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Java Micro Edition and Adobe Flash Lite for arcade-style mobile phone game development: a comparative study

Published: 06 October 2008 Publication History

Abstract

The pervasiveness of mobile devices has created a substantial market for mobile applications and games that continues to grow extremely rapidly. Consequently, the mobile game industry has firmly asserted itself as a significant industry with major development houses. In order to achieve a maximum target audience reach, it is crucial for developers to target the right mobile platforms and development environments. Simultaneously, the right tools are required to ensure the rapid, efficient creation and deployment of these mobile games. This paper offers an analysis and comparison of the well-established Java Micro Edition (JME) and the emerging Adobe Flash Lite platforms, based on our experiences developing a mobile phone game. An arcade-style game was developed that allowed key features to be tested using the JME and Flash Lite development platforms. The game adopted a tile-based, top-down perspective common to arcade games that are created using a tile-based game engine. The results obtained showed the strengths and weaknesses of the two environments, enabling optimal trade-offs to be made when developing mobile phone games. Our conclusion is that although it is possible to create tile-based games in both environments, JME currently provides better support, especially in the areas of collision detection and multi-threading.

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Cited By

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  • (2014)Mobile Application Platform HeterogeneityProceedings of the 2014 IEEE 28th International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications10.1109/AINA.2014.78(635-641)Online publication date: 13-May-2014
  • (2010)Android vs Windows Mobile vs Java MEProceedings of the 3rd International Conference on PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments10.1145/1839294.1839348(1-8)Online publication date: 23-Jun-2010

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  1. Java Micro Edition and Adobe Flash Lite for arcade-style mobile phone game development: a comparative study

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      cover image ACM Other conferences
      SAICSIT '08: Proceedings of the 2008 annual research conference of the South African Institute of Computer Scientists and Information Technologists on IT research in developing countries: riding the wave of technology
      October 2008
      304 pages
      ISBN:9781605582863
      DOI:10.1145/1456659
      Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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      New York, NY, United States

      Publication History

      Published: 06 October 2008

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      Author Tags

      1. ActionScript
      2. Adobe flash lite
      3. Java micro edition
      4. cell phones
      5. comparative study
      6. mobile data services
      7. mobile games

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      View all
      • (2014)Mobile Application Platform HeterogeneityProceedings of the 2014 IEEE 28th International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications10.1109/AINA.2014.78(635-641)Online publication date: 13-May-2014
      • (2010)Android vs Windows Mobile vs Java MEProceedings of the 3rd International Conference on PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments10.1145/1839294.1839348(1-8)Online publication date: 23-Jun-2010

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