作者：David Meyer

位于德国柏林的Wooga是一家非常成功的游戏工作室，现在它将推其游戏大作《Diamond Dash》转战Android平台。现在似乎正是时候了解这个工作室如何游刃于两个手机平台。

Wooga最初是从事Facebook游戏开发，大获成功之后又转向iOS，表现同样出色，由此晋升为最优秀的社交游戏公司之一。现在，它将在Android上发行新版本的《Diamond Dash》。

在这种转变之中，有许多有趣的挑战，特别是当你试图为大量不同的Android设备提供同样顺畅的体验。幸运的是，作为该工作室的首席执行官，Jens Begemann早在发行以前就想到这个问题。

你的团队现在有多少人从事手机游戏开发？

现在有一半多的人从事手机游戏开发。一年以前是10%的人，但之后我们们扩大团队规模至250人，就同时增加了从事手机游戏开发的人的比例。

你们有几百万的玩家——现在你们怎么想到将Android定为目标？

一年以前，当我们决定大量投入手机领域时，我们就很明确，不可能因为我们在网页游戏中成功了，就自然而然地能在手机领域复制成功。因此，专注是极其重要的。我们决定传注于一个平台，那就是iOS。在春夏之季，我们发现下载量持续增长，我们在新平台上的玩家持续增加。

Diamond-Dash(from siammac.com)

《Diamond Dash》是一款非常热门的游戏——在Facebook上就有7000万玩家，而iOS上的下载量也达到3000万。我们每个月仍然有2000万活跃玩家，所以我们对玩家基础的期望很高（对于将在新平台发行的游戏）。11月21日时我们公布注册Android版本的办法，共收获85万个邮箱地址。

这两种经历相比，编写Android平台的代码有什么不同吗？

Android设备太多，障碍太多，版本太多。我们不想让玩家失望，这是最大的挑战。总的来说，在Android平台的开发经历显然不同于iOS，我不是说哪个更简单的问题。

我们可以从一个平台放到另一个平台的代码相当少。我们可以重复利用图象，但基本上要重新编写代码。对于iOS，我们使用的是Objective-C，而Android的是C++—-差异没有太大，但因为程序界面不同，所以基本上要重写。如果你不使用像Unity这种东西，重写是肯定的。

制作一款成功的Android的最大挑战是，使它在不同的设备上运行良好—-让应用在三星Galaxy S III上运行好很容易。就测试而言，我们混用内部测试和云端测试。共有50多部内部测试设备，各种屏幕尺寸、CPU和GPU的都有，但之后我们用基于云技术的方法。现在有许多云技术供应商，通过网络，你可以远程访问数公里之后的设备。我们动用了不下100部的设备。

所以你们覆盖的范围很大。就你们将支持的Android而言，你们的要求是怎么样的？

我们有意设定了限制：Android 2.3是最低标准，最小屏幕分辨率是320 x 480像素。游戏可以在更老一点的设备上运行，但我们不保证那样能呈现好品质，我们希望玩家能获得良好的游戏体验。

有句老话说，所有开发商都应该先搞定iOS。这听起来就好像Android非常费功夫，但因为Android设备的数量超过iOS，所以这一点弥补了它的劣势？另外，就新的分辨率而言，现在iOS本身也出现了更多分裂性。总之，那句老话仍然正确吗？

每个人都有自己的结论。至于分裂性，我们看到的是苹果一直推出新设备和OS版本，升级换代的周期是很短的。这意味着三年以前推出的设备不会再得到支持，两年以前推出的OS版本也不会再得到支持。

例如，iPhone 5引发了新一轮屏幕革命，但同时，新游戏再也不必支持iPhone 3GS和它没有采用视网膜技术的屏幕分辨率。iOS的更新也很快，所以今天它足以支持iOS 6和iOS 5。

3GS用户可以运行iOS 6这种最新版本，但你们仍然不支持3GS？

对于2013年初的新游戏，我们再也不支持iPhone 3GS了。我们想制作确实能在Retina技术下达到最佳效果的作品，非Retina技术的市场占有正在下降。

另一件关于iOS的事是，屏幕大小确实不同，但除此之外，设备的性能基本一致。有些设备有相同的芯片——iPhone 4S和新的iPad Mini、iPad 2和新的iPod Touch都采用相同的A5芯片。它们的RAM和性能其实是一样的。

这可能与Android开发商有关。说到iOS，你的iPhone 5和全世界的iPhone 5都一样。而如果是Galaxy S III，它的内部模式就有10到12种。差别是很小，但作为开发商，你应该意识到这个事实。

换句话说，开发Android游戏仍然太费人力吗？

多少取决于你想达到的品质和普及度。我们试图支持尽可能多的设备，所以需要更多工作。但令人振奋的是，谷歌正努力推进这一平台的标准化。

最后，在Facebook方面还有什么想法吗？在Android上也能管用吗？

我们当然从iOS中学到经验，我们不知道在Android上会怎么样，但我们希望会差不多吧。在Facebook方面，我们整合得很好，所以你可以看到你的得分对比好友的得分，我们发现这会让游戏更有趣得多。登录Facebook的人更加活跃，更加愿意花钱——如果他们与好友竞争，他们会更乐意购买能量道具。（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

How the cloud helped social gaming firm Wooga prepare for its Android invasion

By David Meyer

Berlin’s highly successful games studio is moving into Android, starting off with a new version of the hit Diamond Dash. It seemed like a good time to get a snapshot developer perspective on coding for the big two mobile platforms.

