I completely support your decision to drop Android like a hot potato.
In the two weeks since starting as a senior graphics engineer at a middleware company who shall remain nameless, I have learned from coworkers about, or personally experienced:
- Drivers that crash if you try to actually use all of the texture formats they claim to support
- Drivers that crash if you try to actually use certain ARBs that they report as supported
- Drivers that report supporting 128 shader uniforms but crash if you try to access anything past the first 64
- Drivers that report supporting various OpenGL ARBs but actually have a software path
in fact, I don't believe there has been a single Android device that has come out so far that is actually point-for-point compliant with the requirements for OpenGL ES 2.0, yet they have no problems claiming to support it nowadays.
GPU support on Android is utterly atrocious, and I've managed to learn this in all of two weeks at my new job.
As someone that's on the verge of porting some 3D code to OpenGL ES 2.0, this is awfully depressing. :(
With all respects, why is that comment either a) at all credible, or b) informative? It is by an anonymous person at some nebulous "middleware" company (not a description I would ascribe to someone concerned with Android GPUs...).
The problem with this discussion -- it is ostensibly an iOS versus Android discussion, as if developers have the luxury of just developing for iOS and the market will follow (hint: ha! Android made most of its gains when there little to no apps for it. Apps like Netflix and others followed but didn't lead. Now you could fill your day trying out new games and apps) -- is that there are a lot of very, very strongly biased individuals and parties, and the discussion gets completely crowded out by what often ends up being bullshit (though it takes a lot of legwork and endless excluding to actually discern that). What I like to see are specifics, but they are shockingly hard to come by. Lots of vagaries and second-hand accounts of profound all-encompassing difficulties, but never specifics that could be vetted, if only to offer a fix or different approach.
In this case of the linked story the vendors used Unity 3D -- why they were even writing specific shaders (double shocking given that their top-down sprite graphics, if I am understanding their apps right, are the most bog standard shaders going) is a mystery.
There seems to be a market for some kind of game framework for Android. Game developers shouldn't have to spend effort on specializing in Android hardware support.
"We spent about 20% of our total man-hours last year dealing with Android in one way or another - porting, platform specific bug fixes, customer service, etc. I would have preferred spending that time on more content for you, but instead I was thanklessly modifying shaders and texture formats to work on different GPUs, or pushing out patches to support new devices without crashing, or walking someone through how to fix an installation that wouldn't go through. We spent thousands on various test hardware."
I think we could get an economy of scale if someone who enjoyed this kind of work would supply a useful platform for game devs.
The thing is, Mika Mobile already uses Unity, arguably one of the better cross platform development tools. If they are having this problem, imagine what a dev using his own libraries and porting tools is dealing with.
That makes a lot of sense. Maybe I'm oversimplifying but if Windows is to Mac OS what Android is to iOS, then Android needs its DirectX to make game development easier.
I get it from blog mikamobile.blogspot.com to reach mikamobile.com. Zombieville by them is also popular in iOS. They use a 3D Unity engine to built their 2D games.
One of the main reasons i haven't really gotten into Android development is i really don't know what i am targeting.
I think if there was some sort of standardised tier system for categorizing hardware capabilities (e.g. tier 1 = basic, tier 2 = supports 3d, tier 3 = quad core powerhouse), it would help immensely.
To be even more fair, the problem he details has been mentioned by a number of Android developers:
"There's a big difference between generating revenue, and "making money" - It's not that they haven't generated income, but that income is offset by the additional support costs the platform has demanded. Where did your dollar go? We spent about 20% of our total man-hours last year dealing with Android in one way or another - porting, platform specific bug fixes, customer service, etc.[...] We spent thousands on various test hardware. These are the unsung necessities of offering our apps on Android. Meanwhile, Android sales amounted to around 5% of our revenue for the year, and continues to shrink. Needless to say, this ratio is unsustainable."
This is a major problem (that actually encompasses several problems often mentioned with Android) that countless developers face, and that will not be addressed anytime soon.
I think the most notable part of this story is the...notability....of it. There are literally tens of thousands of developers on the Android market -- including many long time denizens -- but one (purportedly) quits and it gets spread far and wide: I've now seen this linked on a number of blogs, news sites, and social news lists.
Why? I would argue that it speaks to an audience's bias.
I think the most interesting thing about this company is that their games are, by most respects, quite successful on the Android market. A $3.00 game selling more than 50,000 copies. Another selling 100,000+. Another selling 100,000+. Perhaps they got all of their sales during a sale, but their base metrics seem quite good.
I can't speak to their situation or frustration, but will make a couple of remarks for prospective Android devs-
a) Cut out the crap: Don't desperately try to reach 100% of the Android base because that just sets you up for a world of pain, which I suspect is their core issue. Cut out low-end handsets, with the basest filter being Gingerbread+ at this point.
b) There are actually only a handful of GPUs in use across all of the different devices (Adreno, PowerVR, Tegra2/3, Mali). Understand the GPUs, not the handsets.
c) If you can't handle the work, which apparently this company couldn't, subcontract. They apparently had a successful product but they couldn't tolerate the work involved. I guarantee that if they offered it out for profit sharing to a contractor they would have many well-rated prospects.
