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Bedrock set to tempt mobile game developers

No, it's nothing to do with the Flintstones...

Bedrock set to tempt mobile game developers
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Ever since we heard about Bedrock, a new technology for mobile games development, we've been whistling the Flintstones theme tune. What next? A J2ME porting technology called Jellystone Park?

Cartoon silliness aside, Bedrock does sound interesting. It's a suite of tools designed to make it easier for mobile developers to create games that work across a number of handsets and platforms, and has been made by Metismo, a company led by former Infospace Mobile man, John Chasey.

We'll spare you the techie details (if you're a developer, go here for those). Some of the aspects we're interested in include its support for SMS, networking and touchscreen input, among others – which should make these features less time-consuming and/or difficult for developers, and thus mean more games include them. That's the theory, anyway.

Meanwhile, it also has a Code Cross-compiler (stay with us!) which converts from Java to other programming languages. In short, this means someone can develop a game for mobile phones, but then easily convert it to other mobile platforms like BREW and Symbian, but also make it work on PSP and DS, or as a web flash game.

We see cross-platform development being a bigger trend in 2008, so technologies like Bedrock can only help.

Stuart Dredge
Stuart Dredge
Stuart is a freelance journalist and blogger who's been getting paid to write stuff since 1998. In that time, he's focused on topics ranging from Sega's Dreamcast console to robots. That's what you call versatility. (Or a short attention span.)