Porting Lemmings In 36 Hours

An anonymous reader writes "Aaron Ardiri challenged himself to port his classic PalmOS version of Lemmings to the iPhone, Palm Pre, Mac, and Windows. The porting was done using his own dev environment, which creates native C versions of the game. He liveblogged the whole thing, and finished after only 36 hours with an iPhone version and a Palm Pre version awaiting submission, and free versions for Windows and Mac available on his site."

Comments

iPhone bandwagon

[JustinRLynn]

Pandering to the Apple fanboys like everyone else seems to be? Oh come on Aaron, would you jump off a cliff just because everyone else ... oh.

Re:iPhone bandwagon

[DamienRBlack]

If only I hadn't spent all my mod points making my friends dig and climb.

Re:iPhone bandwagon

[TubeSteak]

I think he's hosting the website on his iPhone.
I managed to grab the page after hitting F5 a few times
http://img713.imageshack.us/img713/8107/lemmings.png

Re:iPhone bandwagon

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a bad habit of bragging about my N900 -- WVGA screen, CortexA8 overclocked to 1.1GHz, and a touch-optimized Firefox derivative, it can do anything a laptop can do.

The above link has cured me.

(On second thought... does anyone's laptop actually handle that monster gracefully, either?)

Re:iPhone bandwagon

[Anonymous Coward]

I can scroll just fine through that on my 17" screen

Re:iPhone bandwagon

[Anonymous Coward]

No problems here, but I guess the PackardBell iPower GX doesn't count, right?

Re:iPhone bandwagon

[icebraining]

No problems here with Firefox running in a AMD Neo, currently clocked at 800MHz.

Re:iPhone bandwagon

[GameboyRMH]

CortexA8 overclocked to 1.1GHz

Sweet Zombie Jesus, you're a madman! 8(

How hot does it run? I know that my N900 can get a bit toasty when I do things that peg the CPU for a long time (like watching videos), especially if the keyboard is closed, and I'm at stock clock speeds.

Re:iPhone bandwagon

[jonadab]

I had no problems on my desktop, which is several years old and wasn't high-end even when new. Let's see... /proc/cpuinfo says it's a Celeron running at 2.13GHz with 256K of cache.

No problem. This computer can't play Flash-based games (like Bejeweled, which my sister is really into for some reason) without setting off the heat alarm, but Firefox displayed the 1249x19444 image without batting an eye. It was zoomed to fit by default, but clicking once zoomed it to 100%, and I can scroll through the whole thing just as if it were a web page. An ugly web page with a lot of missing images, but that's not my computer's fault.

Oh, probably should mention that I'm running Firefox 2.0.0.20. I got tired of the dataloss bugs in the 3.x series and downgraded. Not sure this is at all relevant to the ability to show a large image, but it's sufficiently out of the mainstream that I thought I'd mention it.

Re:iPhone bandwagon

[Anonymous Coward]

I used to think my pentium 3 was capable of decent web browsing. The above link cured me too.

Re:iPhone bandwagon

[djdanlib]

You mean Digg? ;)

"Oh No!"

Re:iPhone bandwagon

[Anonymous Coward]

FWIW, A few people are running Palm Pre's at 1.2GHz.

Re:iPhone bandwagon

[bandmassa]

How is developing for multiple platforms pandering to one? Dickhead.

I notice now that he's copped a takedown shakedown from Sony. Of course. I need to get to /. sooner. I would KILL to play lemmings again ;-)

Re:iPhone bandwagon

[mooterSkooter]

here:

http://lessermatters.homeunix.com/LemmingsSDL/

It has a bug in it (something not being set to NULL - I will upload the new version sometime...)

Please don't hit me Sony...

Re:iPhone bandwagon

[jnitetime]

You have to pander to somebody, why not a popular and versatile handheld platform? it's got the best touch screen functionality on the market right now, it makes sense to me.

You can play coin-op arcade lemmings game in MAME

[Joe The Dragon]

You can play coin-op arcade lemmings game in MAME as well.

Nice accomplishment!

[Junior J. Junior III]

See, this is what you can do with low level languages... IF you know your shit.

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[SpazmodeusG]

I'm getting old. I remember C being regarded as a high level language designed with portability in mind.

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[Anonymous Coward]

You would be amazed what anyone can produce with any language *IF* they know their shit

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[Junior J. Junior III]

Yeah, and it is, but it's still considered "low level" these days because it's awfully darn close to the metal. As compared to stuff like .NET or Java that runs on virtual machines or Common Language Runtimes.

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[phantomfive]

Exactly.....I used to spend a lot of time learning different languages, comparing them, trying to figure out what was best, using all the features.......then one day I realized it isn't the languages so much that make the difference, it's how you use it. I don't regret learning a ton of languages because you learn new techniques and ideas from each one, but as long as you can encapsulate stuff and be flexible, the language is ok. With macros and functions and libraries, I can write code just as flexibly and nearly as quickly in assembly as I can in a language like Perl or Ruby.

When the vast majority of your time writing code is taken up by debugging or refactoring, the language it's written in doesn't matter so much as the quality of the code that's written.

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[mini me]

As compared to stuff like .NET or Java that runs on virtual machines or Common Language Runtimes.

iPhone apps are compiled using LLVM, which provides its own virtual machine, not unlike the JVM and CLR. Does that make C a high level language?

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[Windwraith]

Yes, yes, you are getting old ;)
But C is like "more low level" than many popular modern languages.

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[ToasterMonkey]

iPhone apps are compiled using LLVM, which provides its own virtual machine, not unlike the JVM and CLR. Does that make C a high level language?

That is just so wrong, it hurts to read it.

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[osu-neko]

I don't regret learning a ton of languages because you learn new techniques and ideas from each one...

Eventually you reach the point where that's not really true anymore because you're pretty much seen it all. At that point, it doesn't matter which languages you "know" or don't, and have used in the past or not, you can sit down and write code in anything, even stuff you've never seen before, as long as you have a minimal syntax reference or some sample code handy.

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[Lifyre]

Wrong as in factually incorrect or Wrong as in 350 pound man wearing a Sailor Moon costume?

(You're welcome for that lovely image too)

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[Anonymous Coward]

When the vast majority of your time writing code is taken up by debugging or refactoring, the language it's written in doesn't matter so much as the quality of the code that's written.

