AGS to iPhone/iPad (Cocos Adventure Games)

[CraZyMuffin-IPC]

After seeing the success of some classic point-and-click game ports to the iPhone (Myst, Monkey Island, Beneath a Steel Sky, etc), I have started taking a look at porting my AGS game, The Legend of Seth the Bard: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/games.php?action=detail&id=1229

Looking at the reviews and comments for the ports, it looks like they are enjoying playing this genre on the touch interface, and they are clamoring for more (both ports of classic games, and original creations).

I know my game is nothing special, and in many aspects sub-par. But it is a full-length game, and I figure its not a bad first submission to the app store.

More importantly though, my plan is to share all of the code I write to get my AGS game running on the iphone. No, I am not writing a converter for AGS->iPhone, as that is against the apple license agreement. And no, I am not implementing all AGS features (so _your AGS game here_ will not be instantly convert-able to iPhone). However, I hope to get the basic features implemented, which I hope will help others with getting their AGS games onto the iPhone.

I have started my conversion, and I am happy with what I am seeing so far, but there is a lot left to implement (I will post more tech details/questions on the Technical Form). Here are screens of the LOSTB intro sequence and main menu running on my iPad. The intro sequence runs the same as the AGS version, and the menu is fully functional (with the exception of the characters parading on screen, as I have yet to build the animations for other characters). Also added a screen of my credits room 100% complete. Starting to work on in-game rooms, attached a new screen of the starting room in all its pixelated glory.





During/after working on getting my own game to the iPhone, I would also be happy to help others with this conversion, especially other short/simple games. I will do this for free, as long as the apps I am working on are released on the iStore for free.

I will also assist with porting over commercial games, but I will require some sort of fee (either 1-time or profit-sharing) if you plan on selling it on the iStore. I am currently working as a Software Engineer / Game Design contractor, so I am always looking for additional contractor work on bigger projects.

If any of this sounds interesting to you, please respond here or shoot me an email.

[karja]

I find this very interesting. I will follow your progress closely!

[markbilly]

Wow, this is great news!

[Darth Mandarb]

I find the prospect of playing [any] games on my iPhone less than pleasing ... however, I do have an iPad (and it seems you do too from the pix) and I think it'd be a perfect platform for playing Adventure Games.  Had I any idea how to do a iPad port I would be ALL over it!!

[CraZyMuffin-IPC]

I find the prospect of playing [any] games on my iPhone less than pleasing ... however, I do have an iPad (and it seems you do too from the pix) and I think it'd be a perfect platform for playing Adventure Games.  Had I any idea how to do a iPad port I would be ALL over it!!

I totally agree. I started my conversion directly to the iPad first (as you saw in the pics), planning on ignoring the iPhone. But once I took a look at the reviews and ratings for some of the existing "point-and-touch" games currently on the iStore, the iPhone versions seem more popular (atleast more downloads), and there is not a lot of complaining about the small screen size.

I also might add that it is super super easy to release an OpenGL app that is universal (takes up the whole screen on both the iPhone and iPad, with no 2x button on iPad), so it would be CRAZY to only release a game to the iPad, and leave the larger population of iPhone users out in the cold.

I will post more techincal details in the proper forum, but the biggest thing that is making the graphics problem so easy (iphone/ipad resolutions) is because they are both the same aspect ratio as 320 x 240 (320 x 200 + perminent status bar GUI + perminent menu GUI in my game's case) and the iPhone/iPad will do all of the scaling work for you at very little processing cost (both graphics and touch input). Now if you want to release a higher resolution verison of your game for the iPad, then you have to do the extra work yourself for anything that uses coordinates.

but since my game (and many other AGS games) are low enough resolution that they will look just as good scaled up on the iPhone and iPad, in my first post iPhone == iPad

[Moogle]

YESSS!!! If this is truly possible I can start making my games for the iPad, If this work's I will be getting one very soon ;]

[markbilly]

Anyone who has released an AGS game commercially in the past, or is hoping to in the future, should be seeing $$$ right now!

[Mr Flibble]

I'd be very interested to know how you were going about doing this.