Berlin’s Wooga has evolved into one of the top social games companies out there, initially just on Facebook but then, very successfully, on iOS as well. Now’s it’s moving into Android, with the first release, out today, being a new version of Diamond Dash.

There are a lot of interesting challenges in a shift like this, especially when you’re trying to provide a slick experience for Android’s enormous range of devices. Luckily, CEO Jens Begemann was more than forthcoming on the matter when I spoke to him ahead of the launch.

Meyer: How big is your push into mobile?

Begemann: At the moment a little more than half the team is working on mobile. A year ago it was 10 percent, but since then we’ve doubled our number of employees [to 250] and at the same time increased the share of people working on mobile.

You have many millions of users – how come you’re only targeting Android now?

A year ago, when we made this decision to invest heavily into mobile, we were very aware that we wouldn’t automatically be successful on mobile because we were successful on the web. Because of this, focus was extremely important. We decided to focus on one platform, and that was iOS. In the spring and summer, we saw downloads continue to grow and our new games were on the right track.

Diamond Dash is an extremely popular game – on Facebook we’ve seen 70 million people play it, and on iOS we had over 30 million downloads. We still have over 20 million active users every month, so the expectations from our fanbase are very high [regarding any new version]. We put up a page on November 21st where people could sign up for the Android version, and we have collected 850,000 email addresses.

How different was the experience, coding for Android?

You have so many devices out there, so many carriers, so many versions of Android. We don’t want to disappoint people and this has been the biggest challenge. Overall, development is obviously different for iOS than for Android, but I wouldn’t say one is easier than the other.

The amount of code we could take over from one platform to the other was relatively little. We could reuse graphics, but basically the game has been rewritten. We used Objective-C in the case of iOS and C++ on Android – it’s not such a huge difference, but because the APIs are different it was basically rewriting. This is to be expected if you don’t use something like Unity.

The biggest task in building a successful Android game is to make it run well on a large range of devices – it’s easy to make something run well on the Samsung Galaxy S III. In terms of testing, we used a mix of in-house testing and testing in the cloud. We have more than 50 devices in-house, covering a broad range of screen sizes, CPUs and GPUs, but then we use cloud-based solutions. There’s a couple of providers coming up just now, where via the internet you have remote access to devices running thousands of kilometers away. We do that currently for over 100 real devices.

So you’re covering a broad base then. How far back are you going, in terms of the Android versions you’ll support?

We set a limitation intentionally: we have said that Android 2.3 is required, and a minimum screen resolution of 320 x 480 pixels. The game would run on older devices, but we can’t ensure a good quality, and we want to make all users happy.

It used to be a truism that any developer should address iOS first. It certainly sounds like Android is a lot of work if you want to address it comprehensively, but is that offset by way in which Android is overtaking iOS by numbers? Also, there’s a bit more fragmentation of iOS itself these days, in terms of new resolutions and so on. In short, does that truism still hold?

Everybody has to make their own conclusions. Regarding fragmentation, what we see on iOS is that all the time Apple brings out new devices and OS versions, but we see that the upgrade cycle is very fast. This means devices that came out three years ago don’t need to be supported anymore and OS version that came out two years ago don’t need to be supported anymore.

For example, the iPhone 5 introduces a new screen resolution, but at the same time for new games you don’t need to support the iPhone 3GS and its non-Retina screen resolution anymore. The iOS upgrade cycle is also fast, so today it’s enough to support iOS 6 and iOS 5.

Wait – 3GS owners can run iOS 6, the latest version, but you’re still not going to support them?

For new games in early 2013, we won’t support the iPhone 3GS anymore. We want to create artwork that is really optimised for Retina, and the non-Retina market share is declining.

One other thing about iOS. It’s true you have different screen sizes, but besides that the devices behave unbelievably similarly. Some devices have the same chip – the iPhone 4S and the new iPad Mini and the iPad 2 and the new iPod Touch all have the same A5 chip. They’re virtually identical in terms of performance and RAM.

And this is something that may be relevant for Android developers. In the case of iOS, if you have an iPhone 5, that’s an iPhone 5 worldwide. With something like the Galaxy S III, internally it’s about 10-12 different models. They’re small and slight variations, but as a developer you should be aware of this fact.

So in other words, Android is still way more labor-intensive?

It depends a bit on the level of quality you’re aiming for and how broad you want to go. We try to support an awful lot of devices, so it’s a bit more work. But it’s encouraging that Google tries to standardize – the Nexus devices help.

Finally, any thoughts on being plugged into Facebook these days? Will that work the same on Android?

We obviously have experience from iOS and we don’t know how it will be on Android, but we expect it to be very similar. We have deep Facebook integration so you can see your score versus your friend’s score, and we found that makes the game much more interesting. People who log in with Facebook are about twice as active, and they monetize about nine times better – if they’re competing against their friends, they’re more likely to buy a power-up.（source：gigaom）