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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For those of you who have been wondering what makes the Plug-in Development Kit tick and how it fits in to the overall webOS picture, Palm’s presentation earlier this month at the Game Developer Conference has been made available at the GDC Vault website (direct link to the video not available – it’s towards the bottom of the page) (registration required).

The 40-minute long video is complete with an overview of the technology, a lengthy coding demonstration, and an enlightening Q&A session.  Highlights include the demonstration of how SDK and PDK elements can seamlessly work together inside of a single application, how easy it is to deploy PDK apps to the device for for testing and debugging, and details of Palm’s plans with the technology before allowing developers to release applications incorporating the technology "before the middle of the year."

The prospects are exciting, and not just for the gaming world. Seeing how easy it is for developers to utilize the PDK for more CPU intensive tasks in their regular apps – things like audio processing (Shazam, anyone?) and OpenGL based  transformations that are difficult to do with interpreted coding languages like JavaScript – make the future of the App Catalog, and indeed the platform itself, seem bright indeed. 

Thanks to argyledx for the tip!

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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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You got most of the deets yesterday on the news on Palm’s Plug-in Development Kit: it’s coming to the Pixi, regular developers will have to wait for a couple of months before they’re able to distribute PDK apps, and you’ll be able to mix and match the PDK with the regular SDK.

Rene from TiPb spoke with Joe Hayashi from Palm yesterday, detailing the PDK in broad strokes in a way that the rest of us non-developers can make sense of. Palm’s main message is a subtle dig on Android and iPhone: if you’re on Sprint or Verizon and want cool 3D games right now, your best bet is the Palm Pre.

What interests us the most is how much thought Palm is putting into integrating ‘native’ PDK stuff with the standard webOS web-app architecture. It will be pretty cool to see apps that utilize a combination of quick-to-code standard elements with the fancier and shinier PDK elements. Right now PDK apps are just games – but we’re excited to see utility and productivity apps.

We’d say we’re pretty bummed that developers won’t be able to release their PDK apps right away, but from how we understand how the PDK works right now, basically it looks like PDK apps completely un-sandboxed and able to do whatever they’d like to webOS’ linux underpinnings – potentially very bad. So a future update to webOS will definitely be necessary (and welcome, as it always is) to get a wider distribution for PDK apps.

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Palm has released their Plug-in Development Kit Beta for developers to allow them to create rich, 3D games and other native linux apps for webOS. The PDK is available now at the Developer Center.

Palm looks to be making a pretty big push with this – they’ve released at the Game Developer’s Conference and are pushing that they are offering great gaming experiences on multiple carriers:

"Palm webOS is the go-to platform for great games on two of the three leading carrier networks," said Katie Mitic, senior vice president, Product Marketing, Palm, Inc. "We have both the developer tools and the hardware necessary for a world-class gaming experience, and an impressive portfolio of webOS game titles from top-notch developers to show for it."

Full press release after the break. So, developers: how’s it look? Legend79 emailed us to note that Palm has chosen to use Simple DirectMedia Layer (SDL) for hardware access – which to us looks like yet another way to enable easy porting.

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We’ve all wondered what Palm would be talking about in March when they present at the Game Developers Conference, but now we’re getting a better idea. We have confirmed with Palm that the clearly awesome webOS Plug-in Development Kit will be released as a public beta in March. Putting two and two together, we wouldn’t be at all surprised to see the PDK beta announced at GDC. In fact, we’d be surprised if it wasn’t (assuming it’s not unveiled beforehand). The full 1.0 release for the PDK is expected at some point later in 2010.

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While Palm’s spiffy new PDK (Plug-in Development Kit) is right now limited to bringing fancy binary apps to webOS only from a few select developers, that isn’t going to stop Palm from showing it off to the masses. To that end, Palm will be presenting at this year’s Game Developers Conference. GDC will be taking place in March in San Francisco, just up the road from Palm’s Sunnyvale headquarters.

The hour-long presentation, scheduled for 3:00 pm on March 12, has a title that tells us pretty much everything we need to know: “An Overview to Creating Games with Palm’s Plug-in Development Kit (PDK)”. But that’s not all, there’s also a description if that left you hungering for more:

“Come learn how to take full advantage of the advanced hardware capabilities of Palm’s webOS devices–including full OpenGL ES 1.1 and 2.0 support–using the recently announced Plug-in Development Kit (PDK). This technical session will provide an architectural overview of Palm’s hardware and software platforms and then provide hands-on details for how the PDK exposes these capabilities.”

Which makes us say “Ooooooh.” Will we see new game announcements? Considering that they’re planning to demonstrate the PDK to game developers, we wouldn’t be surprised if the PDK becomes widely available around that same time.

Thanks to Baryn for the tip!

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