I feel like a troll writing this, hence the AC, but this statement makes me think of the following quotations from Dijkstra:

"If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in," and

"If you want more effective programmers, you will discover that they should not waste their time debugging, they should not introduce the bugs to start with."

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sailor Moon is a sailor, not unlike Popeye the sailor man.

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[Anonymous Coward]

As compared to stuff like .NET or Java that runs awfully darn close to the virtual machine.

I seriously think that the quote from David Wheeler (and the corollary from Kevlin Henney) applies, if you consider each virtual machine as a level of indirection.

"Close the bare metal" as in running in a virtual processor using the native instruction set provided by the thread abstraction, in a virtual memory address space (provided by the process) in a machine that has been virtualized (as in virtualization, not virtual machine). And then you need to add yet another layer for a virtual machine, because otherwise it is close to the bare metal?

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[PrecambrianRabbit]

A professor I worked with once quipped: "C is portable assembly language."

I think that's something I like about it... I can actually predict what the machine is going to do when I write a line of code!

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[Anonymous Coward]

Eventually you reach the point where ... [you've] pretty much seen it all

That is so wrong on so many levels. The beginner thinks he knows everything. The well learned thinks he knows a lot. The expert knows that he knows nothing. This is true in programming as well. There are infinitely possible ways to design a language, and some are yet to come (though derived from current languages of course). There never EVER comes a point where one has seen it all.

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[Anonymous Coward]

Eventually you reach the point where ... [you've] pretty much seen it all

That is so wrong on so many levels. The beginner thinks he knows everything. The well learned thinks he knows a lot. The expert knows that he knows nothing.

And the AC thinks that the GP knows less.

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[Anonymous Coward]

And you're all nucking futs!

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[Anonymous Coward]

You not getting old, well yeah you are, but...

It's all other that getting younger, you and I only getting wiser.

Surprises me how many developers turns to question marks in there face, if you mention C.
And they state 'You don't need C anymore, everything is running on a VM anyhow (If they know VMs at all)'.

I can say for one, that without my knowledge of C, it would be harder to track down problems in the JVM.
Yes, if you code Java for a living, with a code base greater then a webapp, you will run into problems that
can only be solved by actually open up the hood and looking inside.

And when someone says "No that never happened to me", that only means that "Yes, someone fixed the problem we had".
It might been Sun, it might been throwing out the code, it might been what ever, just cause they don't know that
it is all based on lower level programming down to the metal.

It's like peeling an union, layer by layer, until you get down to the core (bare metal).
Groovy->JAVA->ByteCode->JVM->C++->C->Asm->Microcode->CPU.

If you learn this chain, you can debug things that others just cant.

So, guess who gets the job done?

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[Anonymous Coward]

sure, but you come to the point that you have a dozen or so of patterns to be used in all kind of applications (it's not that they're so creative anyway) so that you don't need the fancy features of new languages or you can include them in your own patterns to enhance them - once your patterns are simple and powerful enough to be run on any turing complete procedural language you're pretty much guaranteed to be able to run them anywhere, anytime, without having to relearn a yet new and powerful and useless platform/framework that will discontinued in a couple years anyway.

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[Anonymous Coward]

Which reminds me, are we modding funny as in hmm this milk tastds funny or haha funny?

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[Anonymous Coward]

C is not a high-level language. C is an optimizing macro-assembler with automatic register allocation.

OK, more seriously, though - a high-level language, in my definition, is one that allows you to think in the problem domain, rather than in the platform (especially hardware) domain. SML/NJ is a high-level language; C is not.

Of course, C is a bit special insofar as that it's often used in cases where the problem domain IS the platform domain, but that doesn't make it a high-level language still (if it did, you'd also have to consider assembly a high-level language when you're writing things like device drivers, OSes, BIOSes and so on).

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[TheRaven64]

Factually wrong. LLVM is a virtual machine in the sense of virtual architecture, not in the sense of virtual environment. Code for the iPhone is first compiled to LLVM intermediate representation (IR), which is machine code for a virtual architecture that has an infinite number of single-assignment registers and a structured (but simple) memory model. You can do various things with code in this form, but when you are targeting the iPhone, you generally run some optimisations, link a load of the modules together, run some more optimisations, and then compile the result to native code.

Describing LLVM as not unlike the JVM or CLR is like saying that Pascal is not unlike Smalltalk.

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[TheRaven64]

You're not a troll, you're just quoting a troll, and Djikstra was the ultimate troll (which doesn't mean he was wrong).

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[icebraining]

Since when does C++ needs to be converted to C? It's C++ -> Machine code. And JVM should be "HotSpot", JVM itself it's just a model, not a specific implementation :)

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[Jurily]

I can actually predict what the machine is going to do when I write a line of code!

Ah, the good old popular misconception. For most practical purposes,

- you don't know what code the compiler will emit, especially if you're optimizing. Given the bajillion optimization flags most compilers have, and the fact that they change across versions (for example gcc 4.4 has the graphite framework, gcc 4.5 has link-time optimization), you're either very smart and brave to take a guess, or just ignorant. You can look at the output of course, but that's hardly "predicting", and we're lazy anyway.
- at any given point in time, you don't know how long it will take to execute the next instruction (hint: scheduling, possibly powersave)
- you don't know the state of RAM, with regards to swap
- you don't know the state of the CPU cache
- you don't know what microcode the CPU has, or what it's actually doing under the hood

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[icebraining]

Even in Bitxtreme, where you can only address two bits?

Here are all possible programs:
00
01
10
11

His creator is very confident about its turing completeness:

OISC is Turing-complete. The fact that integers are limited to 1 bit doesn't affect that result. Thus, Bitxtreme must also be Turing-complete itself, I'm sure. The amount of memory supported by the virtual machine is unbounded, thus complying with the requisite for Turing-completeness; actual implementations will however impose an upper bound. Some people object that the limitation of PC to 1 bit imposes severe restrictions for Turing completeness but I'm sure that the examples above will be enough to show that that argument is bogus.

(Yes, this is a joke, not a rebuttal to parent's post. I understand his point and agree with it)

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you don't know PrecambrianRabbit as his real name... R2-D2. Take it back now?

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[GigaplexNZ]

Since when does C++ needs to be converted to C?

Since it started - it was just a preprocessor. It's now changed though to compile directly. You could in theory write a compiler that goes straight from Java to machine code if you were really keen. In fact, that has already been done. It's not just the language syntax, the toolchain matters too.

