[SDL] Google's Mobile Android OS - SDL ???

[Bill Kendrick]

On Fri, Apr 02, 2010 at 10:07:52PM +0200, Paulo Pinto wrote:
>    Actually rewriting applications seldom make sense, on the other hand it
>    used to be quite
>    common on the gaming industry and I bet it is still done.

Definitely done in the mobile space.  Even when your target is the same
platform (e.g., all BREW or all J2ME phones), you end up tweaking your
code and building various versions to work around the bugs and limitations
of all the handsets.

If you're lucky and have someone uber-smart on your team, you can end
up with a cross-platform system where you target a thin API layer
(kinda like what we around here do with SDL!), and have the app
mostly-automatically-ported between two different platforms (i.e., the
same codebase running on J2ME _and_ BREW!)


>    Many studios focus in just one platform and outsource the work for other
>    platforms. How
>    the game is then developed is the contractor's problem.

Happened a lot in the early days, too.  "Game XYZ - By Original Programmer
(Atari 800 version by Some Other Guy)"

In some cases, the ports inherited limitations in the original platform
(like Apple II games ported to Atari and Commodore and had almost no color),
which always made me sad. :)

-bill!