An Iphone port would triple fanbase

deltadawgs · Mon Mar 24, 2014 3:32 am

I just signed up because I wanted to add into the pile of suggestions about this that. A mobile port of transcendence with maybe some ads and the ability to buy the upcoming expansions would give the funding needed to continue development and give a very active and new expansion of the player base. There's very few good games for mobile devices so if this was offered cheaply or at best free as it is on computers. You would be able to make money and drastically increase the exposure the game gets. It would be worth the effort to do it if it's at all possible.

If controls are a question certain games have virtual joy sticks like FIFA 2014 or Galaxy On Fire 2. As two examples. If you had a system like this you could keep all the immediate functionality with a fire button, directional movement, and then one for rockets and probably a docking button? Then just a small menu button in the corner where you could go into the map and inventory.

If it could be done it would be worth it. I made an account just to chime in on how good of an idea this seems to be. I saw someone talking about how people on phones and ipads are casual and don't want serious lengthy games and right away I would just like to point out that all types of people have smart phones now. There's no specific segment of the population that loves 21st century technology and hates good decent games.

Sorry if this is spam or if I should have posted in another thread to voice support for this idea.

Mon Mar 24, 2014 4:25 am

This has come up multiple times and the answer has been that porting would be nontrivial. It's not just control schemes, but also the different APIs.

sun1404 · Mon Mar 24, 2014 12:26 pm

For control schemes, I'd say smartphones are even more fit to this game than computers. We can even make a new weapon type - one that fires where you touch the screen, not just straight ahead or to the target.

Yet, porting Trans to other OS is, as far as I know, impossible. It would be like making it from scratch. The only part usable in other OS would be the xml files. The engine would need to be written anew.

Mon Mar 24, 2014 11:29 pm

The item, power, and communication interfaces require more keys than a smartphone has.

sun1404 · Tue Mar 25, 2014 6:13 am

You can have an icon for each menu (items, comms, powers, disable/enable, ship screen) at the bottom and sides. Touching items, comms, power, or disable/enable calls the associated list, which can be scrolled by sliding your finger on it, which is better than arrow keys in my opinion. Touching ship screen brings up the cockpit screen normally. The buttons might get in the way occasionally, but I think it's workable.

Tue Mar 25, 2014 5:05 pm

The powers menu needs to be fast to be useful. In some cases (superconducting shield or QCPU algorithms) the use menu also needs to be fast. Menus are clunky.

Tshark9999 · Thu Mar 27, 2014 2:38 pm

Perhaps when you open the screens it pauses the game?

Fri Mar 28, 2014 5:19 pm

An iPhone/iPad port would be great, but it is difficult and not worth the effort at this point in time.

1. As Atarlost mentioned, the control scheme would need to radically change.
2. The porting effort alone would take multiple person-years of development. Transcendence is currently about a quarter-million lines of code.
3. The iPhone/iPad marketplace is saturated with games. There is no guarantee that it would get a good following without serious marketing dollars.

p.s.: Anyone who wants to try to port it is welcome to pull down the sources and do it: https://github.com/kronosaur/Transcendence The license allows non-commercial distribution (and if you want commercial distribution, we can talk).