Inauguration of the Flash Lite player on the Nokia N95..with what else but a game

Following all the talk on blogs and websites about a recently touted multimedia computer phone, I finally gifted myself a Nokia N95 last weekend... and was I the envy of all around me!

My first expression after getting a grip of the phone was - "What can I do to inaugurate the phone?", and the answer was very simple....to do what I am good at, ie. develop a game in Flash Lite and play it on the phone!

So thats what I have been working on for the past 2 days, a simple game called Bust the Blocks developed in Flash Lite version 2.x. The game concept is very simple where the user has to bust 3 similar colored blocks by moving them around the grid.

I wouldn't consider this one of my best games, because most of them involves a team effort, but this one is good enough to be downloaded and played. I have provided the link below to download and play it on the phone for entertainment purpose only.

Link to Bust the Blocks
Distribution of this game/other developer's game on any website without the author's permission is illegal and should be reported immediately.

Some pointers for the game -

1. Developed in a resolution of 240X320 (will upload a version in resolution of 176X208)
   
2. Works on phones supporting FL 2.x
3. Features are yet to be added...suggestions are welcome (will upload new file in a few days)
   
4. Designers are welcome to help make the game more visually appealing :)

Flash Lite on Handango – A Reality Check

I have been following the Flash Lite content spill on Handango and have observed a number of points which I hope will get noticed for the benefit of the community and the technology –

1. Pricing of content needs immediate attention.
While browsing through the content I noticed that while there are some games priced at a range of $5-10, there are some also priced at $0.50. The pricing of wallpapers is even more shocking with some of them being priced at $4.99!!

With uneven pricing of content, I wonder if users are really paying to download content, or rather even having faith in the content?

According to me, a good price for games on Handango (which are not even a Single A Titles) should be approximately between $1-3 and wallpapers around $0.25-0.50, which can be maintained across the content.

2. No monitoring on content quality
There is no monitoring on the quality of content going up on Handango. Developers are coming up with varied content and pushing it on the portal with the intension of getting great downloads. Serious quality content developers are then getting lost amongst the populaters.

3. High downloads for free content and humble downloads for paid content
Free content on Handango is seeing more acceptance and testing, than content that is paid. Could this also stem from the fact that the content quality and pricing are not monitored?


I feel that if developers are serious about the technology and want it to be accepted positively on a wider scale, they should try forming a community and coming to a consensus about their sale strategy, instead of just building Flash Lite content and putting it up at Handango at a price convenient to them! Infact the team at Handango can help developers build such community on their portal itself.

It would be great if I could get some feedback on this topic because I have been thinking about it since a long time.

Survival of the fittest – Flash Lite, Silverlight Embedded or JavaFX Mobile?

There seems to be a splurge of new technologies being introduced in the recent months by the biggies. Just when serious debates had actually begun making rounds comparing Microsoft’s Silverlight technology to Adobe’s Flash technology, yesterday there was yet another announcement made by Sun Microsystems at the JavaOne Conference in San Francisco.

Sun introduced the JavaFX platform focused exclusively for rich application development (RIA), placing it on the same platform as Adobe’s Flash/Flex and Microsoft’s Silverlight development environment.

According to the announcement made, the first product which would be introduced of the JavaFX family would be the JavaFX Mobile. Sun plans to sell the JavaFX Mobile directly to the handset manufacturers and at the same time also give away its open-source JavaFX Script for developers to use to create applications for the 5 billion devices that already run Java.

Read this article for more news

As a developer I’d only like to comment by saying that there is absolutely no doubt that Java ME has always ruled on mobiles. Although it has had a successful round of 6 years, and is now considered to be graying, launching of the JavaFX Mobile may be a great move by Sun to inject a new life into it. A move to also prevent developer conversion and divert the media attention from Flash Lite. They might also be hoping to attract developers to get back to developing better and richer mobile content with a technology they are most familiar with.

Silverlight Embedded still has a long way to go in proving itself, but Flash Lite which is currently in news will have to penetrate much more across regions for consumers to gain faith in it. Apart from US and Japan, Flash Lite is yet to see a carrier and consumer adoption on a large scale like Java on mobiles.