[Dave Gilbert]

I just wrote a blog entry about this last week!

Converting my stuff to the iPhone or iPad would be a huge boon, although the amount of time and/or money I'd have to invest in order to do the conversion is too high for me right now.  If someone created a iPhone/iPad equivilent of AGS, I'd be all over it. 

[Icey]

tell me, even if you are successful how do you plan to get the game on to there...i was thinking an ags app store but maybe you can just download from on the ipad and it will convert them from the device.or maybe on ags achives they can add an ipod/ipad section for converted games that you can download from there.

[CraZyMuffin-IPC]

YESSS!!! If this is truly possible I can start making my games for the iPad, If this work's I will be getting one very soon ;]

The same reason/excuse that got me to run out an grab an iPad! I started working on my conversion, but I really wanted to see my game running on an actual device.

I'd be very interested to know how you were going about doing this.

I am glad to see there is interest in this, it is making me even more excited to stay up late/not sleep, just to work on this project some more. Hopefully I will not keep you waiting much longer on the implementation/technical details. I plan to post about it soon.

I just wrote a blog entry about this last week!

Converting my stuff to the iPhone or iPad would be a huge boon, although the amount of time and/or money I'd have to invest in order to do the conversion is too high for me right now.  If someone created a iPhone/iPad equivilent of AGS, I'd be all over it.  

Thanks for the link to your blog, been looking through your excellent posts there!

My plan (at least for now, things may change) is not to create an adventure game GUI editor for iPhone (equivilent of AGS), or a 1-click conversion program from AGS->iPhone (which sounds like it would be against apple's license agreement). But the libraries I am making should be a good start. My stuff should be able to use a lot of information exported out of AGS, with the majority of the work left to do related to converting the scripts/code/modules to Objective-C syntax. (has been pretty straightforward so far)

As for the cost, yes it might take some time/money, but think of millions of iPhone/iPad users that your game will now be exposed to. Yes the iPhone game market is heavily saturated, but the Point-and-Click adventure game market is still WIDE open, and becoming more popular. (I only found a dozen total point and click games on the appStore)

Also, to help offset that cost, I would be more then happy to help out with any AGS->iphone project (free/cheap depending on if its a free or commercial game). I would like to see as many AGS games make it to the appStore as possible!

Get in touch with me when I am near completion on this project (or sooner) if you are looking for some cheap help to get yours over. (that goes for anyone)

[CraZyMuffin-IPC]

tell me, even if you are successful how do you plan to get the game on to there...i was thinking an ags app store but maybe you can just download from on the ipad and it will convert them from the device.or maybe on ags achives they can add an ipod/ipad section for converted games that you can download from there.

There are a couple ways to get a game you make for the iPhone/iPad onto the devices.

1) build your source code to your personal iPhone/iPad (requires an iPhone developer license from http://developer.apple.com/ at $99 per year) (also requires an intel-based mac)

2) send your game though apple to other people as beta testers, these copies of the game only last for a limited time period I believe. (again, requires an iPhone dev account)

3) When your game is complete and ready for release, you send it to apple then anyone can download/buy it from apple (iTunes).

4) or if you dont like apple and there need for 100% control, release your game on the jailbreak appStore. But you will not find nearly as many users there.

[CraZyMuffin-IPC]

EDIT: credits screenshot moved to main post.

I am in need of a prefix for most functions/variables, so I have decided on "cag" for Cocos Adventure Games (I am using the Cocos2d iPhone game engine, and subclassing a lot of their functions. Cocoa is the OSX touch framework, so Cocos Adventure Games = Touch Adventure Games for OSX)

This means that you will use such objects called cagCharacter, cagRoom, etc. when programming your game.

Title updated to reflect this addition.

[Clarvalon]

Coincidentally I've been playing with a Mac and the iOS sdk in the last few days, so your project is very interesting.

It seems that, whilst you're porting the game manually, you might still benefit from some automation.  You may find the XAGE Exporter plugin for AGS Editor useful, as it pulls out some game info that's otherwise held in proprietary formats (room details, etc) as xml.  You could even write a routine to automatically convert the AGS scripts into your native iPhone engine code.  As this would all be done before compilation it would not fall foul of Apple's fiddly Terms & Conditions.