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[TheLink]

> then one day I realized it isn't the languages so much that make the difference, it's how you use it.

To me it's not the language that make the difference but the _libraries_ that make the difference.

The more suitable and available the libraries there are to do what I want to do, the less code I have to write, document and hopefully debug (some libraries are buggy unfortunately).

And also if they are standard or defacto standard libraries in means the poor sod taking over has less code to read. Assuming he/she is not a noob and does not need to check what "standard function/method" really does.

There are powerful programming languages that allow a top programmer to do lots of stuff quickly and concisely. These may be good for the elite programmers, BUT, I'm not an elite programmer...

So instead of a language that helps in the code I write, I prefer a language that helps because of all the code I don't have to write :).

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[Sir_Lewk]

Shhhhhh! You might shatter their pre-concieved notions of C and make them feel bad for never learning it!

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[jellomizer]

C was never a High Level Language. It was a more portable Lower Level Language. Sure it was above assembly (As Assembly isn't much of a program language, but but just a 1 to 1 translation to machine code) it was lower then COBOL, Fortran, Basic, Lisp, and many of the other popular languages at the time.

The difference between higher languages and lower languages. isn't as much portability, while higher languages tend to be more portable, however a high level languge such as VB is less portable then a Low Language such as C. But more to the fact how much of the execution of the code is based on the compiler vs. the programmers understanding of the computer.

Eg. in high level languges. you have string classes that do a bunch of cool things...
in C. you have a pointer to a block of characters and any effects you need to do you need to code it yourself.

Old Languages such as LISP where higher level and isolated the programmer from managing memory and handled it all itself.

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[CODiNE]

OT:

Dude, in your world peace blog post, isn't the 3rd group exactly who the 1st group are talking about? Violence and war are related to game theory, it's always to someone's advantage to brutalize the others. You solve the problem of the 3rd group and the 1st group will go away, the 2nd group will as well.

So peace is really simple, you just have to stop the sociopaths and "might is right" people, then everyone else can relax. That doesn't sound so easy now.

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll give you #1, but all other points apply to anything running on a preemptive multitasking OS.

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[robthebloke]

- you don't know what code the compiler will emit, especially if you're optimizing. Given the bajillion optimization flags most compilers have, and the fact that they change across versions (for example gcc 4.4 has the graphite framework, gcc 4.5 has link-time optimization), you're either very smart and brave to take a guess, or just ignorant. You can look at the output of course, but that's hardly "predicting", and we're lazy anyway.

Yes, but the more output you inspect, the more you get to know your compiler, and thus predicting the output becomes easier. (Actually you don't need to predict the output for 99.99% of cases, you only need to worry about C/C++ constructs that will cause performance problems. Once you've identified those sorts of bottlenecks [via a profiler of course!], avoiding them in future is fairly easy). I'm not sure about you, but personally I don't go and blindly enable every single new optimization flag with every time I get a new version of a compiler! I think the fact they change is largely moot to be honest

- you don't know the state of RAM, with regards to swap
- you don't know the state of the CPU cache
- you don't know what microcode the CPU has, or what it's actually doing under the hood

A touch pedantic imho (and not entirely accurate). Those are specific to programming on a modern CPU/modern OS, and apply to any language. If you want to know all of those things, don't use a modern CPU or os....

- at any given point in time, you don't know how long it will take to execute the next instruction (hint: scheduling, possibly powersave)

What does scheduling have to do with an instruction timing? It sounds like you are working on the assumption that a thread can be suspended mid-op? Anyhow, if an instruction executes, it executes in 'n' cycles, with a latency of 'p' and a throughput of 't'. Those are known values for all CPU's. If the CPU has been throttled back via speedstep, then it still takes 'n' cycles, with a latency of 'p' and the throughput remains the same. The only thing that changes is the time for a cycle, but do you really want to be measuring your code performance in seconds? Fine for us console developers i guess, but not so great for your average PC.

Also worth pointing out, that there is always a counter-example. If you want to measure your code in terms of ops, get an ATOM ;)

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[Culture20]

Wrong as in 350 pound man wearing a Sailor Moon costume? (You're welcome for that lovely image too)

C'mon, we've all been to gencon. Try harder.

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[csartanis]

And the GP responds to AC as AC. Amazing!

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[gstoddart]

Wrong as in factually incorrect or Wrong as in 350 pound man wearing a Sailor Moon costume?

(You're welcome for that lovely image too)

I'm not sure what is more disturbing -- the fact that you described it, or the fact that when I googled for images with fat man sailor moon, I actually got pictures.

You bastard!! I didn't need to know that! :-P

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[jonadab]

That was when the alternative was assembly language.

These days "high level" is when the language provides a built-in optimized function for extremely common tasks (like sorting), data types that don't change when you move to a different architecture (even if it's got a different number of bits or a different endianness) and don't overflow when you stick a somewhat larger number in them, automatic built-in bounds checking, automatic resizing for aggregate types (e.g., arrays), standard libraries for popular network protocols (e.g., HTTP), file types (e.g., ZIP), and other data interfaces (e.g., pulling information from an RDBMS), and a standard repository and mechanism for sharing additional code libraries (think: CPAN).

In other words, the VHLL (Very High-Level Language, i.e., something at least as high-level as Perl5) is the new HLL.

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[Lunix Nutcase]

I can actually predict what the machine is going to do when I write a line of code!

Doubtful. With all sorts of branch prediction and pipelining going on in a modern CPU it is extremely hard to know what the cpu is really going to do at any moment. This is why when Intel, for example, publishes latency and throughput of assembly instructions that the numbers they provide actually just rough approximations.

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[mini me]

Okay, perhaps my wording was poor. I was not suggesting that the iPhone executes its apps in virtual machine, just that the build process for iPhone development uses the LLVM, to note that it is not some esoteric project. That, and that C does not have to be compiled straight to hardware instructions.

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[phantomfive]

Sort of, the people in the first group, who support the 'violent ape' theory is that man is violent by nature, and we will have wars because it is in our genes; we fight with family, we fight with neighbors, we fight with other people, etc. Now, this theory has generally been discredited, but a story from a guy I was talking to on my front steps weirdly just two days ago: he said he used to carry a knife around with him for protection, but then one day he and his friends were jumped by another group, and he got pounded in the face. In retaliation he stabbed the guy and then ran off. It was such a bad experience that he got rid of the knife and just decided if it ever happened again he would take the beating rather than hurt someone like that, and risk killing him.

