July 26th 2010 | Posted by
Jonathan I Ezor
HyperDevBox’ ExZeus, currently available for iPhone and Android, has just hit the Palm Pre and webOS. The game, a futuristic shooter, has fast, responsive animation, which (along with its cross-platform nature) shows the power of the PDK. Intriguingly, the video of the game on the HyperDevBox YouTube channel shows "online network" and "worldwide highscore" features. You can also see a video of Lovecatch, another HyperDevBox game reportedly on its way for Pre users.
If you’re wondering why we’ve all been so hot for webOS 1.4.5 to finally land stateside, check out videos of the two games below the break. You can also read descriptions of ExZeus and Lovecatch on the HyperDevBox Web site.
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July 22nd 2010 | Posted by
Dieter Bohn
We’ve asked about Social Media apps, Games, and Travel apps, now we’re just straight up asking: the Half-Off sale on webOS apps ends tomorrow and so tell us: what have you purchased? What will you purchase? There are a ton of good apps out there (a few of our faves are after the break) but tell us in the comments what you’re rocking and or rolling.
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July 21st 2010 | Posted by
Dieter Bohn
The number one game on the iPhone? Angry Birds, where you fling birds at pigs in an effort to smash them and get your eggs back. It sounds simple and it is, but it’s also fun, addictive, and features some ingenius level design and great artwork.
Rovio, the company behind the game, is considering porting the game to webOS and an angry little bird sent in the above shot showing that progress is being made. But there’s a wide space between a quick port and a finished game on a new platform, submitted on the app catalog, ready for you to purchase. To that end, Rovio has set up this form where they’re looking to gauge your interest.
So trust us, you’re interested. Tell them and get this fun game on your platform of choice. See the sad story of the Angry Birds after the break.
via @RovioMobile; thanks angry little bird!
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July 6th 2010 | Posted by
Robert Werlinger
Stonetrip has added webOS support to the latest iteration of its ShiVa 3D gaming engine, and developers now have another weapon to add to their arsenal (including the excellent Unreal Engine 3) for developing and porting PDK applications. For those not in the know, ShiVa is a game builder that offers a graphical WYSIWYG editor and has full support for both OpenGL ES 1.1 and 2.0 along with a whole slew of important 3D technologies including advanced shading and the automatic handling of post-rendering effects.
The engine powers a whole laundry list of games available on the iOS platform, and a quick perusal of some of those titles on Stonetrip’s website should whet the appetite of many a webOS user, as many of them are sure to pop up in the App Catalog given how easy it is to write once and deploy on multiple platforms with ShiVa.
Interested parties should hit the source link for details on how to get into the beta and head on over to the Palm Developer Forums for further discussion.
Source: Stonetrip’s ShiVa blog; thanks to dcforever for the tip!
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June 30th 2010 | Posted by
Jonathan I Ezor
As we have previously reported, Aaron Ardiri, who had long ago ported the classic video game Lemmings to palmOS, had been liveblogging the efforts of his games studio Mobile 1up to re-port it to both iOS and webOS. Unfortunately, things are now on hold due to cease and desist its efforts to bring these versions of Lemmings to the public after hearing from the lawyers from Sony, which currently owns the copyright to the game..
For now, development is halted, and we won’t be seeing the game on webOS unless either Sony publishes it itself, or Ardiri and his team can work out a deal to do so.
while are did this as a tribute to the game – we can only hope that Sony actually does a conversion for platforms like iPhone and Palm Pre in the near future. we will open communication with Sony to explore the rights for these platforms!
(Unfortunately, Adriri’s old PalmOS version doesn’t currently run under MotionApps’ Classic.)
Source: Mobile1up blog
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June 11th 2010 | Posted by
Robert Werlinger
We’ve been spotlighting our favorite apps on a regular basis here, but the truth is that our members’ collected wisdom is greater than ours. Here’s how it works: you tell us in the comments what the best stuff is, we gather up your favorites, and report back on what’s hot.
Gaming is a big deal on webOS, with the gaming category representing a large majority of what’s available in the App Catalog. There are plenty of styles and genres available to users of the platform, from epic 3D titles like Need for Speed to games from independent developers like Paratrooper, and we want to know: What are your absolute favorites?
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May 2nd 2010 | Posted by
Dieter Bohn
We were expecting to have to wait until late May at the earliest, but it a perusal through our App Gallery shows that Palm is already letting some independently-produced native PDK apps into the official App Catalog. We have a bunch of games from Mobile 1UP in the catalog now, including my personal favorite, Cronk.
Get ‘em while they’re hot, folks!
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April 30th 2010 | Posted by
Dieter Bohn
Palm has given developers the heads-up that a "webOS Update [is] Coming Soon" and developers need to be ready to test their apps on the new version. In "early May" there will be an SDK release candidate, giving developers a short week to test their apps, and two to three more "before the update lands on consumer devices."
In other words, Palm looks to be targeting a release of the next version of webOS for late May or early June. The good news is exactly what in-the-know webOS lovers would hope: as predicted, Palm looks to be ramping up native ‘PDK’ apps for this release.
The email indicates that this won’t be a major update, and that timeframe is probably a little too early for the big, structural changes outline in Palm’s Dev Day keynote, but we’re excited to see what smaller / indie developers have been cooking up with the PDK.
Thanks to everybody who sent this in!
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April 21st 2010 | Posted by
Dieter Bohn
We’re big big fans of the Plug-in Development Kit for webOS. It’s the magic that allows the Palm Pre to be the only phone on multiple US networks with real 3D gaming and one of the under-rated features of the platform.
Anyhow, as of right now the only PDK apps you see come from big, professional development houses like Gameloft. They’ve obviously done a great job with the apps and we’re also pleased to see that they occasionally put stuff on sale (Hero of Sparta is only 99 cents for a limited time, for example). You know us, though, we like to root for the little guys too.
To that end, Ben Combee of Palm’s Developer Relations team is following up on March’s release of a public beta of the PDK by asking if any developers have "ready-to-deploy" PDK apps. Which is to say that Palm has decided to open up the App Catalog to PDK apps a little earlier than originally planned. If you’ve been working on a PDK app, be sure to check out his post – there are a few caveats and provisos to be aware of.
If you’re not a developer, stay tuned. Palm’s deadline for these apps is tomorrow, so it’s entirely possible that we might see some indie PDK apps sooner than we previously thought.
Thanks to slp15 for the tip!
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March 11th 2010 | Posted by
Dieter Bohn
As Palm reports on their blog, Epic Games has demoed their Unreal Engine 3 on the Palm Pre. Unreal Engine 3 is the ‘gaming engine’ behind lots of your favorite console style games – from Gears of War to Batman: Arkham Asylum to BioShock to, well, a lot of games. We humbly assume it’s because we asked for this in December.
Naturally it would be a little overly optimistic to hope for console-level graphics and gamelength on a mobile phone, but if you were wondering if webOS had the potential to run with the big dogs when it comes to mobile gaming, the answer is yes. It’s all possible, of course, because of the PDK. If you missed it, we’ve got a video interview with Palm discussion the philosophy and possibilities of the PDK.
UPDATE: The folks at Engadget were able to get a video demonstration (above) of Unreal Engine running on a Pre Plus at GDC, and it’s pretty darned slick (though apparently not incredibly stable just yet).
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