🔒 Locked

iPhone game graphics programming

Started by WarPug May 11, 2009 at 9:39 AM 3 replies 2k views

Original Post

May 11, 2009 at 9:39 AM

Hi, I'm planning on porting my Flash game to the iPhone. It's a straightforward Atari 'Combat' style game with a few twists. I'm trying to decide whether to use the Quartz API to implement the rendering engine or dive into the OpenGL ES APIs instead. Being a Flash based game means my rendering code is mostly sprites and some vector graphics for alpha blending and special effects so I don't believe I necessarily need the hardware acceleration OpenGL ES provides and Quartz seems like a better match to Flash since they are both vector based. However, I would hate to discover that performance is not acceptable using Quartz and then have to switch gears in mid-stream. Be great to hear if anyone has experience with both Quartz and OpenGL ES and can describe what context the APIs are appropriate for. Are most of the simple games in the App store OpenGL? Or are they a mix? Thanks.

darkpegasus

May 12, 2009 at 9:35 AM

It sounds like Quartz is all you need if you're just drawing some simple sprites. OpenGL ES has far more code to get started and can be much more difficult to debug if you're only using it for 2D and this is your first time.

The Quartz API is pretty straight forward and the iPhone hardware is good too so you should be fine.

Matt_D

May 13, 2009 at 12:02 AM

if you wrap your renderer nicely, you can swap to whichever api you want to use.

opengl es isnt that hard to get your head around, and you can access opengl from C/C++ without having to jump through too many obj-c hoops.

best advice would be to just pick one, and go :)

diazed129

May 13, 2009 at 1:57 AM

Ya! Bump!!!!!!!!!

EDUmobileORG

May 22, 2009 at 2:56 AM

I would recommend OpenGL ES any day...because once you learn it you have mastered a very handy skill set. I think QUartz may be a bit limited, and may not help you fully and in future projects. You will probably have to learn OpenGL ES anyway sooner or later ... so better to do it sooner!

Topic Locked

This topic has been locked by a moderator. New replies are not allowed.