Anecdotal evidence aside, people don't naturally want to kill, it's only when we get in weird emotional states where we can demonize or animalize the 'others' when we start killing each other. The psychological training US soldiers go through is really incredible.

So peace is really simple, you just have to stop the sociopaths and "might is right" people, then everyone else can relax. That doesn't sound so easy now.

Nah, all you have to do is convince people to not follow those sociopaths and 'might is right' people. Then they will have no power. A simple parallel that might help clarify it would be that in the middle ages, people didn't have the idea of democracy. They followed kings, because that was the way to do things. But in modern times, things have changed. Imagine if some presidential candidate rose up who said, "if I am elected, I will make myself king!" He would be promptly opposed by both democrats and republicans. This is the same kind of change that needs to happen in places like the middle east or Kyrgyzstan with regards to war. It is going to happen eventually, but we should help speed it along if we can.

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[icebraining]

I didn't asked if it could be done. I asked if it was needed, and it's not anymore. I'm willing to bet that Oracle's compiled HotSpot binaries aren't compiled with a C++ preprocessor and a C compiler, but with a straight-to-machine-code C++ compiler.

You could in theory write a compiler that goes straight from Java to machine code if you were really keen. In fact, that has already been done [gnu.org]. It's not just the language syntax, the toolchain matters too.

You don't need GCJ. HotSpot by itself compiles Java code to machine code - a part of the code, at least. What GCJ does is ahead-of-time compilation, while HotSpot does just-in-time.

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[PrecambrianRabbit]

I can actually predict what the machine is going to do when I write a line of code!

Ah, the good old popular misconception. For most practical purposes,

- you don't know what code the compiler will emit, especially if you're optimizing.

Ah, leave it to someone on Slashdot to take a little quip and pile on technical details. I love it, honestly :-).

While I admit I don't know precisely what the compiler/optimizer is doing, I think C in general has a fairly "transparent" programming model. Not much happens unless you explicitly make it happen. Contrast this with C++, where destructors and copy constructors and the like get called, and it's (in my opinion) much harder to understand what's going on when you write any given statement. Let alone something like Java that uses virtual methods like crazy, and there's always the garbage collector, watching, waiting... *grin*

Now, none of this rant is supposed to suggest that higher-level languages or bad, or that I have some kind of mystical precise microarchitectural knowledge of the state of a machine at any given nanosecond. Just that I have a nice warm fuzzy feeling when it comes to programming in C. You know, until I have to debug a memory corruption error...

Oh and by the way, I did not know that gcc 4.5 has link-time optimization. That is awesome!

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[gangien]

From Wikipedia: A high-level programming language is a programming language with strong abstraction from the details of the computer.

I think if you're not moving register values around, it's a pretty strong abstraction. You even stated that it's a portable lower level language, which to me, is mutually exclusive from working with the details of the computer.

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[tepples]

do you really want to be measuring your code performance in seconds? Fine for us console developers i guess, but not so great for your average PC.

If I'm programming a PC game's engine, then I certainly want to treat a system at the low-end of the system requirements that I'm targeting as if it were a console. If something takes 5 ms on a low-end PC, it'll take 5 ms or less on virtually every PC, and I can do three such tasks in one 16.7 ms cycle of the game clock.

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[CODiNE]

Sort of, the people in the first group, who support the 'violent ape' theory is that man is violent by nature, and we will have wars because it is in our genes; we fight with family, we fight with neighbors, we fight with other people, etc.

There's also violence caused by scarcity real or imagined. Want money, chicks, food, etc... I'm sure you know how population growth is causing and will continue to cause fights over these things. It's true that the earth produces enough food for everyone but politics and greed prevent fair distribution of these things.

Personally I'll let someone kill me before I kill anyone else... of course I'll run or resist as much as possible first. :-) I don't want to die, that's nuts. But to me, murder is an enormous crime against society given simply the investment and effort that's put into each human being, besides their own individual worth which is greater than any physical object or monetary sum.

You speak of modern times but nationalism and patriotism continue to be a bane on humanity. Religions are used as arms of the state to encourage xenophobic behavior as it benefits those in power. As you said people continue to follow them. Those with honest intentions find themselves quickly neutered by the ones seeking power and personal gain. It's tough to swim with the sharks.

Anyhow, I appreciate your earnest effort to better the world we live in and your desire to spread that to others. I have certain philosophical and religious beliefs that lead me to believe man alone can't accomplish this, though I certainly don't resist any attempts to try. I know that many use God and the bible as excuses for their bloodlusts and the majority of churches encourage this, but there are millions who refuse to take up arms against their fellow man.

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[ToasterMonkey]

I understand you, honestly, but I don't think the intermediate layers count much towards what "level" the language rests at, and arguably the final destination does.
C is pretty dang close to describing what the hardware is doing. To the point where you could fairly easily, one line at a time, transcode it into assembly, which itself is veeeery dang close to the machine code instructions it represents. Not only that, but you can kind of go from assembly to C in a pretty straightforward way too. You can't really say the same for more complex object oriented or dynamic languages. Those have quite a few layers of abstraction from what the machine really does.

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[DrVxD]

"If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in,"

Debugging is the process of replacing one known bug with 10 unknown bugs.

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[wood_dude]

With a good macro assembler you can quite easily create your own higher level language. I've done that several times. Porting a game in the old 8/16 bit days from 6502/6809/z80/68000 was just a set of assembler macros for each low level operation of your game creation langauge. Only a few specific time critical bits of code ever ended up in true native, mainly the blit code. Porting games even in assembler was quite quick, you just had to start out with the correct technique. All thoses guys that wrote piles and piles of hand crafted native assembler without useing the macros we're just crazy.

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyhow, if an instruction executes, it executes in 'n' cycles, with a latency of 'p' and a throughput of 't'. Those are known values for all CPU's. If the CPU has been throttled back via speedstep, then it still takes 'n' cycles, with a latency of 'p' and the throughput remains the same.

Well this statement is an utter bunch of crap given cache effects, memory bus issues, TLB misses (another type of cache), SMT (depending on the underlying archs implementation this can affect your simple formula more than you realize)... and then if you want to bitch that these are noneffects in non-multitasking scenarios (but when does that occur in real life except in a microcontroller... there's branch prediction and branch target buffering which depend other code then the instruction block you just happen to be looking at...

