Android Developer Interview – Camel Games, the development team behind Space Physics
2 November 2009
11 Comments
Hot on the heels of the interview with Che Jami, the brain behind What The Doodle!? comes an interview with the team that created fiendish puzzler Space Physics (reviewed here).
What’s your team’s development background?
We are a small team with 2 programmers, 1 art designer and 1 game designer. We all graduated from the same college. In college we’ve already made some games as a team. Now we make iPhone and Android games part-time. It’s pretty fun for us to make games together, really satisfying.
Which Android devices do you use yourselves?
We have two Android devices: a G1 and a Magic. Hopefully Space Physics could buy us Motorola Droids for everyone 
What inspired you to create Space Physics?
We love to play physics games, such as the famous Crayon Physics. However we could hardly find any physics games in Android before. So we took the responsibility to bring Android users the first amazing physics puzzle game. Space Physics borrows some ideas from Crayon Physics and Geometry Wars. And we add our own ideas to make it more unique and fit to touch screens, like the two direction car and special touch gestures.
How simple was it to build the physics engine you use for Space Physics with the Android SDK?
Space Physics uses NDK to wrap box2d as the physics engine. Thanks to Erin Catto.
How has the Android application publishing experience been for you? Are you inspired to write more apps for the platform?
It’s our first time to publish a game for Android. That was exciting and fun. We spent all our spare time for two months making this game. To be honest, what we’ve got so far is way less than we expected, especially comparing with another app store, if you know what we mean, LOL. But we think Android has potential. And we want to make more games for Android to gain more experience.
One thing that strikes me as a potential feature for future updates to Space Physics is a level editor to let users create their own puzzles. Is this something that’s on the horizon?
We do plan to make a level editor, but somehow it’s not easy. If we can solve the problem of making backgrounds consistent with the level design, the level editor would not be far away. Anyway, we’re trying. Maybe it shows up some day, a surprise.
Which is your favourite Android app (other than your own of course)?
Labyrinth. Easy, fun, and makes you freak out.
How much potential do you feel the Google Android platform has?
We think it should surpass iPhone in future, for it’s more open and aggressive. But how fast depends on the attitude of Google. Lots of places need improving, especially the Market. Google need to learn a lot from Apple.
Yes, I’ve heard from a lot of developers hoping for improvements to the Market. With Android being such an open platform and the marketplace itself being fairly unrestricted, piracy is becoming a big concern and a number of developers have mentioned getting disheartened. Have you been affected in any way?
Yeah, we strongly think it’s a serious problem. Google could and should do better. Otherwise, even the platform becomes better and better, lots of good developers and companies still would not work for it.
What’s on your personal wish-list regarding Android apps or
features? Is there something you feel the platform is sorely missing?
features? Is there something you feel the platform is sorely missing?
Improve NDK, more features and more friendly on the developing environment. Developing high performance games depends on it. But now it’s lack of libraries and hard to use.
Provide more payment options. Take Space Physics for example, almost 10% orders failed because of credit card verification. Google Checkout hurts developers.
What drew you to developing in Android, and do you feel it is a powerful enough platform for developers?
The developing environment is most friendly among all mobile platforms. Programming in java is like playing games.
For general apps, it’s powerful enough. But for the type of CPU consumers like 3d games, Java has some inherent weaknesses. NDK is a way to work around. But you’ll lose the benefit of fast developing.
What’s next for you – updates to Space Physics or an entirely new project?
Both. Updates including new features and improvements for Space Physics will be constantly (ongoing). And so will the releasing of new games.
Any advice for aspiring Android devs?
Be patient. It is the most important for now.
Space Physics is available for $2.99 from the Android Market. There is a free, 10 level, Lite version available too.
Doesn't seem to work on my new droid… Things happen but all I see is a ball the is floating in space…no object…no goal…
That's a shame, it's a fun game.
This is the main issue with the speed at which Android as an OS and the hardware supporting it is evolving – developers will struggle to keep on top of all the different OS versions, hardware specs and screen resolutions unfortunately. I'll get in touch with the devs and see if they have any plans on updating for Droid users.
Ok, I got a response from the devs regarding Space Physics on the DROID-
"It's a known issue. We've tried hard to fix it but with no luck, for we have no droid phone by side. Anyway, we've tried to contact some friends in US to see if we could buy one in these days."
You'll probably find there are a lot of apps that are affected in a similar fashion for a little while.
Ironosity and anyone stumbling across this before trying this out on their Droid – it seems to work fine now. I never tried it before the last OTA push, or if there was an earlier version of the game, but as of 12-27 it's working here. (and is very cool/fun)
[...] Games (interviewed here) are one of our favourite Android developers. They’re the team responsible for some of the [...]
[...] of an update that includes a level editor in a developer interview Camel had with the folks over at This Android Life, nothing of the sort has been seen yet in the Android Market. I’m keeping my fingers [...]
[...] of an update that includes a level editor in a developer interview Camel had with the folks over at This Android Life, nothing of the sort has been seen yet in the Android Market. I’m keeping my fingers [...]
[...] of an update that includes a level editor in a developer interview Camel had with the folks over at This Android Life, nothing of the sort has been seen yet in the Android Market. I’m keeping my fingers [...]
[...] of an update that includes a level editor in a developer interview Camel had with the folks over at This Android Life, nothing of the sort has been seen yet in the Android Market. I’m keeping my fingers [...]
[...] of an update that includes a level editor in a developer interview Camel had with the folks over at This Android Life, nothing of the sort has been seen yet in the Android Market. I’m keeping my fingers [...]
[...] of an update that includes a level editor in a developer interview Camel had with the folks over at This Android Life, nothing of the sort has been seen yet in the Android Market. I’m keeping my fingers [...]
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