You make interesting points here. What are we supposed to generalize from this dev's experience? That Android is doomed?
It does say something about what some mobile devs have come to expect from a development experience. While IOS is never mentioned once in the post, the comparison is implied in every paragraph. While this is far from damning for Android, it's worth keeping in mind as competition for developer mindshare escalates.
[+] [-] Irfaan|14 years ago|reply
I completely support your decision to drop Android like a hot potato.
In the two weeks since starting as a senior graphics engineer at a middleware company who shall remain nameless, I have learned from coworkers about, or personally experienced:
- Drivers that crash if you try to actually use all of the texture formats they claim to support - Drivers that crash if you try to actually use certain ARBs that they report as supported - Drivers that report supporting 128 shader uniforms but crash if you try to access anything past the first 64 - Drivers that report supporting various OpenGL ARBs but actually have a software path
in fact, I don't believe there has been a single Android device that has come out so far that is actually point-for-point compliant with the requirements for OpenGL ES 2.0, yet they have no problems claiming to support it nowadays.
GPU support on Android is utterly atrocious, and I've managed to learn this in all of two weeks at my new job.
As someone that's on the verge of porting some 3D code to OpenGL ES 2.0, this is awfully depressing. :(
[+] [-] huggyface|14 years ago|reply
The problem with this discussion -- it is ostensibly an iOS versus Android discussion, as if developers have the luxury of just developing for iOS and the market will follow (hint: ha! Android made most of its gains when there little to no apps for it. Apps like Netflix and others followed but didn't lead. Now you could fill your day trying out new games and apps) -- is that there are a lot of very, very strongly biased individuals and parties, and the discussion gets completely crowded out by what often ends up being bullshit (though it takes a lot of legwork and endless excluding to actually discern that). What I like to see are specifics, but they are shockingly hard to come by. Lots of vagaries and second-hand accounts of profound all-encompassing difficulties, but never specifics that could be vetted, if only to offer a fix or different approach.
In this case of the linked story the vendors used Unity 3D -- why they were even writing specific shaders (double shocking given that their top-down sprite graphics, if I am understanding their apps right, are the most bog standard shaders going) is a mystery.
[+] [-] AnthonBerg|14 years ago|reply
"We spent about 20% of our total man-hours last year dealing with Android in one way or another - porting, platform specific bug fixes, customer service, etc. I would have preferred spending that time on more content for you, but instead I was thanklessly modifying shaders and texture formats to work on different GPUs, or pushing out patches to support new devices without crashing, or walking someone through how to fix an installation that wouldn't go through. We spent thousands on various test hardware."
I think we could get an economy of scale if someone who enjoyed this kind of work would supply a useful platform for game devs.
[+] [-] illumin8|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] doodyhead|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanBC|14 years ago|reply
I'm not asking for huge banners or marquee scrolling, just a plain simple text link on first mention.
[+] [-] jemeshsu|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidwparker|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jamesu|14 years ago|reply
I think if there was some sort of standardised tier system for categorizing hardware capabilities (e.g. tier 1 = basic, tier 2 = supports 3d, tier 3 = quad core powerhouse), it would help immensely.
[+] [-] nubela|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GuiA|14 years ago|reply
"There's a big difference between generating revenue, and "making money" - It's not that they haven't generated income, but that income is offset by the additional support costs the platform has demanded. Where did your dollar go? We spent about 20% of our total man-hours last year dealing with Android in one way or another - porting, platform specific bug fixes, customer service, etc.[...] We spent thousands on various test hardware. These are the unsung necessities of offering our apps on Android. Meanwhile, Android sales amounted to around 5% of our revenue for the year, and continues to shrink. Needless to say, this ratio is unsustainable."
This is a major problem (that actually encompasses several problems often mentioned with Android) that countless developers face, and that will not be addressed anytime soon.
[+] [-] barredo|14 years ago|reply
[+] [-] huggyface|14 years ago|reply
Why? I would argue that it speaks to an audience's bias.
I think the most interesting thing about this company is that their games are, by most respects, quite successful on the Android market. A $3.00 game selling more than 50,000 copies. Another selling 100,000+. Another selling 100,000+. Perhaps they got all of their sales during a sale, but their base metrics seem quite good.
I can't speak to their situation or frustration, but will make a couple of remarks for prospective Android devs-
a) Cut out the crap: Don't desperately try to reach 100% of the Android base because that just sets you up for a world of pain, which I suspect is their core issue. Cut out low-end handsets, with the basest filter being Gingerbread+ at this point.
b) There are actually only a handful of GPUs in use across all of the different devices (Adreno, PowerVR, Tegra2/3, Mali). Understand the GPUs, not the handsets.
c) If you can't handle the work, which apparently this company couldn't, subcontract. They apparently had a successful product but they couldn't tolerate the work involved. I guarantee that if they offered it out for profit sharing to a contractor they would have many well-rated prospects.
[+] [-] madrox|14 years ago|reply
It does say something about what some mobile devs have come to expect from a development experience. While IOS is never mentioned once in the post, the comparison is implied in every paragraph. While this is far from damning for Android, it's worth keeping in mind as competition for developer mindshare escalates.