A type of game that is designed to run on a dedicated gaming system. Examples of such systems include PlayStation, Nintendo GameCube, Nintendo DS, Nintendo Wii, and Xbox, to name but a few. Such systems include dedicated graphics hardware for rendering high-quality, on-screen graphics.
Published in Chapter:
From Single to Multiplayer Mobile Bluetooth Gaming
Daniel C. Doolan (University College Cork, Ireland), Kevin Duggan (University College Cork, Ireland), Sabin Tabirca (University College Cork, Ireland), and Laurence T. Yang (St. Francis Xavier University, Canada)
Copyright: © 2009
|Pages: 11
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-60566-046-2.ch040
Abstract
The growth of mobile phone sales is phenomenal, with estimated sales for 2007/2008 expected to be approximately $1 billion. The majority of these devices are Java-enabled, giving rise to a huge market within the realm of computer games. Most of today’s mobile games are designed to execute on as many phones as possible. Thus, they focus on MIDP 1.0 technology; such devices have very limited resources compared to the top-of-the-line phones of today. The primary reason for this is to maximize profits by having the game reach as wide a potential market as possible. Mobile technology is ever advancing, and the capabilities of the lower-end devices will continue to improve. Perhaps in the not-too-distant future, we will see all of the lower-end mobiles Bluetooth-enabled and supporting more advanced Java implementations. This chapter examines the world of mobile gaming. In particular, it looks at what is needed to produce a single-player game and what elements are necessary to modify it to allow for multiplayer gaming over a Bluetooth network. A framework is presented to allow for the rapid transformation of a single-player to multiplayer game, along with a game engine that can be used for the development of the graphical elements, such as the background and sprites. The multiplayer framework makes use of the Mobile Message Passing Interface (MMPI) to simplify the creation of the network connections and interdevice communication.