In Conversation with Ian Livingstone

I had the opportunity to meet and hear one of the biggest author and entrepreneur in the field of gaming - Ian Livingstone.

Ian was in Mumbai celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the world famous icon - Lara Croft, a character he and his team have been associated with since a long time. The videos of the Tomb Raider Anniversary looked really awesome!

His presentation titled "Life is a Game" spoke in depth about his life, starting right from the time he and his friends who were right out of college created fliers about games they played, to the opening of his store - Games Workshop, and then his role as an author for books like Fighting Fantasy and the extremely popular Deathtrap Dungeon.

Today he is a Creative Director at Eidos in UK and is completely involved in promoting one of their biggest IPs - Lara Croft. There were a number of points he made during his presentation about game development which he felt has made him very successful -

1. Always be original and never copy ideas. A character like Lara Croft was concieved when the gaming space was completely dominated by male character based games. The innovation lied in creating a tough, confident yet sexy character for a game that would appeal to all genders.
2. Gameplay is the most important aspect of any game. A lot of game developers give a weightage to graphics but experience has shown that if a gameplay is weak even the best looking game will fail.
3. Market analysis was not considered very important a couple of years back, but today it is a very important aspect of game development. Every game you create should go through some focus test to know its viability in the market and amongst the masses.
4. Its always best to create your own successful IP (Intellectual Property) than licence one. Lara Croft is a good example of a simple game character getting successful. There are Lara Croft games created on a variey of consoles, she represents brands in advertisements, she has made it across to the movies, she has branded merchandise....and she has made billions for her creators.
5. Sticking to conventions. Lara Croft was known to be a character who lives at exotic locales and tradional tombs, so getting her to the modern streets of Paris failed with the audiences.
6. Quality is more important than Quantity. You would never hear a person saying that the movie was bad but atleast it 10 hours long!
7. A game or any software the most important thing. Nobody will purchase a hardware or console if there is no great software.

When Ian was asked the question of who would he select from Bollywood (The Indian Film Industry) for the role of Lara Croft, his prompt reply was Shilpa Shetty because she was the only actress he knew from the Big Brother controversy in UK.

Overall it was a great experience, and I am glad I got to be a part of it.

Mariam

BlueskyNorth recounts its success story with The Journal

In this short story covered by the icNewCastle, Paul Lamonby of BlueskyNorth (a leading Flash Lite content development company) talks about the growth of his company, his team and their plans for game releases with operators across Europe.

One of their expected launches is a game called Fickle Blocks on the Orange Mobile Phone networks.

Airtel - India's largest telecom service provider launches Flash Lite

Airtel which is India's largest telecom service provider today launched Flash Lite content via their WAP portal - Airtel Live!

They have a upto 4 pages of Flash Lite games listed which are priced at the Indian Currency of Rupees 50, - a good enough rate for single A titles. Currently the games are supported on S60 2nd Edition and 3rd Edition phones. For those users holding older devices, instructions are provided to visit the Adobe website to download the player before playing the games.

The launch may see its set of teething problems but atleast it reflects the Indian community's acceptance of Flash Lite content for their Flash enabled handsets.

Flash Lite Article - Introducing Adobe Device Central CS3

With the launch of CS3, Adobe has a new article up on their Dev Centre Introducing the Adobe Device Central CS3 authored by Winston Wang, Senior Product Manager for Mobile Authoring at Adobe.

The article lists the features of the Device Central and also gives interesting points on the challenges and promises of working with mobiles.

Device Central CS3 will help simplify mobile content creation

The Creative Suite 3 will be one of the better launches by Adobe this year, especially for mobile content creators like us.

Many developers currently using the Flash Lite emulator might have thought if the code they're writing will run with the same consistency and speed on the device as it would on the PC. And 90% of the times this proved to be true.

But with the Device Central, developers will be able to preview their work and test mobile content instantly within their authoring environments. They would also be able to interact with the content in the same way as they would on a real phone.

According to an article on MacWorld, Device Central will feature a built-in library of more than 200 mobile device profiles from Nokia and Sony Ericsson, among others and operators such as Verizon, so users can view at-a-glance details on the capabilities, constraints and features of individual devices. The profiles will be continuously updated by Adobe as new phones come out.

