Made For Games

1

Made For Games Mobile Hardware Revisited Tim
Closs CTO, Ideaworks3D Ltd.
2
About Ideaworks3D

• Independent game developer and middleware
  provider for mobile and handheld gaming, London,
  LA and Kyoto offices.
• Two divisions, with broad base of clients and
  partners

3
Recent Ideaworks3D Game Projects
Dirge of Cerberus Lost Episode Final Fantasy
VII
Need For Speed Most Wanted
PGR Mobile (native versions)
The Sims 2 Mobile
Winner 2004 / 2005
System Rush Evolution
4
NOT Made for Games!
1 - voice/SMS 2 - internet, music, imaging,
video, navigation, enterprise 3 - other, e.g.
games
5
Previous Attempts
6
Make The Most Of It

• Unlikely well see their like again
• Innovate around existing hardware
• Game developers know how to do this
• Compare the PC mouse keyboard

7
Breaking It Down

• INPUT
• OUTPUT
• CONNECTIVITY

8
Input Pads/Sticks

• Sadly not much improvement
• Yet to see pad like N-Gage QD
• Very few 8-way pads
• Unlikely to change
• Stuck with 4-way digital

9
Input Pads/Sticks
10
Input Touch Screens

• May be most interesting development
• Main enabler is UIQ and Sony Ericsson
• SE have 7 devices, Moto 4, HTC, LG, Apple

11
Input Touch Screens
Drivers from other user experiences
12
Input Touch Screens
13
Input Keyboards
Smartphone or PDA?
14
Input Microphone

• Underused every phone has one!
• Accessible on most devices
• Again, mobile squares up to DS!
• Very limited as a controller

15
Input Camera

• Lots of potential, starting to be exploited
• Accessible on many devices
• Most OSs allow real-time image grab
• Optical flow algorithms etc. for motion
• Other innovative uses other than motion

16
Input Camera
?
17
Input Developer Challenges

• Make use of interesting interfaces
• Game must still work without
• Run-time querying of interfaces
• Requiring high performance from any interface
  limits its use

18
Output - Display
The good news

• QVGA becoming standard
• RAZR2 2.2, N95 2.6, iPhone 3.5
• CIF and VGA on enterprise devices
• Sharp, well-lit LCDs becoming the norm

19
Output - Display
The bad news

• QVGA without hardware acceleration
• QVGA with ARM9
• Performance of embedded graphics software very
  poor on these devices

e.g. JBenchmark for JSR-184 Nokia 6630 (QCIF)
225, Nokia N71 (QVGA)170
20
Output Landscape Gaming

• Actually a software issue
• Some devices allow physical rotation
• Makes games play more like handheld

21
Output Graphics Hardware
Lots of good news, but slow progress

• Video/mobile TV driving presence of GPUs
• Single API (OpenGL ES) to address
• Mobile GPU market very competitive

22
Output Graphics Hardware
23
Output Graphics Hardware

• Not yet taking over dont believe the mobile
  TV hype!
• OEMs still have non-accelerated handsets on
  their roadmaps
• Serious challenges with QVGA
• Adoption of ARM11 will help
• Fast software rendering still required

24
Output Developer Challenges

• Must run in all resolutions, from 176x208 up to
  480x640
• Must run in portrait/landscape
• Must exploit hardware where available (through
  OpenGL ES)
• Must still perform well in software, even at
  higher resolutions

25
Connectivity 3G

• 3G base band flat-rate tariffs good
• 45 million 3G subs in EU, overtaken Japan
• Operators need to increase 1Mb limit
• Flat-rate enables episodic delivery

26
Connectivity Wi-Fi/Bluetooth

• Wi-Fi not a viable target for games - yet
• Bluetooth potentially underused
• Hard to persuade publishers to allocate the
  budget

27
Conclusions
Good news

• Touch screens, cameras
• Displays, GPUs
• 3G uptake

Challenges

• Designers must accommodate multiple interfaces
• Engine coders must accommodate screen formats
• Graphics coders skilled in SW and HW

28
Thank you
Tim Closs CTO, Ideaworks3D Ltd. tim_at_ideaworks3d.
com