Speaking of which, Apple's changes to their T&C's appear to be aimed squarely Adobe, as they really don't want the Flash -> iPhone recompiler to take off.  However it doesn't look like they're uniformly enforcing their own rules, as engines like Unity power plenty of iPhone games.  There has also been confirmation that an XnaTouch game, which relies on Mono, has been approved to the App Store.  As XAGE would rely on these libraries I'm optimistic it will become a viable platform.

Good luck!

[CraZyMuffin-IPC]

Coincidentally I've been playing with a Mac and the iOS sdk in the last few days, so your project is very interesting.

It seems that, whilst you're porting the game manually, you might still benefit from some automation.  You may find the XAGE Exporter plugin for AGS Editor useful, as it pulls out some game info that's otherwise held in proprietary formats (room details, etc) as xml.  You could even write a routine to automatically convert the AGS scripts into your native iPhone engine code.  As this would all be done before compilation it would not fall foul of Apple's fiddly Terms & Conditions.

Speaking of which, Apple's changes to their T&C's appear to be aimed squarely Adobe, as they really don't want the Flash -> iPhone recompiler to take off.  However it doesn't look like they're uniformly enforcing their own rules, as engines like Unity power plenty of iPhone games.  There has also been confirmation that an XnaTouch game, which relies on Mono, has been approved to the App Store.  As XAGE would rely on these libraries I'm optimistic it will become a viable platform.

Good luck!

Hi Clarvalon! That is good new indeed!

After I get my libraries working and my game ported over, I will have to look more into automating the conversion. I have seen your XAGE plugin to export the rooms (I read though all of your blog posts and comments, really good info in there!) and I am currently using it to pull out mostly graphics information right now (hotspots/walkable areas/objects/etc).

I will be posting some more technical discussion this weekend, and I hope you will be able to offer some advice in the areas I will be getting stuck. I am also hoping there will be some useful information you can use on your XAGE project!

[Clarvalon]

I will be posting some more technical discussion this weekend, and I hope you will be able to offer some advice in the areas I will be getting stuck. I am also hoping there will be some useful information you can use on your XAGE project!

Sure, if there's anything I can help with, let me know.

Thought you might be interested to see my progress - I finally got XAGE up and running on the iPhone/iPad emulator late last night.  There's quite a bit left to do, but hey, it runs.

Here's a quick video of Ben304's '!' running on something I promise not to call iXAGE.

[Dualnames]

That's great!!

BTW: Check your pms.

[mätzyboy]

I keep being surprised at the development of your XAGE engine, clarvalon. Good work sir!

[GarageGothic]

Didn't see this mentioned:

"Apple is loosening its grip on its app development for its mobile devices, announcing Thursday that it will drop restrictions on what programming tools developers can use to create iOS apps."  (CNN, September 10, 2010)

Not sure exactly what consequences this would have for an AGS port, but at least the Flash people seem happy about it.

Edit: More info on the Apple developer's site. You can find the released review guidelines here if you don't have a log-in. Best quote: "We don't need any more Fart apps."

I promise not to call iXAGE

That's a shame actually, I quite like the ring of it. Not sure how you pronounce it, but applying my own "hearing" of XAGE as "sage" would make iXAGE sound like "ice age" - to me that's pretty damn cool (no pun intended). Great work anyhow, clarvalon. I'll probably shoot you a PM within a couple of days, because this whole cross-platform AGS idea really intrigues me and I'd like to hear your thoughts on a related project that I'm planning.

[Clarvalon]

Yeah, I mentioned Apple's new T&Cs on the dev blog - it's perfect timing really, as not only is the iPhone version of the engine technically viable but it's now also legitimate for App Store distribution.  Good news all round, really.

As for pronunciation, 'eye-Sage' for iXAGE hadn't occurred to me.  I tend to stick with 'Ex-Ay-Gee-Eee', though anything's fine.  That anyone at all is curious about pronunciation is weirdly gratifying.