| A cross-platform game engine sounds awesome. But I wonder what kind of game can truly be write-once, run-everywhere, and considered "fun" on all platforms. A few major challenges: - Designing a game that is fun and intuitive to play with a wide variety of input controllers (touch, mouse, keyboard, joystick). - Handling the entire spectrum of screen resolutions, from older iPhones to high-end desktop computers. The game would also probably need to work in both portrait and landscape modes. - The QA effort alone could be huge. Testing on quirky desktop browsers or buggy Android devices alone could be a dealbreaker. - I'd argue that the time spent trying to figure out a game design or technical workaround for a particular platform would be better spent focusing on one platform and making the game more fun. In my experience, trying to make a fun game involves a lot of trial and error and iteration, and I personally don't think I could do it if I also had to keep in mind multiple distinct target platforms. I can envision a couple one-button games like Angry Birds or Tiny Wings possibly having a chance, but even in those cases, I'd argue it'd be better to nail one platform first and then incrementally add other platforms instead of spreading oneself too thin. |
I am writing a simple puzzle game, and am doing a totally different UI level for even mouse and touch. For example when dragging, with touch it is nice to offset the piece so it is easier to see, whereas with mouse you probably want it dead-center.