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Forum > Sony Ericsson / Sony > Themes, ringtones, screensavers, games, video clips > Full Mophun games!

Author Full Mophun games!
macki_c
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Posted: 2003-08-04 17:19
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I think mophungames need to sort their support out cos it is appauling you should always expect a 48 hour reply from someone youve bought something off.

Sounds like their systems for updating your online account are a bit dodgy too from keve30 experiences with them

[ This Message was edited by: macki_c on 2003-08-04 16:21 ]
joebmc
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Posted: 2003-08-04 22:05
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no were near as well they rob me. downloaded a game and it told me to download it again!

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wrath000
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Posted: 2003-08-04 23:47
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Before you read the rest: I am not making an argument to justify pirating mophun. This is simply a statement

A mophun game averaging 70kb, with a lifespan of aproximatly 1 week, and simplicity of 5-10 years ago costs £4

A new computer game averating 1-4gb in size, where lifespan can range from months to years costs £40-£80

Where is the sense in that?
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WildNomad
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Posted: 2003-08-05 00:24
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About the lifespan of Mophun games:

Ok, we are talking on numbers, so let's look at some facts...

- Usual PC: 128 megs of RAM (more available to application due to virtual memory), 30GB hard-disk, CPU 32 bits 1GHz

- T300 hardware: 64kbytes (yes, you've read right) of RAM available to a Mophun application, maximum of 120.000 bytes per game in the filesystem (some vendors won't allow more than 60.000 bytes in any case), CPU 8 bits 12MHz

That does this mean? Programming for a mobile device is always full of constraints. We can't spend precious space in magnificent graphics, thousand of levels or even magnificient soundtracks in MP3, although we would to. Lifespan of these games must be shorter because we got this kind of limits.

As stated below, some vendors won't allow any game with more than 60.000 bytes (like AT&T or Cingular), and that's because sometimes we have to crop our games to cope with that.

We have to spent many hours optimizing the code by hand, chosing the right graphics so that they take the lesser space as possible.

And about the game price:

Here, in Spain, the download of three 10 seconds monophonic tones costs the same than a Mophun game. Do you find this fair? I could compose one of those melodies in just half an hour.

Everything depends on what is compared with.

Take care...

[ This Message was edited by: WildNomad on 2003-08-04 23:24 ]
M3_DeL
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Posted: 2003-08-05 00:38
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I think people are missing the point......

I don't care if the games cost 1,000,000 dollars.....whether that is fair on not is not the issue at hand.

I don't think it is fair that Microsoft windows is so expensive and Linux is free....does that now give me the right to steal Windows? NO

If you don't like the pricing of these games stick to the java games!!!

If it seems so rediculous to pay for these games.....feel free to start developing games for us all for free. You may enjoy making the first one....but I doubt we'll see much more come from you in developing terms as I am sure you have a job and program free games on the side won't be very fruitfull for you.

just my 2 cents
wrath000
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Posted: 2003-08-05 00:41
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@WildNomad: I agree with you. Mobile content is overpriced. Why is it so overpriced? Because it's too popular. So popular in fact that nobody feels that they have to drop prices in order to beat comptetition.

By the way, a little of topic here: don't underestimate the effort that goes into polyphonic ringtones. I make polys (not comercially, but for myself. Why? because I gave up on buying them since they all sound like cr*p because the author didn't bother to put more then an hour of effort into it). They are a lot of work... at least the good ones. Adapting a song into MIDI is a pain in the *ss. Are they overpriced? Yes. The latest trend is for the prices to go up and the quality to go down.

