Elecorn: The Animated Coder

Yes, this is the main menu of Caster on the IPhone (simulator).  Most of the credit goes out to my main man Spencer Nielsen that handled the Mac port of Caster.  Spencer is one crazy awesome coder that is not to be taken lightly.

No, that is not Caster with the Seeker (pink colored attack) selected.  We just need to swap the blue and red channels for our loaded images.

So why IPhone?

Well, the first hour after I heard the announcement for opening up IPhone development, I had to take a break from work because I was so dizzy with excitement for the possibilities of what could be done that I almost passed out.

Later when I got a grip back on reality, I realized that Caster was not the best game for the IPhone.  It’s a third person shooter.  I could think of a dozen other game ideas that would be cool and work much better on the IPhone.  If I was going to spend time doing something for IPhone, I would rather spend my time doing something that made sense on the platform.

So I shelved the idea of Caster on the IPhone.  However, I still really wanted to get Caster on an embedded device because:

1) Caster has a small footprint and pretty low hardware requirements.

2) I like doing ports and I like the challenges of low end development.

3) It’s just cool.

Really, the turning point for me was when a publisher offered to port Caster to the IPhone for me.  For some reason, this made me look at it in a different way.  Instead of thinking “Caster is not a good game for the IPhone”.  I was thinking “How can I make Caster work on the IPhone”.  Then it became a challenge.  How can I take a 3rd person shooter like Caster, and make it work… no… make it ROCK on the IPhone?

For me, the value of getting Caster on the IPhone is the challenge of taking something that has no business being there and making it shine.

And shine it will!… (if nothing else, from the glare you get when you tilt your IPhone into the sun).

So what about a port to Nintendo DS and Pandora?  Well Nintendo DS is of interest, but I would need a publisher and I would have to deal with a publisher as well as certification etc.  As far as Pandora (Linux handheld) goes,  they have an awesome dev community and I have a person planned for this.  If the install base was bigger, I would probably do it myself.