Says Anup Murarka, Adobe’s Director for Technical Marketing, Mobile and Devices about the CS3 launch, “In many ways it’s an extension of what we are doing in the rest of the company. How do people reach their customers in print, Web and increasingly on mobile phones. It extends everything Adobe has done on other media to mobile."

Apple iPhones being sold on eBay although shipping is scheduled for June 2007

I read this crazy news today which stated that E-bay had the exclusive Apple iPhones up for sale on their website, and nearly 23 people fell for the scam by agreeing to purchase the phones for large sums. The highest bidder of this transaction agreed to pay $1125 for 1 of the 6 phones that had been put up for sale.

This is probably one of the best examples of the frenzy that the iPhone has got the people into. I can equate this sitaution to a Harry Potter book where people are willing to pay huge amounts just to get hold of the initial unedited copy....

Can't imagine what the actual phone launch will do in June!

Sony Ericsson anounces new Walkman phones at CTIA

Via biskero, Sony Ericsson announced new Walkman phone W580 at CTIA which are Flash Lite enabled - W580i and W888c.

The slim music phones are said to deliver a full walkman experience along with gaming, imaging and fitness applications.

Says Najmi Jarwala, president, Sony Ericsson Mobile Communications (USA) Inc. "The W580, the latest in our extensive line of Walkman phones, is exceptionally cool looking. But most importantly it was designed first and foremost for the needs of North American consumers who want to listen to their favorite music on the go with the one device they always carry with them -- their mobile phone."

Amp'd reinvents Motorola Q with a Flash Lite UI

According to the news on GearLog

"Youth-oriented mobile carrier Amp'd got their first smartphone today in the Motorola Q - but this isn't quite the Q you know from Verizon and Sprint. Amp'd has completely redone the user interface in Adobe's Flash Lite, into an animated carnival of ... well, it looks a lot like Amp'd's animated Amp'd Live interface on their other phones. The Q also plays Amp'd TV and all of Amp'd's content - a real breath of fresh air compared to other carriers who don't have versions of their popular entertainment apps for smartphones. And it's still a Q, which means that you can send e-mail, sync with your PC, and maybe even get some work done."

The magic word is Flash Lite which makes up the phone's UI. I remember Amp'd hiring Flash Lite UI designers sometime last year...and I guess we now know why.

The phone would go on sale sometime in April for $199 on the Amp'd website.

Flash Lite games launch in APAC

Sometime back I had posted an entry talking about Iguana Mobiles launching Flash Lite content in Singapore. Well, they are finally out with the games on their website and this time the games can be puchased online in countries like Brunei Darussalam, China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Taiwan.

The games are downloaded through GPRS over WAP on the users phone. It feels good to see the Flash Lite Ecosystem operating in full swing in APAC.

Link to the Iguana Mobile Flash page for Indiagames
Link to the Iguana Mobile Flash page for CELL

You can also check the list of other publishers who have a catalogue of Flash and Java games.

Adobe MAX 2007 - Call for Topics

The MAX Conference in North America is going to be held in Chicago this year during the first week of October. The good news for developers living in other regions like Europe and Japan is that they are going to be having their own MAX too.

Adobe wants developers/designers to suggest topics for this conference. Please visit http://www.adobemax2007.com/topics/ and suggest a topic.

I guess the topics suggested will apply uniformly to all regions, so take your pick and and be assured that if Adobe finds your topic convincing enough, it will definitely be a part of the MAX agenda this year.

Iguana Mobile Singapore launches Indiagames Flash Lite Content via Nokia's Flash Channel on NCD

Our working closely with the Iguana Mobile and the Nokia team to launch our Flash Lite content in APAC finally bore its fruit this week when I received a mail saying that our games for Nokia S60 and wallpapers/screensavers for Nokia S40 had launched.

The games would be available though the Nokia Content Discoverer(NCD), which is an on-device content portal displaying a catalogue of varied wireless content. The Flash Lite category is the latest addition to this mobile portal.

To be precise, we launched 9 of our games for all the Flash Lite supported handsets on Nokia S60 and around 5 wallpapers/screensavers for each sceen resolution of Nokia S40.