Nevermind that OOO execution really makes a pat statement like yours at the very least...somewhat debateable.

I know that the specs for instruction timings make certain assumptions, and sometimes these are reasonable assumptions... but in certain cases they are not, and it blows the implication of your statement completely out of the water and pretty much supports the original point.

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[jellomizer]

The Wiki Definition is right your analysis is not.

Because there are some things you are kinda missing...

The C Language has the ASM command for moving those registers around if you feel the need... And if you dig into these libraries you find that most of the stuff that is going on ends up to be assembly language. What you are thinking is just as assembler perhaps with some macros. Assembly isn't a language, it is a 1 to 1 map to what the computer is doing.

Languages offer abstractions so you don't need to move the registers around all the time... the wikipedia you mentioned had "strong abstraction" vs. just any abstraction.

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[osu-neko]

Sorry, I assumed it went without saying that one hasn't seen what doesn't exist yet, and I didn't expect anyone to interpret "you've pretty much seen it all" to mean you've seen things that don't yet exist. Taking that absurd interpretation of what I wrote, you are of course correct in stating it's false. However, taking the statement as it was meant, it is true, and you are mistaken.

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[gangien]

so if java has some libraries that make it possible to manipulate registers, that makes it a low level language? Or any other language?

It says strong abstraction from the details of the machine.. I think when i can write a simple function and have it compile and run on 10 different platforms that implies strong abstraction from the details of that machine.

Re:Nice accomplishment!

[Lifyre]

Try Sailor Bubba for extra credit!

Site down?

[Anonymous Coward]

What... 3 comments and the site is already /.ed?

Copyright?

[PyroMosh]

Okay, so Lemmings isn't public domain. The owners may have turned a blind eye to DHTML Lemmings, and other small projects, but how do you expect to get approved for the Palm and Apple App Stores?

IIRC Psygnosis owns the rights to Lemmings. Also IIRC, Psygnosis is now owned by Sony. Unless Psygnosis was only the publisher for a third party I'm not aware of.

Good luck with that.

Re:Copyright?

[Tacvek]

I have no idea Who retained the copyrights, by if it was the developer, then Rock Star North would be the current identity of the developer, so Take-Two Interactive would be the people to ask, not Sony.

Re: Copyright?

[alex4point0]

PC/Amiga classic 'Cannon Fodder' was also recently ripped off (certainly from a look and feel perspective, and all reviews mention the likeness) as an iphone/itouch game Warpack Grunts - with no credit to the original coders on their website. Considering the original devs have their own mobile phone development company I doubt they would have allowed this, and I hope they have sicced their lawyers onto them. I doubt Apple look too closely for prior art and are more interested in counting the filthy lucre their Jesus phone is piling up at their feet.

Re:Copyright?

[El_Muerte_TDS]

It doesn't happen often that the develop remains copyright over their creations when signing up with a publisher.

If you look at the continuation of the Lemmings series you'll see DMA Design isn't involved anymore, but it's Psygnosis/Sony.

Re: Copyright?

[danielsfca2]

I doubt Apple look too closely for prior art and are more interested in counting the filthy

Oh, so today we're mad at Apple for dastardly approving apps that they should have rejected on the grounds of software look-and-feel... because that totally holds up in court, not to mention it's totally Apple's job to ensure that every app has no resemblance to any other software ever published. Got it!

I'm glad you posted, because I think I missed that memo and was still cursing those Apple jerks for rejecting too many apps, because "All Apps Deserve To Be Approved" and "Apple Is Oppressing People With Their Walled Garden."

Re:Copyright?

[SuperDre]

that's exactly what I thought.. How in the hell is he allowed to publish this without having the actual rights to the game, and especially since Lemmings games are still being made... I can imagine he publishes the engine alone, but he's also publishing the actual artwork/sounds/music...

Re: Copyright?

[LynnwoodRooster]

Of course you're right... Why would Apple care? After all, ripping off ideas and selling them out as their own is not a new idea, just ask Steve Jobs about pretty much any Apple product!

Re:Copyright?

[DreadPirateShawn]

IIRC Psygnosis owns the rights to Lemmings. Also IIRC, Psygnosis is now owned by Sony. Unless Psygnosis was only the publisher for a third party I'm not aware of.

Good luck with that.

Not a bad résumé tactic though, however you look at it. If I had an interviewee who ported a game for kicks in 36 hours, I'd certainly file that in the "pros" column..

Re: Copyright?

[danielsfca2]

Show me a "new idea" in software and I'll show you some no-account who claims he "thought of it first" but didn't have the motivation or skills, either to implement it right, or to successfully bring it to market.

Sure there are occasional examples of some freeware widget being copied and made into part of the OS, but more often than that, they just buy the relevant IP from the guy who created it. However if you think Apple is the only company to ever reimplement a "good idea" independently, without the blessing of some "inventor of the idea," then you're delusional and just have an axe to grind with Apple on some holy-war grounds.

Let me guess, you think Apple "stole" the desktop metaphor, mouse, etc. from Xerox PARC... but Microsoft was just using an obvious evolutionary idea when they suddenly developed Windows after examining the Mac prototypes they were given.

Apple (and Jobs) are no saints. But they've been on both sides of those battles, and are no worse than any other tech firm when it comes to originality. There are just not that many whole-cloth brand new ideas in our industry! The best things are refinements of other things. Think about it--Apple didn't invent MP3 players, and Microsoft didn't invent CP/M. In both cases, the concept of something crappy was taken, improved upon, and released as something less crappy (iPod, and MS-DOS).

Re: Copyright?

[blincoln]

Oh, so today we're mad at Apple for dastardly approving apps that they should have rejected on the grounds of software look-and-feel... because that totally holds up in court, not to mention it's totally Apple's job to ensure that every app has no resemblance to any other software ever published. Got it!

This isn't a game that looks vaguely like the original Lemmings and has somewhat similar gameplay mechanics. It's an exact copy that uses the "Lemmings" name and logo.

Re: Copyright?

[delinear]

He's talking about the Cannon Fodder clone which copies the "look and feel". Apple have yet to approve the Lemmings port, and I'd be surprised if they did since it's so well known and someone somewhere is likely to still have a vested interest in the rights and will pop up and challenge this.

Re: Copyright?

