These days I’m working on a better implementation of AI for my game Gomoku, and found that when performing pure math & logic calculations, iPhone simulator is vastly faster than real device, maybe 10x times! I implemented a new way to calculate next move for computer in the board name, it took few seconds to calculate inside simulator, but more than 30 seconds on real device. Interesting. I need to put more work on my algorithm, definitely!

If you’re going to create your own iPhone games, with help from a good game engine, your life will be much easier, and you’ll be able to focus on executing your ideas, not the low-level details involving too much math and OpenGL.

cocos2d for iPhone

This is an open source 2D game engine imported from its original Python implementation. The API is organized in several easy-to-understand OOP concepts: Director, Scene, Layer and Sprite. It also sports two powerful 2D physics engine: Chipmunk and Box2d. The full feature list can be found here:

http://www.cocos2d-iphone.org/wiki/doku.php/prog_guide:index

OGRE

OGRE is a famous open source 3D game engine, now it being ported to iPhone.

Unity iPhone

Unity is a commercial iPhone game development environment, it has got everything you’ll need for developing a 3D game. The only problem is the licensing price is too high, the combination of Unity Pro and iPhone Advanced could cost you $1499 + $1499. It’s quite a lot.

Unity feature list can be found here:

http://unity3d.com/unity/whats-new/iphone-1.5

Oolong Engine

Oolong Engine is a new open source 3D game engine, it has built-in support for Bullet Physics SDK, which is also open sourced and being supported by AMD recently.

An abstract strategy game for iPhone / iPod Touch

Gomoku is a very old game, it originated in China and developed in Japan. I started to port it to iPhone in August 2008 and finally got a working version in the beginning of September 2008. During the development, I also tried to purchase iPhone Developer Program from Apple China (because I’m living in China), as the game is getting more and more mature, I still cannot receive my iDP, this is a frustrated story I’ll cover later.

However, then I decided to release the game for free via Cydia, I just wish more people would enjoy the game sooner. So, add http://apt.shinra-core.com/ to Cydia sources, and you’ll find Gomoku under Games section. One more reason to jailbreak your iPhone / iPod touch, huh. :D

Update on November: Gomoku is now available on iTunes Store. Download it here.

If you find any bugs, welcome to notify me via comments below and I’ll fix.

Wikipedia has got more on this game: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gomoku

Gomoku has a professional variant called Renju, it’s the rule used by World Championship every 2 years. I do plan to support it. Hope you like the game. :)

SHINRA-CORE is the studio name for games and apps developed by me and my friends, I’ll write more on it later.

p.s. There is another iPhone app provided in http://apt.shinra-core.com/, it’s a client for a SNS site in China, still in early stage. Feel free to try if you can read Chinese.