To celebrate the release of MonsterUp for iOS devices, I decided to dedicate a website only to MonsterUp branded games. I have 3 games already using the MonsterUp brand, the original MonsterUp, its sequel MonsterUp Adventures and a kids’ memory matching games called MonsterUp Memory. Since I plan to use the brand on future games as well, a dedicated simple website for all things MonsterUp seemed like a good idea. So I bought the domain monsterupgame.com, installed wordpress and presto – I had a website in about 4 hours :)
It has most of the things I wanted to have, like reviews and screenshots showing on devices’ pictures. I had to hack the template a bit to support multiple platforms, since it was originally supporting only iPhone apps, but I think it works the way I want it to work now.
With summer in full swing, it is actually most likely preferable to head to the nearest beach to cool off, than stay in and play some good old fashion video games. But wait! That is why we have mobile phones these days, it seems, so that we can take gaming wherever we go, right? Well, many people have Windows Phone devices, and have been enjoying Galaxium, my space shooter, for a little over a year now. So I though it was time to give something to the even more people who walk around with iPhones, iPod Touches and iPads in their pockets these days. And I did, Galaxium has been in the App Store for a little more than a week now, and people from all over the world have been downloading it already. If you have an iOS device, you can do the same, by following this link. Galaxium on the iPhone has the exact same gameplay, bonus, enemies and bosses as the Windows Phone version, and there are a small differences as well, like the different menu layout and the Game Center support for the iPhone.
But how did we port the game I hear you ask, since Galaxium has been developed using XNA and C# which are not available for the iOS platform? Did we rewrite the game in Objective-C? The answer is no. The game is a direct port, even using the exact same code, using the most excellent tools provided by MonoGame, MonoTouch, Mono and MonoDevelop. These tools allow game developers to use their beloved C# and XNA skillset to write games that write in oh-so-many different platforms, including Linux, MacOSX, iOS, Android, PlayStation, Windows 8 and more. It’s every XNA game developer’s dream come true! It’s not perfect, but it’s stable enough to port most games already written in XNA to any of the platforms above. And you don’t have to take our word for it. We did it with Galaxium, we will do it with more games in the future and there are also some very nice examples in MonoGame’s website. There you can also find tutorials and documentation to get you started. What are you waiting for?
Galaxium, my space shooter, is making its way to iOS, iPhone, iPod and iPad. I have an alpha version ready. What do you thnk? The video is of an iPhone 4S and was shot with a Nokia Lumia 800 is 720p. The game is not complete yet, but I quite like the results, considering it’s a direct port, using even the same codebase :) I might write a nice article about MonoGame one of these days. Until then, enjoy:
