Making Games For Mobiles

[ART_Adventures]

Hi People,

I've been programming in DirectX and C++ for quite a while and I would really like to move into the world of mobile phone game programming. I've not programmed using mobile phones before, so I'm a real beginner in this area. I was wondering if someone could point me in a good direction as to where I can find information for getting started. I googled for this, and there's so much information, some geared towards those already experienced with this kind of thing.

I have MS Visual Studio .NET 2003. What else do I need? Where can I get it etc?

Thanks.

[hauptman]

Depends. Most mobile phones support Jave2ME.
http://java.sun.com/j2me/index.jsp

With this you can program most modern mobiles. (look out at the websites of the companies. They often offer emulators and so on for their products)

Another thing would be Smartphones or Pocket PCs. If they're running with an old Windows CE, you'll need embedded C++/Visual Basic, but if it is running with Windows 2003 you can simply go with the .net Compact Framework.

[geon]

Most phons run java. I on't think VS support that. Sorry for brokn kybor.

[Jufa]

symbian or java.

[Cybrid]

I think that the ide you'll be most compfortable with is JBuilder 2005 from Borland Enterprises. Most of the mobile phones, support java and JBuilder has a special module dedicated solely to Mobile development.

[weevil]

Yeah JBuilder is an excellent choice if you wan't to develop j2me. You need to download the wireless toolkit sdk from sun's site to get starting. Also, because of the limitations of MIDP 1.0 virtually every mobile phone vendor has their own API which extends the functionality of the phone.

Alot of modern phones also supports that you compile c++ to it's native processor. Symbian for nokia series 60+ phones, and Sony/Erricsons are called mofun or something. Naturally this gives you a substatial boost in performance, but makes it alot harder to port your game to other phones.