We have lots of experience making Flash games but recently a client has asked us to turn this Flash game: http://special.the-raft.com/korn/game/ into a Java app game to be played on mobile phones. I've been advised that we should charge more for the mobile version of the game, but how much more? Double? I presume we'll need to redesign all of the graphics for a much smaller screen and that there's no auto conversion tool for the graphics? Is this website (GameDev.net) the best place to find Java developers who could work with the Flash source files to produce the mobile phone version? Many thanks for any advice. Nick

You should charge more for the mobile version, because development costs are almost certainly going to be higher. The reason for this is that the mobile Java handset market is very fragmented and a significant amount of effort goes into porting and testing the application across multiple devices. There's a total of roughly 40 different devices *groups* out there with more than 150 individual device types which should be supported.

To answer your question about graphics, there are no tools that I am aware of for doing this. You will most likely need to manually recreate and convert the graphics to at least three different sizes. This won't be the biggest issue however, since you will also need to redesign the gameplay to accommodate different usage patterns and input method.

Also, don't forget that once the application has been developed, it will somehow need to be installed on the user's handset. Developing the website and delivery mechanism without an existing platform is likely to be a 1-2 man month project in itself.

J2ME development is what our company, Ionsquare Ltd, specializes in, so if you're still interested, drop us an email at info at ionsquare dot com. If you'd looking for freelance developers, then the forums at Benhui might also be worth checking out.

Alternatively, you could look into mobile Flash. However, the number of devices which currently support it is low in part due to the high minimum device specs.