[Anonymous Coward]

because that totally holds up in court

Wow, you suck at examples. Apple primarily lost because they licensed most of the LaF elements to Microsoft (from Wikipedia 179 of 189 claims). The very first hit from your link says that. Try actually using the results instead of just snarkily posting lmgtfy links.

Re:Copyright?

[Narishma]

If that was the case, why would the last 3 or 4 versions be released only on Sony hardware? I think Sony owns the IP.

Re:Copyright?

[bhaak1]

Although I would be concerned with his attitude about copyrighted material.

Re:Copyright?

[16K Ram Pack]

And... this is why I like Android. Because this won't get allowed by either store, but will at least last a while on someone's website.

Am I saying that this is OK? Yes, I am. Sony should approach the guy and make him a reasonable offer and market it themselves and coin it in. I'll hand over money for an official Lemmings for Wii and Lemmings for Android, if they make it available.

Re:Copyright?

[Sockatume]

The game was developed by DMA Design (now Rockstar North), but the copyright went to Psygnosis as the publisher, and Psygnosis became SCE Liverpool. So ultimately Sony does hold the copyright, yes.

Re: Copyright?

[Hatta]

There's nothing illegal or unethical about making a clone of a popular game. As long as they don't use the same name, or any of the same art or code it's just fine.

Re: Copyright?

[tlhIngan]

Oh, so today we're mad at Apple for dastardly approving apps that they should have rejected on the grounds of software look-and-feel... because that totally holds up in court, not to mention it's totally Apple's job to ensure that every app has no resemblance to any other software ever published. Got it!

Actually, Apple lost the look-and-feel lawsuit because they had licensed it to Microsoft. In a huge case of "left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing". the lawyers didn't know that Apple had already licensed Microsoft all the GUI stuff. All Microsoft did was pull up this agreement, and... whoops.

Re: Copyright?

[danielsfca2]

You're right, and it was a hilarious technicality of poor wording, since obviously the intent of the license wasn't to grant them a license to knock off the concept but rather to write software FOR the platform.

However, have there been successful "look and feel" suits? I was under the impression that no one had won any similar cases. I chose a poor one as an example, didn't I.

Re:Copyright?

[ksheff]

He doesn't have to submit the game to Palm for approval if he doesn't want to. It just won't appear in their on device app store if he doesn't. Their 'web distribution' method would still work ok and wouldn't require any sort of approval.

Re: Copyright?

[mattack2]

Wasn't there a lawsuit involving The Print Shop? I can't find info about it, but I thought there was. (AFAIR, I am not mistaking the Lotus 1-2-3 suits, though my vague memory is about a similar issue -- a clone using basically the exact UI of The Print Shop.)

Re: Copyright?

[PyroMosh]

But he's doing both of those things. Am I grossly misunderstanding the article? The summary? Did you read either?

Re: Copyright?

[Hatta]

My comment was to the immediate parent who was upset about a clone of "Cannon Fodder" that used neither the name nor assets from the original game.

As for the fellow in TFA, he's at least using the name without permission, and possibly the artwork. So he's in a bad spot if someone chooses to protect the lemmings brand. I wouldn't be surprised if he got C&Dd over this.

I misread that as Portal Lemmings in 36 hours

[Magic5Ball]

/disappointed.

Re:I misread that as Portal Lemmings in 36 hours

[Anonymous Coward]

If the source code to Lemmings is available somewhere I'm totally on this

Re:I misread that as Portal Lemmings in 36 hours

[FlyMysticalDJ]

Actually that could be a pretty good idea. You could have a few types of portal spawning lemmings. One would invariably have to shoot it somehow, but one could create one in the path, and it could lead to other types of puzzle dynamics.... And would hopefully replace the painfully annoying stair building ones that always make me lose lemmings.

Re:I misread that as Portal Lemmings in 36 hours

[Anonymous Coward]

My god...

This is possibly the best idea i have seen in a long time. The things it could do for gameplay would be amazing.
Significantly more complex levels could be created while still remaining fun.

Re:I misread that as Portal Lemmings in 36 hours

[TheRaven64]

So did I. I was imagining lemmings able to fire in / out portals either forward, up, or down. That way, you could keep a load of lemmings safe at the start by firing one up and one down, keeping them in a little vertical loop, while one lemming made it to the exit and fired the portal up, letting them all drop out by the exit. A cross between the portal flash game and the original Lemmings.

Re:I misread that as Portal Lemmings in 36 hours

[Golddess]

letting them all drop out by the exit

And go splat because the distance they fell was far, far, far greater than the distance they can fall without an umbrella.

Unless you were thinking of giving them umbrellas for the infinite fall.

Re:I misread that as Portal Lemmings in 36 hours

[TheRaven64]

Hmm, good point, that would indeed make it more interesting.

Android please?

[Anonymous Coward]

No port for Android? Its selling 160,000 phone per DAY!
C'mon...

Re:Android please?

[Adys]

No port for Android? Its selling 160,000 phone per DAY! C'mon...

RTFA.

"Congrats to Aaron! Apparently he’s now thinking of extending his dev environment to include a port to Android. Let’s all weigh in on the comments below to help push him into challenging himself, yet again."

Re:Android please?

[zullnero]

And, if you're too lazy to read the article, it's because his custom dev environment does not currently support Android. This might shock you, but Android kind of sucks. It's mainly only popular because it's not Microsoft and Google licenses it out to any crappy hardware manufacturer that will slap it on their device to save themselves a few bucks, whereas Palm does not currently license webOS nor does Apple license their iPhone OS. That also doesn't mean Android is all that good. Personally, I think hacking a Linux kernel all to hell and running a bunch of non-portable java smeg on top of a goofy jvm isn't all that impressive nor is it very forward thinking. But hey, it's up to Aaron whether he wants to bother with extending his environment to allow him to support several different revs of Android.

Aaron's a pretty good guy. He and I cut our teeth on PalmOS at roughly the same time, contributed a lot to the mailing list. He really has a passion for this stuff, so yeah, he'll probably do Android too just because he can.

Re:Android please?

[lightversusdark]

After another 36 hours spent wrestling the Android audio APIs he will admit defeat.

Re:Android please?

[Anonymous Coward]

This might shock you, but Android kind of sucks.

Nah, there's nothing shocking about trollish displays of FUD.

Re:Android please?