Back to the original point though. The mobile content is not aimed at individuals. It's aimed at masses. When a mobile product is made, it's expected that it will be bought by millions. Teenagers use more and more money on this. As a matter of fact it's becoming an addiction to them. So even though £3 a game doesn't sound like much, when you multiply it by a million it becomes quite a large number. I know you will probably say that no game is downloaded so much. Just wait. Mophun phones are not very widespread yet, but they will be soon, and one thing we learned from the mobile content industry is that they don't lower prices when the sales increase.
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Elrond
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Posted: 2003-08-05 01:26
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Can anybody give me a link to download demos via wap? Thx

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macki_c
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Posted: 2003-08-05 01:31
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games.mophun.com mate
Elrond
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Posted: 2003-08-05 01:41
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Thanks a lot. Maybe I buy a game or 2 or 3 or ... :-D

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macki_c
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Posted: 2003-08-05 01:45
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cool i would recommend syndroid its based on a game that has never got boring to me since it first came out as arkanoid donkeys years ago
M3_DeL
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Posted: 2003-08-05 01:59
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I would love to see more role playing games in the future....I also would like to see SE add a little more memory to phones so we can see longer games with more detail (no not graphics).

I guess with time this will improve
Mavito
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Posted: 2003-08-05 02:01
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OK!

The reason why I download cracked Mophun games, is that Ericsson made that misstake to ignore JAVA on my T300. Mophun didn't let users make own applications and share them free, like JAVA. And I don't want to have to pay everytime I want to refresh the phone with some new games.

Another thing I hate about Mophun, is that they only make games and not usefull applications; like remotecontrol and datebook.

If only Ericsson had dropped Mophun from the begining, there would be no problem with cracked software and no more people thinking about the poor company loosing their money...
N.M.E.
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Posted: 2003-08-05 03:06
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@WildNomad
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People spend $2 for short monophonic tunes (1 SMS). Why not paying a little more for a full game?
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People are idiots I guess. It's just a ringtone....I've never paid for a ringtone/logo on my phone...Theres too many available for free.

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We get paid for every game we sold. We get very little of that "few dollars" per game, so we must sale many games to get enough profit to continue. In either way, I also work on other "more substantial" projects, but I've just give a try on Mophun development. Why with Mophun? Because of its strict DRM. I was surprised how pirated J2ME games where available on the net, so Mophun got very attractive.
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Fair enough. I won't argue with that.
I think Mophun (from what I've seen of it) looks a lot like Allegro..Not that I can claim to be adept at Allegro development, but they both seem to serve a similar purpose. J2ME games shouldn't even have to be pirated! It's ridiculous.

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Really? Then why a Nokia J2ME game doesn't work on my Siemens phone (or viceversa)? Just a tip: I've managed to get my game playable on a Nokia 3650/7650 just by rescaling the graphics. Does J2ME allow this? No, for sure. Perhaps when MIDP 2.0 arrive to the mass market, but not today.
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That was kinda my point :P The whole vision behind Java was to write once and run anywhere. Other companies somehow got too competitive and lost that vision. It is possible to write J2ME apps that will run on any phone, you just have to leave the company specific classes alone. And yes, it is possible to dynamically scale the screen in Java.

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Believe me when I say that I would be more flattered seeing the people who find my software worthy enough paying for it.
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Again, fair enough. I guess that is just a difference of opinion.

@macki_c
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Try and argue against that N.M.E djburno2000.
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Against what? I didn't see you say anything....

WildNomad
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Posted: 2003-08-05 03:08
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Quote:
The reason why I download cracked Mophun games, is that Ericsson made that misstake to ignore JAVA on my T300. Mophun didn't let users make own applications and share them free, like JAVA.

Well, SonyEricsson didn't ignored JAVA. The T300 hardware cannot support any commercial JAVA implementation because of it's limited speed. Look at T610: it's way faster than T300... and J2ME implementation is veeery slow on it.

One of the reasons about adopting Mophun is its speed. It uses a very fast runtime engine that lets the hardware give the best.

Quote:
And I don't want to have to pay everytime I want to refresh the phone with some new games.

C'mon guy. These games doesn't appear from the void. There are people working hard behind them. I also don't want to pay for many things, but not doing it is unlawful.

Quote:
Another thing I hate about Mophun, is that they only make games and not usefull applications; like remotecontrol and datebook.

From Mophun you have no direct access to hardware (so bye bye infrared remote). Datebook? Perhaps you mean calendar... it could be done, but no alarms would be available, as you can't access the actual date/time from Mophun. By the way, I'm working on a eBook reader where books can be made by the user and uploaded at his will.