Currently the games are available locally in Singapore. But we are hoping that the game downloads will pick up momentum and we will see our catalogue available with more carriers worldwide.

Flash Lite article - Porting J2ME game to Flash Lite

My new article on Porting a J2ME game to Flash Lite went live on the Adobe Developer Center today.

This is the third of my articles after the ones done on Persistent Data : Shared Objects and Best Practices for Mobile Game Development.

This new article is a real view of one of our J2ME games which we ported for Flash Lite on the Nokia S60 handset. It talks of the challenges we faced during porting and what methods we adopted to ease future porting.

I have tried making it as comprehensive as possible, but it would be great if anybody who has been involved in this kind of a porting process contribute to it through this post.

FlashCast showcased at 3GSM

Adobe and Viacom's MTV Networks are showcasing the new mobile media applications on mobiles at the 3GSM event this year according to this press release.

According to Greg Clayman, Senior Vice President of MTV Networks' Mobile Media -
“The MTV, VH1, COMEDY CENTRAL and Logo FlashCast channels that we are jointly demonstrating at 3GSM are indicative of the rich experiences that can be created on the handset when the power of programming meets the power of technology. With FlashCast technology, we’re able to create innovative mobile experiences that allow our viewers to connect with the music, comedy and entertainment programming they love.”

Last year during MAX there were several partners for the Flash Lite launch on Verizon including us with the release of "The Office Games", based on NBC's sitcom The Office.

This year too Adobe as partnered and introduced a new technology of content development with FlashCast for the 3GSM.

Omega Mobile Launches Winter Themed Wallpapers and Screensavers

Omega Mobile is in news once again! Yes....but this time its for a launch of its winter themed wallapapers and screensavers called Hyper Screenz.

The content is dynamic and changes according to the time of the day, signal strength or battery level. Omega has not mentioned the handset it is targetting but says it is open for anybody who wishes to license and deploy the content. They also mention that the content can be customized to suit any brand if it wishes to.

Read more about Hyper Screenz......here


Flash Lite wallpapers and screensavers are really big on the Nokia S40 handsets. Sony Ericssons too support Flash Lite content in browser mode. Verizon too has support for Flash Lite screensavers....

Its a big open market for varied content and Omega Mobile is at it!

2007, the year of mobile widgets?

Recently I read a small brief written by Anders Borg, CEO and Consultant for Abiro and spoke about the AJAX technology and its possibility of coming on mobiles.

According to Anders "The main competitor to "AJAX" solutions is no doubt Flash Lite yet most (all?) mobile widget platforms run on top of MIDP, which is a benefit compared to Flash Lite, that's typically embedded (and hence must come with the phone)."

I wonder what the AJAX and Flash Lite developers have to say about this?

Omega Mobile Launches a Complimentary 3GSM Conference Buddy Mobile Flash Lite Application

Omega Mobile, a leading mobile content developer has launched a new Flash Lite Application specifically for the 3GSM Conference to be held in Barcelona, Spain this year.

The application is called " 3GSM Conference Buddy" and is created for the Wireless World Forum by Omega Mobile to be distributed to the conference attandees to stay connected with others at the conference. W2Forum wants to distribute this application free of cost at its booth and has also made it available for download from their website.

The application has features such as prewritten text messages, pre-programmed calls to services in Barcelona and even a message to send to a loved one on Valentine's Day.

An interesting combination of features......

Its good to know that Flash Lite will be accessed by many 3GSM attendees during the conference. While travelling to a new city for a conference, its always good to have emergency numbers on you, and the Conference Buddy will help people do just that.

Unfortunately I will not be able to make it to 3GSM this year, but for those those who do attend it, please download this application for your own utilization. And for those who will not attend it...well its available to you as well....so go ahead and download it.

Adobe's Narayen sees growth in video, mobile arena

Infoworld conducted an interview with Adobe's President and CEO talking about all the plans that have been envisioned for the worldwide developer community.

What is really interesting is Narayen's views on Flash Lite and the to be launched Flash Cast technology. What he also mentions is in the future Apollo, the runtime will also be mobile-aware.

An very interestig interview to read.