[mdwh2]

What about Symbian then? 50% of the smartphone market, and their dev environment is Qt, allowing the same code to run on near 100% of the desktop/laptop/netbook market too (as well as their other OS, Maemo and presumably Meego in future).

(Of course, what one individual guy chooses to develop for is up to him. The sad thing is though, I can't help feeling that this story made the front page not because of the feat, but because of the obligitary "On The Iphone" mention...)

As for your Android comments:

licenses it out to any crappy hardware manufacturer

Whether or not that's true, these other companies still include those that sell a lot of phones. Nokia are number one, but there are a lot of other major companies that sell far more than Apple (and RIM come to that), but didn't have a decent OS. So it's a good thing that companies like Motorola can now ship devices with a decent OS.

Personally, I think hacking a Linux kernel all to hell and running a bunch of non-portable java smeg on top of a goofy jvm isn't all that impressive nor is it very forward thinking.

So how portable are other platforms? One could argue this for Symbian (now that it uses Qt), but not for the likes of Apple phones. What's "forward thinking" and "impressive" about other platforms, in a way that Android doesn't manage?

Re:Android please?

[csartanis]

Do I smell a butthurt fanboy?

Re:Android please?

[aristotle-dude]

No port for Android? Its selling 160,000 phone per DAY! C'mon...

Are they really "selling" that many or is it more like 80,000 since Verizon offers a "buy one, get one free" offer? People like free crap and will take it even if they have no real use for it.

Re:Android please?

[lightversusdark]

Flamebait? Sheer fanboyism! Android bug 3434 is a showstopper.
Audio is critical for telephony and the media functionality expected of a smart phone, and Android's basis in Linux is only highlighting the sorry state of Linux audio.
Hopefully this may spur Google to develop something along the lines of CoreAudio that could be used in Linux as well as just Android and rid us of the ALSA, Jack, OSS, etc. mess that represents the worst of Linux.

But can he actually publish his iPhone version?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't using your own dev environment and having a code translator violate Apple's extremely fascist developer's license?

Re:But can he actually publish his iPhone version?

[wampus]

Only if you are Adobe or someone else on Steve-O's shit list. They relaxed the rules to be even less consistent and harder to predict.

Re:But can he actually publish his iPhone version?

[ekhben]

Dev environment, no. Code translator, no, if the project was originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript. Since it was written in C, it doesn't even come into play.

But bonus points for noting that Apple is fascist! Take that, The Man! Woo!

CORAL CACHE

[Qubit]

Here's the link for the coral cache copy....now let's see if we can get the page loaded into the cache...

Re:CORAL CACHE

[pinkushun]

Mobile1UP.com is dead, heavily slashdotted, likely. Aah to relive the thrill of exploding lemmings!

Re:CORAL CACHE

[Man Eating Duck]

Here's the link for the coral cache copy....now let's see if we can get the page loaded into the cache...

I don't understand why the editors don't do this as a standard practice before publishing stories to the front page. I dunno, there might be some legal issues with publishing a cc url. If they at least preloaded the content it would be available, and the original host would stand a better chance of surviving a slashdotting.

Wrong language?

[mwvdlee]

Didn't Apple have some anti-competitive rules that allowed only Objective-C to be used in programming for the iPhone? Even if C were allowed, we're talking about generated C code here.

Re:Wrong language?

[Christoffer777]

XCode will allow you to mix Objective-C with both C and C++. Not only that, but I seem to remember reading that at compilation, Objective-C is actually translated to a C code state before being compiled further. Anyone correct me if my memory serves me wrong.

Re:Wrong language?

[Graff]

Didn't Apple have some anti-competitive rules that allowed only Objective-C to be used in programming for the iPhone?

Objective-C is C. Objective-C is a strict superset of C so there's no difference between C code and Objective-C except for the extensions that Objective-C has added.

Even if Objective-C didn't include all of C it would still be OK. Apple allows iOS apps to be written in Objective-C, C, and C++. These languages were chosen because they are supported under Apple's API for iOS.

Re:Wrong language?

[Per Wigren]

All valid C code is also valid Objective-C code as Objective-C is a superset of C with Smalltalk-like features on top.

Re:Wrong language?

[TheRaven64]

I seem to remember reading that at compilation, Objective-C is actually translated to a C code state before being compiled further. Anyone correct me if my memory serves me wrong.

This is correct if the year is less than 1988, or you are using either StepStone's compiler (I recently met someone who was, which came as a surprise) or the Portable Object Compiler. If you are using gcc or clang (the two Objective-C compilers that are capable of targeting the iPhone or Mac), then it is not.

Re:Wrong language?

[dangitman]

Didn't Apple have some anti-competitive rules that allowed only Objective-C to be used in programming for the iPhone?

No.

Re:Wrong language?

[DarkOx]

not quite all C code is objective-C code but not all objective-C code is C code. So you can certainly write some C code feed it to the objC compiler and faithful in the technical sense call it an objective-C program; if not in spirit.

Re:Wrong language?

[Graff]

Which is why I said that Objective-C is C with extensions, if you discount the extensions then what's left is C. I was trying to express it in layman's terms because it's very difficult to draw Venn diagrams in text! ;-)

But yes, the intersection of the sets of Objective-C and C includes all of C but not all of Objective-C. You can write a pure C function or variable and use it within Objective-C code without any problems at all.

Re:Wrong language?

[Anonymous Coward]

SYNTAX ERROR.

The Game that Made DMA Design

[snap2grid]

One of my claims to fame is that I was working for DMA Design when they created the original Lemmings (Dundee, Scotland), released on Valentine's day 1992. I did some conversions of the Amiga graphics to the PC (EGA!) and Atari Lynx. In the victory screen, there's a pic of the developers including myself! Needless to say, a lot of what is written on the net isn't quite correct. Great to see that it's still well thought of and in fact it's even part of a museum exhibit in Dundee (McManus Galleries) (You *really* know you're old when your photo is in a museum!) You can find the history of Lemmings (and DMA) here. http://www.dmadesign.org/ and some of my musings from that time here http://www.stevehammond.org/

Re:The Game that Made DMA Design

[Anonymous Coward]

My dad bought us Lemmings for our Amiga when it was released. We also enjoyed Blood Money.

Re:The Game that Made DMA Design

[16K Ram Pack]

You owe me weeks of my life back ;)

Looking forward to the Android port

[Spacelem]

It would be great if I could play my favourite game on my phone!

