Defend London it’s a Symbian game that recreates the WWII Battle for England. The player can use Spitfires, anti-aircraft guns, jeeps and even play as a commando or fight on the German side.
Defend London shows real iconic buildings of the city in 3D, and is made with advanced features, like the use of Open GL, atmospheric effects and hardware acceleration on phones like the Nokia’s N93, N95, N82 or E90. You can fight against a friend via bluetooth and in some levels the control is made through the accelerometer, just moving the phone. One of the more interesting features is the pseudo-multitouch on the Nokia 5800, a tactile phone not supposed to be multitouch. We’ve been talking with his creator about this feature and other things.
NMT: What do you do for a living? Did you make Defend London alone?
MobileGamesPro: I’m making mobile games since 2004, sometimes for companies, sometimes for me, for Mobile Games Pro. I did several Java games so I decided to jump into the 3D world with Symbian. Initially I was doing an anti-aircraft game, but soon I started to add more options: flying planes, multiplayer, driving jeeps over mountains and the commando mission. It became the longest game I’ve ever did. I did Defend London alone, I started by the end of 2007 and it was finished on April 2009, all by myself.
NMT: Why a Symbian game? What do you think of Symbian?
MobileGamesPro: When I started to program it seems the trend were 3D accelerated Symbian phones like the Nokia’s N93, N95, E90 and N82. Unfortunately that stopped. I guess Nokia didn’t make more to assure NGage games compatibility in all his models.
Besides that Symbian problem, we have the piracy problem. People look at mobile games like something you can download from Internet and install for free, there’s no buying culture. You buy something you can touch, not the software, software is free. Unfortunately for me, this is the culture we have. With the Apple App Store arrival things seem to be changing, that’s why I’m porting the game to the iPhone, searching for more success, with Symbian I’m selling one game per day, that’s nothing. If Ovi Store is capable of make the people buying mobile apps, instead of pirating them, Symbian will be interesting again.
NMT: What about the multitouch on the 5800?
MobileGamesPro: With the 5800 launch I had to adapt the game to the tactile screen. In the game is important push two buttons at once, for example to go up and turn to the left at the same time. Initially I thought that it was impossible because the 5800 is not multitouch, fortunately I discovered the trick to make it multitouch and that saved the game playability.
The bad side is that Nokia is not putting 3D chips on his phones and counting the large pixels number on the 5800 that makes the game slow. You just can play it with low graphics and 12 frames per second. It should be perfect with the Samsung Omnia HD, which has hardware acceleration, but some users tipped me that doesn’t start. I think it’s something trivial to fix, but I can’t fix it until I have that phone.
NMT: How Nokia or Symbian could help independent developers like you?
MobileGamesPro: Two quick ideas:
1. Contract 10 expert programmers to solve technical questions in their forum. What are 10 salaries for Nokia? Nothing.
2. Do not ask for signing to enter Ovi Store.
NMT: What do you think about iPhone? Android? Palm?
MobileGamesPro: To me, an operative system is just the icons that let the people reach my game, so I don’t care about them, what is important is that the app stores of the system generates well sales numbers. It would be nice to have only one operative system, that way, instead to convert my game to some of them, I could be making Ciclis 3D, a game I want to make from sometime now.
NMT: Defend London is not in Ovi Store, what do you think of the Nokia app shop?
MobileGamesPro: It looks good, it seems they overcome the initial glitches. The main problem is they request the applications to be signed, that requires a company certificate, and that requires to be a legal company, a lot of things an individual can’t afford easily. I can’t make such investment right now.
NMT: What do you think about piracy?
MobileGamesPro: Recently I did a Google search for Defend London and I discovered a few forums distributing it for free. One of them had more than one thousand downloads in just one day. I asked the forums administrators to remove it, but for every forum that does it, you have 10 new posting it. There’s no way to stop it.
Singers and actors complain about piracy, but they can earn money with concerts or the cinema. Meanwhile, a mobile programmer with a pirated game is simply screwed.
A lot of people complains there are no good games for Symbian. I also didn’t understand why there are no more 3D accelerated titles for these phones. I can see clearly now: Why? To have them all pirated?
NMT: Tell me your favorite application or game in Symbian. What’s your favorite Symbian phone?
MobileGamesPro: I liked a lot Carmageddon in my old Nokia 6680. I also like an app to use the phone as a torch. My perfect Symbian phone could be one with 3D acceleration, Xenon flash and torch. I’m currently using a Nokia N93 two years old and I’m happy with it, except for night photos.
NMT: Do you think one day you could be making a living programming for Symbian phones?
MobileGamesPro: I already did it, working for a company. With my own games is difficult, I will keep an eye at the evolution from Ovi Store and the similar ones from Samsung and Sony Ericsson.
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