Developing for iphone

[Zarcath]

Looking into developing a game for iphone/touch and wondering what the typical development cycle is for one. What sort of certification process does the finished product go through?

Also i've been hearing for a while now that getting approved as an iphone dev is a long process. Is it difficult to get approved or is apple just dragging it's feet?

[Big W Powah!]

I really can't answer your questions; though I will say I'm interested in this as well.

[niteflyx]

I'll hop aboard this iPhone train. I messed around a bit in objective C when the SDK was first released, but haven't touched it since. There were a few people in the IT Thread who've made apps so hopefully they can shine some light.

[Kargon]

I haven't personally done any iphone development, but there are tons of topics about it over at stackoverflow.com.

This appears to be a particularly good thread.

[Hachima]

UNITY: Features – iPhone Publishing is nice for indie developers that want to get into some iPhone game development and have a background in C# or javascript. A lot of 3D engine/physics already taken care of for you. They have a nice community that is very helpful.

Your first game can cover the cost easily.

I use it along with the iPhone SDK for my game development. A lot of people don't even touchthe iPhone SDK when they use Unity, but my game uses a lot of GUI menus and stuff, which the iPhone SDK is a lot better for.

[Faille]

decided I might try and learn java2me for developing stuff on mobile platforms. Not sure if it applies to iphone as well, but that would be a bonus. Was also looking at Unity, but not really an option until they release a stable windows version for me.

[Drajakur]

We had two apple reps visit the studio where I work last week and, believe it or not, they said that apple had been totally caught by surprise by the popularity of iPhone apps, and the time it takes to get approved was due chiefly to the fact that apple doesn't have the infrastructure to push certification through faster. He told us that it would take about 2 weeks to get a dev certificate (with his help) and that the process had been intentionally designed to seem more formal than it actually is in order to dissuade a deluge of applicants from clogging up the system.

As far as development cycle goes - well, who the hell knows really. It is a bit of the old wild west garage days at this point. We designed an easy game in-house with 2 coders who knew zero about Objective C and had a beta up in about 8 days. /shrug

We don't have the game certified yet so I can't help there, but if we ever do I'll let you know how long it took and what was involved.

[Zarcath]

This does not bode well if true

Rumor: Apple Putting The Squeeze On iPhone Developers

[Ssinurn]

I just heard a talk from the founder/developer of Fieldrunners last week. He was the main programmer and there was an artist on the project. He mentioned aiming for the launch of the app store, and it sounded like he met that maybe within a few weeks of launch with 6 months of development time and working with Objective C on an iMac and testing near the end of the cycle on the phone itself.

Fieldrunners was a huge success story, but listening to his talk it definitely sounds like a wild west/garage story. The developer, Jamie Gotch also works at 38 Studios, so he wasn't a novice with development.

I didn't get the impression the certification process was heavy at all, although like all things it probably will be eventually. The sentiment that Apple was/is overwhelmed is totally true.