The tech behind Riptide GP

You would think that converting a current-gen console game engine to a phone would be a daunting task.  I’m happy to report that this is not the case!  This year’s crop of smartphones with their multiple CPU cores and competent GPUs are definitely up to the task.

When we started developing Riptide GP for Tegra 2, we had certain expectations of the performance we could squeeze out of these devices.  The GPU (graphics) more or less met our expectations, so we were able to hit our graphics quality and rendering performance targets by optimizing the fragment shaders and doing more work per vertex.  However, we were completely blown away by the CPU (computation).  The dual-core ARM Coretex A9 is an amazing piece of silicon.  What’s running in Riptide GP is the same underlying water simulation that powered our previous game on the Xbox 360!

Besides our internal tech there are three key components that made Riptide GP possible:  The Android NDK, Bullet Physics, and FMOD Sound System.  The NDK allows us to write native C++ code which is then optimized for the ARM architecture.  Bullet Physics, which we use for collision detection and rigid body simulation, just worked out of the box.  FMOD Sound System released an Android version of their SDK just in time, which has been working flawlessly since the first release.

An embarrassment of riches

One of the great things about being a game developer, is people send you free hardware -- game consoles, dev kits, phones, tablets -- to work with, so you get to try out all the latest cool devices.

The most recent addition to our small but growing collection of Tegra2 stuff is 4 brand new, shiny LG G2X phones, courtesy of the good people at T-Mobile.  We're not actually holding on to these:  We're pre-installing copies of Riptide GP, and loaning them out to game review sites that don't have Tegra2 devices to play the game on.

Even though these are just passing through, I couldn't resist taking a picture of these four awesome phones, all charged up and running Riptide GP in parallel.  As I said, we've had the opportunity to try a lot of Tegra2 hardware, and although they each have their relative strengths, the G2X is one of our favorites.  It's a good size, it's nice and light, and like all Tegra2 phones it's awesome for games.

If only I could keep one for myself ... :-)

Android tablets take a bite out of iPad

We're pretty bullish on Android as a gaming platform these days, particularly with the announcement at CES this year of all the new graphically-supercharged tablets and phones coming out with Nvidia's Tegra 2 chipset.

Add to that momentum the report from CNet today that  Android tablets made huge gains against the iPad's market share in the fourth quarter of last year:

In the fourth quarter, Apple's tablet captured 75.3 percent of worldwide market share, easily besting Android-based devices' 21.6 percent share, according to market-research firm Strategy Analytics. However, those figures differ vastly from the third quarter when Apple had 95.5 percent share and Android had just 2.3 percent.

From 2.3 to 21.6 percent share in just 3 months?  That's pretty impressive.  If they can keep that momentum up, 2011 going to be a good year to be an Android developer.  

I'm not saying anything, just, you know...ahem.

Full article:  iPad loses significant share to Android tablets