Quote:
If only Ericsson had dropped Mophun from the begining, there would be no problem with cracked software and no more people thinking about the poor company loosing their money...

SonyEricsson is not the worst affected... it's Synergenix and we, the developers.

Also, the games haven't been cracked. They are just games not locked to an specific phone.

Regards...
macki_c
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Posted: 2003-08-05 03:17
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Quote:

On 2003-08-04 10:55:42, WildNomad wrote:
@keve30
Quote:
On 2003-08-04 04:12:13, Keve30 wrote:
What happens then when our phones run out of memory cos we dont want to delete our games cos we dont have a backup, meaning if we did delete a game we would have to buy it again to play it.

Same thing if we have to reset our phone, all games are lost and have to be bought time and time again.


I'll try to explain why this work this way. There 2 kind of distribution models on Mophun: OTA and IMEI-Locked.

On the IMEI-Locked, the game you buy is locked at your specific phone. The distributors which allow this model lets you download your game everytime you want. That is: you buy once and download as many times you need (even with your computer in the case of http://www.mophungames.com). The Spanish operator Amena works this way. I've bought 3 games, and I've been able to redownload them after a master reset for free. By the way... mophungames operates in a worldwide manner, you just need a credit card.

The OTA distribution games are not locked to your phone until the game arrive on it. Those games have an user id embedded which usually corresponds with the user phone number.

You could ask, why not using that phone number for knowing if the game has been downloaded before? In that case they shouldn't charge for anything, should they? Well, as you should know, phone number and mobile phone are not strongly associated: I could just change my SIM to other phone a download the same game again on the new phone for free. That's because many distributors doesn't allow the redownload of previous bought games.

Also take into account that OTA distributors' download platforms are usually built over the software which managed polyphonic tunes downloads via WAP. Do you know any "tones by SMS" service that let's you redownload a lost song? I don't.

@djburno2000
Quote:

On 2003-08-04 04:34:24, djburno2000 wrote:
How can customers buy the games when they don't have access to the service in their own country.
check the list on mophun.com or SE site, it's still quite short, meanwhile the mobile phones are sold worldwide.
Why isn't it possible to sell the games over the net?
this solve the problem of access to service and backup problems.

This is already possible. Point your browser to http://www.mophungames.com and register there (you will need your IMEI). In that page you can buy games with your credit card. Once bought, the games can be downloaded from the "My games" via any PC browser.

@N.M.E.
Quote:

On 2003-08-04 08:13:13, N.M.E. wrote:
I know you would tend not to agree, but I am in full support of freeware and the open source community. How can you justify spending $4 on 50kb of data? It just seems stupid to me.

People spend $2 for short monophonic tunes (1 SMS). Why not paying a little more for a full game?

Quote:

1. Paying for Mophun/Java games. So what if it only costs a few dollars? Why even bother? If it bothers you that much that people are pirating phone games, invest your time into something more substantial.


We get paid for every game we sold. We get very little of that "few dollars" per game, so we must sale many games to get enough profit to continue. In either way, I also work on other "more substantial" projects, but I've just give a try on Mophun development. Why with Mophun? Because of its strict DRM. I was surprised how pirated J2ME games where available on the net, so Mophun got very attractive.

Quote:
2. Java is meant to be a platform indepentant interpreter. Good to see that lasted a whole 10minutes in the J2ME world.

Really? Then why a Nokia J2ME game doesn't work on my Siemens phone (or viceversa)? Just a tip: I've managed to get my game playable on a Nokia 3650/7650 just by rescaling the graphics. Does J2ME allow this? No, for sure. Perhaps when MIDP 2.0 arrive to the mass market, but not today.

Quote:
I would personally be flattered to see that someone finds my software worthy enough to be pirated.

Believe me when I say that I would be more flattered seeing the people who find my software worthy enough paying for it.

Regards!

Edit: Just corrected an errata.

[ This Message was edited by: Wildnomad on 2003-08-04 13:18 ]



I meant try and argue against Wild Nomads points.
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