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3GS exclusive games + The perfect iphone controls for hardcore games

wikoogle

wikoogle

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 12, 2009
929
0
First, with the recent news that the iPhone 3GS indeed includes 256 mbs of ram, a much faster processer, a much more current graphics card, I hope devs make some iPhone 3GS exclusive games that take advantage of the extra power. According to devs, the 3GS is FAR FAR more powerful than the PSP, PS2 and Gamecube were!!

I would love to see EA's upcoming Red Alert take full advantage of the 3GS's power.

But the bigger question is, how should such games aimed for the hardcore gamers control?

I think I have a some simple solutions.

First, there should be two circles/joysticks in the bottom to corner that you can move around slightly with your finger, and serve as dual analog nubs. Functionally, they would be identical to the analog nub found on the PSP.

Second, a flick of your wrist/iphone to the right should be analogous to pressing the right shoulder buttons on the PSP/DS and even Wii, and a flick of your wrist to the left should be analogous to pressing the left shoulder button on the PSP/DS.

And lastly, two buttons above each touch based analog nub would give you the psp all the functionality found in the PSP, DS and even Wii (actually more functionality since it essentially would have dual analog nubs).

And all these buttons should be at the most extreme ends of both devices so that they give you a full unobstructed view of most of the screen.

Is anyone making such a gaming iphone shells with dual analog nubs, shoulder buttons, and one that looks as sexy as the iphone?

Something like this that I found...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/danielmacdonald/2127089390/

Before, this controller idea would've failed. But now, the iPhone's brand new 3.0 OS allows apps downloaded from the app store to use add on peripherals like this controller. There is a race right now among hardware manufacturers to be the first to create an awesome gaming peripheral for the iphone thats a hit.

Also...

Whoever makes the iphone's first gaming addon, three requirements are must haves...

1. The peripheral should look very sleek, flush with the phone and use the same black plastic found in the front of all iphones. iPhone owners care greatly about how thier device looks.

2. The peripheral must have dual analog sticks/nubs. Imagine the PSP's analog nub, but on both sides. Portable gamers have been clamoring for this feature forever now, so it's about time they get it. I can't overstress how important it is the the iPhone's gaming pad has DUAL ANALOG NUBS (and shoulder trigger buttons).

3. The peripheral must have two shoulder buttons and a solid D-Pad akin to the PSP/PS3's D-Pad to enable fighting games.

Do these things and the peripheral will be a big hit.

Also the smaller the add on, the better. It should be as small as humanly possible. People don't like large bulky addons. And it should have a rectangular design with curved edges identical to the iphone.


What do you guys think?
 
wikoogle said:
First, with the recent news that the iPhone 3GS indeed includes 256 mbs of ram, a much faster processer with two parallel pipelines, and a much more current graphics card with a bigger bus, I hope devs make some iPhone 3GS exclusive games that take advantage of the extra power. According to devs, the 3GS is FAR FAR more powerful than the PSP, PS2 and Gamecube were!!

I would love to see EA's upcoming Red Alert take full advantage of the 3GS's power.

But the bigger question is, how should such games aimed for the hardcore gamers control?

I think I have a some simple solutions.

First, there should be two circles/joysticks in the bottom to corner that you can move around slightly with your finger, and serve as dual analog nubs. Functionally, they would be identical to the analog nub found on the PSP.

Second, a flick of your wrist/iphone to the right should be analogous to pressing the right shoulder buttons on the PSP/DS and even Wii, and a flick of your wrist to the left should be analogous to pressing the left shoulder button on the PSP/DS.

And lastly, two buttons above each touch based analog nub would give you the psp all the functionality found in the PSP, DS and even Wii (actually more functionality since it essentially would have dual analog nubs).

And all these buttons should be at the most extreme ends of both devices so that they give you a full unobstructed view of most of the screen.

Is anyone making such a gaming iphone shells with dual analog nubs, shoulder buttons, and one that looks as sexy as the iphone? If anyone can pull that off and get a lot of support for such a peripheral, it would be apple.

