and here is a good 3d game for the iphone 3gs for comparison called assassin's creed.
[video=youtube;dkZ39563sew]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkZ39563sew[/video]

I dont know of any games specifically for the new generation of android devices so I cant help you out there but this will give you a good idea of the potential of the droid.

 

[ScottDroid]

Games...

I would take the immense number of SNES and Genesis games I have available over everything iTunes has to offer.


-S

 

[shatteredzman]

Yeah the sheer number of games available for the nes, snes, sega gen, gb, gbc, and gba gives android access to thousands of games. A couple personal favorites are the mario, zelda, final fantasy, and sonic series. Those games alone amount to hundreds of hours of gameplay.

 

[Enk]

I would take the immense number of SNES and Genesis games I have available over everything iTunes has to offer.


-S

Myself and most people that I know are the complete opposite. I would like to keeping pushing innovation as far as mobile gaming goes. I'm not content with playing games I beat when I was a kid. I could play all those games with my jailbroken iPhone, but still played the thousands of great original iPhone games over the emulated games.

It's always nice to play an old game for nostalgia reasons, but playing Madden 10 on my iPhone and playing Madden 94 are completely different experiences.

 

[Dustyice]

IMO, i think that id rather have emulators and play the games i loved as a kid vs. new phone games just purely because i can kill alot more time with a classic. but its ala my personal opinion

 

[shatteredzman]

I read that the droid is more powerful than the PSP.
HowardForums: Your Mobile Phone Community & Resource - Motorola A855 Sholes/Tao/Droid Pre-Release Thread 2 (Off topic Posts=BAN No Warnings)

Some of the psp's specs are:

CPU: PSP CPU (System clock frequency 1~333MHz)
Main Memory: 32MB
Embedded DRAM: 4MB
Display: 4.3 inch, 16:9 widescreen TFT LCD, 480 x 272 pixel (16.77 million colors), Max.

 

[andjarnic]

Excellent replies. I am glad to see there are some decent games, and I agree completely with two points.. one, the hardware of Droid, and all the new phones coming out is on par with the 3GS.. 500+mhz speed, 128MB to 256MB RAM for apps to run in, and so on. The second point is Android 2.0. I've no doubt the combo of these two should allow for comparable games. My main concern was whether using Java vs ObjectiveC would allow as smooth games on the Android devices as those on iPhone. I honestly don't recall now if ObjectiveC turns into "vm" like apps for iPhone, or if they are games that run at full native speed on the iPhone.

I will be curious to know if the Java JNA library will work on Android.. if any of you are java developers, JNA is a super easy native interface API that avoids a lot of the headache that priot-to-JNA java apps that needed native access had to go thru. There is a native SDK as well for Android, haven't looked into that yet, and am curious if game developers end up using that for games or if they are pure Java written games.

 

[shatteredzman]

Oh and another thing I was thinking about. What are the odds that there will ever be 3rd party hardware?
I bring to you, my newest invention, DROIDTROLLER!!!
Okay I understand this looks like **** but I think it would be a neat thing to have. Maybe make it a charging station too.

 

[andjarnic]

That's actually a very kewl idea! Why not patent it right now! lol. I would guess with wifi and/or USB input, there could be a way to plug it in and use it. Basically you could provide a driver (possibly) that runs as a service that can take the buttons you press on the controller arms and send them as keyboard keys as if you pressed the keys. This way a user could configure the controller for a specific game, perhaps. I don't know that any game would be written to use any 3rd party controller tho.. more likely games should allow configuration of keys that control avatars and such in the game.

 

[ScottDroid]

Honestly the only game from iphone I miss is ragdoll blaster... Madden 10 was an ok game but I never liked the controls. I think you give enough time Android will surpass what there is to offer on itunes.

Coming from an iphone and a storm 1 (ughhhh yes) I am happy just to have a phone thats actually usuable that has the promise of games.

imo iphones was jack of all trades master of none..