Re:Looking forward to the Android port

[dpw2atox]

Agreed! Still what he did was impressive non the less.

No love for Lemmings 2?

[DrScotsman]

The original Lemmings is awesome, but I seem to be the only one who prefers Lemmings 2...

Then again, I think I'm also the only one who liked Lemmings 3D.

Re:No love for Lemmings 2?

[iainl]

Lemmings 2 is far, far better if you ask me. But then I've still got my A1200 to play it on, so a port isn't something I desperately need.

Re:No love for Lemmings 2?

[wjsteele]

The basic problem is that One person liked Lemmings first... then everybody else followed him!

Bill

Re:No love for Lemmings 2?

[Rysc]

+1 funny

-1 people at work are now looking at me funny )-:

I am older, I remember why C is called C

[SmallFurryCreature]

You know you are old when B is more then just a brief bit of history in the front of a C book.

To be fair I only knew it from a porting project. I am not THAT old... I am young enough to remember when C was new and exciting... no we did NOT ride dinosaurs to work.

Re:I am older, I remember why C is called C

[Anonymous Coward]

... no we did NOT ride dinosaurs to work.

Obviously! They pulled the carriage!

Re:I am older, I remember why C is called C

[robthebloke]

To be fair I only knew it from a porting project. I am not THAT old... I am young enough to remember when C was new and exciting... no we did NOT ride dinosaurs to work.

a Model-T Ford? :p

nokia please :)

[Anonymous Coward]

would be nice for someone to do a native port to the N900. running and amiga emulator to play lemmings makes it a bit oif a battery hog. :D

Re:nokia please :)

[mooterSkooter]

This was partly my plan (N900 and Pandora)

http://lessermatters.homeunix.com/LemmingsSDL ...go for it, the source is there..and SDL runs on N900!

Ah, it warms the heart

[Snaller]

Its good to see Slashdot still has the power to trash third party sites :)

yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

There seems to be a fashion amongst game porters to pretend that it only took them 10 minutes to port to some new platform. I remember this as far back as the early '90s, where Krisalis would state that they'd produced ports of entire native games from Amiga to Archimedes in 3 or 4 days.

Let me tell you what actually happens:
1. Over a number of weeks, they create a port (or other development effort), deciding on design and implementation strategies, then actually coding, debugging, refactoring, etc.;
2. They produce a storyline which omits all the difficulties they had, giving a false illustration of a perfect journey from A to B in a few days;
3. They hype up that they're "about to" challenge themselves to an awesome timed exercise;
4. Once there's enough interest, they post the fiction produced in (2);
5. What could have been honestly advertised as an impressive (but not superhuman) effort becomes something heroic, and interest is increased n-fold.

This is just the grown-up version of the '90s hax0r culture I wasted too much time in, where everyone with a talent had to exaggerate it to near comical levels.

Re:yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

This. The blog is even complete with "well we got distracted by football / lunch / everything but we still managed to complete everything quicker than expected!"

Bull. Shit. Look, you did a cool job porting, and well done on that. But trying to discourage other developers by pretending that you're a fucking wizard just makes you look lame.

Portal Lemmings?

[Chris Pimlott]

I misread this as "Portal Lemmings" and am now seriously disappointed.

Someone needs to make that.

Re:You can play coin-op arcade lemmings game in MA

[antdude]

Same for DOS port in DOSbox with a bunch of games.

OS X mirror

[Anonymous Coward]

The site takes ages to download. I put the OS X download up on Rapidshare for quick download:

http://rapidshare.com/files/403577098/lemmings.macosx.universal.zip.html (MD5: 1F1B37BA035B7B7BAFA7CDD235FD0BAA)

Common language between iPhone and Windows Ph 7?

[tepples]

Code translator, no, if the project was originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript.

So in what language should I write an app's business logic if I want to target iPhone (Objective-C++ only) and Windows Phone 7 (languages that compile to verifiably memory-safe CIL only)? C++/CLI is a dialect of C++ that compiles to CIL, but its syntax for "handles" (the verifiably memory-safe counterpart of pointers) is a syntax error in Objective-C++.

Porting is easy when you have the source code.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not so easy when you don't. That's how the Nintendo DS port was done.

Missing two

[markdavis]

>"an iPhone version and a Palm Pre [WebOS Linux] version awaiting submission, and free versions for [MS ]Windows and Mac[OS] "

So you are just missing two versions- Android Linux and desktop Linux :) Of course, on desktop Linux, we already have Pingus http://pingus.seul.org/

Re:You can play coin-op arcade lemmings game in MA

[mattack2]

Supposedly there was only a prototype of the arcade version. Was it actually finished and just not released?

Re:Common language between iPhone and Windows Ph 7

[ekhben]

I don't really think the cost of supporting WP7 is likely to be met by the potential returns on the platform.

But if you really want to go there, and you really want to maximise code sharing, and you're OK with throwing away large feature sets of both platforms to achieve that, you can use C++ with #defines to work around the syntax differences for pointers. You can't use any of the other C++/CIL features, but then, neither can you use any of the Objective-C++ features.

I'm not defending Apple's policy. The Lemmings app was written in C, and does not fall afoul of that clause. I haven't seen a developer agreement for WP7, but if the platform itself forces you into vendor specific languages, it doesn't seem necessary to have it in legalese.

Common language between iPhone and Xbox 360?

[tepples]

I don't really think the cost of supporting WP7 is likely to be met by the potential returns on the platform.

Let me rephrase: Xbox Live Indie Games. Like all Windows Phone 7 games, those Xbox 360 games not published by a major company use XNA, which runs on the .NET implementation of the CLI.

if the platform itself forces you into vendor specific languages, it doesn't seem necessary to have it in legalese.

The Common Language Infrastructure (ECMA 335) isn't vendor-specific. Besides Microsoft, the Mono project implements the CLI, although only Microsoft implements the XNA API.

UPDATE on Story!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

From this guys WEBSite... UPDATE to the article...

http://www.mobile1up.com/lemmings/blog/sony-letter.txt

CEASE and DESIST letter from SONY for copyright infringment.

AaaaandPULLED.

[Anonymous Coward]

Cease-and-Desist from Sony.

Omigosh who'da thunk.

zhangyuyu

[zhangyuyu]

cheap gucci sale http://www.gucciusaoutlet.net/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=75&zenid=aa7cf3c1c03ba16b9ac00c8cd2a23ef2