Over the two year period that I have spent blogging and writing about gaming, I’ve been approached by a lot of people who wanted to get into game development. The typical questions I’ve faced are, how do I start off in the industry, is there any course I need to take, which is best college in India that teaches game development among others. I generally end up telling them to stick to basics, understand art design/coding language involved better and then search for specialised courses for the same.

Though gaming has evolved a lot over the years, from 2D scrollers to present-gen realistic graphics based games, the basics are still the same, well almost. What has really evolved are the ideas. Most games try to bring in something new to the market — a new way to play it, a new way to interact with the environment, a different way of story telling, multiple endings or even vast environments which you can explore forever!

If you ask me today how to start off as a game development, I would point my fingers towards iPhone, iPod Touch platform. You may not be able to develop a next Doom on it, nor will you be able to make the game with the best graphics ever. What you can do, is concentrate on the basics and utilise the platform to the maximum to develop a game that is easy to pick up and play and thoroughly enjoyable.

Another reason why I suggest this platform’s also because it’s easier to make a return as you won’t need to depend on distributing the game and piracy. I spoke to Rohit Gupta, who with a friend started Rolocule and developed the first Squash game for the platform — Touch Squash. He told us how he went about developing the app, the motivation, know-how among others. Read on…

Have you developed games in the past?

Yes, I have worked on “The Sims 3″ for PC while I was at Electronic Arts (EA) in Redwood Shores, California, USA. I have also developed couple of games while I was pursuing my Master of Science (MS) in Computer Science at Columbia University, New York, USA.

What motivated you to develop the app?
We are a game development startup and in developing our first game, I wanted to do something that was never done before. I love squash as a sport but the principal limitation has always been the difficulty in observing the sport as a spectator, either in person or on television. Enjoying squash through the medium of interactive entertainment like a Squash 3D sports video game looked perfect.

Secondly, my focus was developing a powerful game with high quality graphics. Developing games for mobile phones was clearly out of picture because of their less processing power. Since we are a startup, it is also not easy to directly jump to making games for consoles or PC because of the many complexities involved. iPhone gave us the perfect platform to showcase what we can do. It is way ahead of any mobile phone as a gaming device in terms of technology. iPhone’s powerful processor gave excellent graphics and ability to develop great gameplay in the game – exactly the way I wanted.
Also, Touch Squash looked perfect since I want to build our game development company on the foundation of creativity, innovation and originality which is deeply missing in Indian game development companies today.

How much time did you spend developing it? What was the most difficult part of developing the game?
It took me 3 months to develop the game. With no experience developing for either iPhone or Mac OS X, it was a completely new world and I wanted to make sure that the game matched the standards of our big brothers (big game developers) on the App Store.
Secondly, incorporating real physics into the game was a real challenge. To make the game look realistic and natural, it was very important for the game to follow all the Newton’s laws of motion, kinetic energy, potential energy, etc. Simulating the real world in a computer language gave a god-like feeling and this was actually the best part of the entire development.

What knowledge is required to develop an iPhone game? (which all languages should one know) What is the investment required?
Knowledge of C, Objective C, object oriented programming, OpenGL (for 3D games) will suffice. However, it is also important to have some art and UI background. Art and UI play a very important role when it comes to developing applications for iPhone.
You need a computer running Macintosh operating system Mac OS X (Macbook or iMac), an iPhone/iPod touch and you should be registered in Apple’s iPhone Developer program (Standard program costs $99).

Do you plan to make the game for other similar platforms life Nintendo DSi or even Wii?
Yes, we do have plans to make games on DSi and Wii.

What is the level of complexity in comparison to let’s say making a flash game
Complexity actually varies between 2D and 3D games. Developing a 2D game for iPhone won’t be very different as compared to a flash game. However, complexity increases 5 to 10 times when you develop a 3D game for iPhone.

How many time was the app downloaded?
In first 3 months since the launch of Touch Squash, tens of thousands of people across 50+ countries are playing the game and this is just a beginning.

How much money can one expect to make of a decent app on iPhone?
There are close to 85,000 apps on the App Store, with many of them made very nicely and are very decent. So, it is very important to stand out of the crowd to get notice first.
Each app performs differently depending upon the popularity it gains in the App Store. The amount of money that one can make on the App Store varies from million of dollars to few hundred dollars. It all depends on how you pull it off.

Also read: My story in DNA newspaper on iPhone gaming