March 28th, 2008 by Arjan Olsder Posted in Platforms: iOS | No Comments »
Innaworks is releasing the beta of a Java development solution for Apple’s iPhone. With this new development tool, porting mobile games to the iPhone could become even more easy.
The new ‘Alchemo for iPhone’ supports development of mobile games in J2me or Java ME. The platform will instantly port the game to the native iPhone language without any changes.
Stephen Cheng, CEO of Innaworks, said, "With the expected introduction of iPhone’s AppStore in June, iPhone is emerging as a serious gaming platform. We are amazed by the effectiveness of the touch screen and accelerometer on enhancing gaming experience. We expect the early backers among game publishers to significantly benefit from their first mover advantage. alcheMo for iPhone will help mobile game publishers to reach the eagerly awaiting gamers with quality games on iPhone and iPod touch."
AlcheMo for iPhone incorporates a patent-pending optimizing translator to convert Java ME application source code to equivalent application source code for iPhone. Compiled using an iPhone tool-chain and linked with alcheMo’s optimized run-time library, a native iPhone application is produced. alcheMo for iPhone is capable of converting Java ME applications utilizing an extensive subset of Java ME CLDC 1.1 and MIDP 2.0 (including touch screen support) and supports several JSR extension APIs including the JSR-256 mobile sensor API. Advanced language features such as Java-style exception handling, multithreading, synchronization, interfaces, and inner classes are supported. alcheMo’s run-time library incorporates a garbage collector for automatic memory management.
"The translation technology behind alcheMo for iPhone has been time tested on alcheMo for BREW, which powers many of the high profile BREW game titles today. "Urban Attack is one of Vivendi’s most technologically complex games. This award winning first person shooter provides an immersive 3D gaming experience on even low end handsets," said Eric Huynh, CTO of Vivendi Mobile Games of alcheMo for BREW. "It was therefore an incredible achievement that alcheMo enabled a Vivendi J2ME engineer with no previous BREW experience to deliver Urban Attack onto a wide spread of BREW handsets. The alcheMo-optimized BREW SKUs delivered a very smooth gaming experience despite the complex graphics and heavy computation."