What do you guys think?
Click to expand...

Someone is going to make some kind of gaming shell for the iPhone. I didn't realize it was more powerful than the PS2 or Gamecube, that's interesting. I've been saying this for awhile, I want to see some real full length games developed for the iPhone.

Red Alert would be cool, though Tiberian Sun is better. I'd like to see some RTS games on the iPhone. We have enough Tower Defenses.
 
Actually, EA is already making Red Alert for the iPhone. It looks AWESOME btw. Look it up.
 
Interesting idea, i think they will just make them scale though. This situation already quasi exists between all the current models of iphones and ipod touches.

see here http://toucharcade.com/2008/11/23/2nd-generation-ipod-touch-faster-than-iphone/

Our first step to increase fps performance was to introduce hardware dependent levels of detail. Where we can easily display two 1500 polygon tennis players with 32 bones each on the iPod touch 2G and maintain fast and fluid game play, the original iPod touch just chokes, and in some instances so do the iPhones. To speed up the touch, we reduced the players to 800 polygons in farther away moments of gameplay, and are now using 1000 polygon models for close ups, bringing the original iPod touch game play performance level close to that of the iPhone 3G. We've taken this approach across the board with great results.
Click to expand...
 
More powerful than the PS2? Ha, that dev is talking out his you know what. If the iPhone was running a game to anything close to the PS2 level of quality it's battery would be drained in a matter of minutes. Some of the crud that shows up in fanboys is amazing.
 
beamer8912 said:
More powerful than the PS2? Ha, that dev is talking out his you know what. If the iPhone was running a game to anything close to the PS2 level of quality it's battery would be drained in a matter of minutes. Some of the crud that shows up in fanboys is amazing.
Click to expand...

The psp has PS1+ quality graphics and it came out roughly nine years later. Why can't the iPhone have ps2 graphics when the ps2 is also around 9 years difference?
 
beamer8912 said:
More powerful than the PS2? Ha, that dev is talking out his you know what. If the iPhone was running a game to anything close to the PS2 level of quality it's battery would be drained in a matter of minutes. Some of the crud that shows up in fanboys is amazing.
Click to expand...

It's power per square inch of screen i'd imagine. It certainly has platform clout. http://www.theiphoneblog.com/images/stories/2009/06/sales.jpg

I think the initial thoughts of adding a hardware dongle onto the bottom to get a d pad misses out on the possibility of having a BT wireless handheld gamepad, and just prop up the screen. If only the iPhone could media out to the tv...
 
Actually, the PSP already has PS2 quality graphics. Look at games like Resistence Retribution, God of War: Chains of Olympus and GT5 Portable and tell me they don't look every bit as good as anything found on the PS2.
 
First, I completely agree with everyone who says that such a controllers should ideally be made by Apple, Apple are you listening, please do it, you're the only guys who can.

Second, there's clearly a chasm here. There's the casual gamers who play the occasional game, couldn't care less about have physical controls or dual analog nubs, usually never buy the hardcore $10 games anyways, and think this whole addon idea is dumb.

Then there's the hardcore gamers who own PSPs and DSs and play them often and buy tons of premium iphone games and would love to have physical controls to improve the interface.

The thing is, the first group doesn't need to buy the add on, I'm certain that pretty much all games would function without out just because of hte size of the market, the addon would just make them control better.

This addon would be for the second group only.

And thus neglecting critical aspects like dual analog nubs that hardcore gamers deeply care about is out of the question imo.
 
Eddyisgreat said:
The psp has PS1+ quality graphics and it came out roughly nine years later. Why can't the iPhone have ps2 graphics when the ps2 is also around 9 years difference?
Click to expand...

Mainly because the iPhone is built as a phone...not a gaming device...
 
the iphone 3G S has graphics that actually surpass the PS2. Honestly, look at a game like Real Racing on the 3G and multiply that times 4 and that gives you a rought idea of what the 3GS can do.
 
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