Any chance of an iPhone Amiga emulator?

[RabidRabbit]

Ok, i'm sure MANY will have thought about this, but are there any chances at all of seeing an Amiga emulator on the iPhone?

[adolescent]

Really surprised there isn't already. There are emus for Symbian, Windows Mobile and Android and probably more. And at least the 3GS has enough power to pull it off. Maybe API restrictions?

[RabidRabbit]

Possibly.

However, can you imagine how awesome it would be to fire up your Amiga emu on your iPhone.

[adolescent]

Well, I already load up UAE on my Windows Mobile phone so I don't really have to imagine. :P I have a replacement phone coming that does WVGA (vs. WQVGA now) so it should be even more "awesome" soon.

My suggestion would be to grab the UAE4ALL source and start hacking.

Mods: This should probably be moved to prb.OtherUAE as it isn't WinUAE related.

[alexh]

You cannot have a general purpose Amiga emulator app for (non-jailbroken) iPhones because apps which load data from files into virtual machines are banned.

The app must contain the ROM, DISK or TAPE images pre-compiled into the executable when released and must be signed in such a way to make data injection impossible.

Other emulators for iPhone have already been removed from App store for loading files.

We have already seen Amiga, ST and C64 games being released bundled with an emulating engine.

The folks at Manomio (of the C64 iPhone emulator fame) are working on an Amiga emulator.

[gilgamesh]

Originally Posted by alexh

You cannot have a general purpose Amiga emulator app for (non-jailbroken) iPhones because apps which load data from files into virtual machines are banned.

As Mr. Jobs put it: Freedom from, ahem, Amiga.

Originally Posted by lifeless

The folks at Manomio (of the C64 iPhone emulator fame) are working on an Amiga emulator.

Indeed, we should have some more news in the near future.

Cheers,

Stuart
manomio.com | in retro we trust

[alexh]

All the best.

Does iPhone app development really pay?

I have been repeatedly surprised at how much money iPhone developers _claimed_ they were making from their apps. The guy who did the London Underground (subway) map claimed he made £1000+ per day. The guy who wrote the game Trism claimed he made $2M in 8 months.

Ok, so these were early apps, but the revenue must be diminishing fast? As number of apps increases the chance of someone finding your app amongst the 100k+ apps gets smaller? Ok so there are more users these days but still I think it is disproportionate to the number of apps being publish. Not to mention that I've not met too many iPhone users who have actually bought any apps at all.

Just curious.

Originally Posted by alexh

All the best.

Does iPhone app development really pay?

I have been repeatedly surprised at how much money iPhone developers _claimed_ they were making from their apps. The guy who did the London Underground (subway) map claimed he made £1000+ per day. The guy who wrote the game Trism claimed he made $2M in 8 months.

Ok, so these were early apps, but the revenue must be diminishing fast? As number of apps increases the chance of someone finding your app amongst the 100k+ apps gets smaller? Ok so there are more users these days but still I think it is disproportionate to the number of apps being publish. Not to mention that I've not met too many iPhone users who have actually bought any apps at all.

Just curious.

Can't comment from 1st hand experience, but I think the money exists. There's 10's of millions of iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad users out there, and I the majority of users I know have downloaded lots of apps (paid/free.)

So I think the money's there... statistically it's a multi-billion dollar market that's only going to grow. That said... yeah, I think the market is getting flooded, and like any market...

The biggest issue I see is that people want their apps to be popular, so if you make an app, there's probably 1 doing the same thing that's only $1... so beware of that. So many people these days seem to be hoping that they create the next thing that goes viral, so it's flooded with apps that in my view have the intention of going viral (and never quite make it.)

That said... viral apps, and premium apps (made by "real" development houses) are making lots of money. I think the money's there if you're a good developer... but don't just expect your app to go viral because it's now available on the iPhone. That's the stuff of dreams... "oh I made a fart button app, charged $1 and 1000,000 people have downloaded it so-far." I think there are some legit stories amongst those ones, but will your app really go viral? Probably not...

[Photon]

Someone might make an emulator that overcomes Objective-C and the limiting framework (or uses Cocoa Touch+some external emulation core written in whatever), but you won't see it in App Store. Cos every app must be approved by Homeland Security, and emus will not pass the cavity search.

Jailbroken iPhone+download from developer's site is the only possibility, as I see it.

I believe more in getting the Pandora/new PSP/new NDS for on the go emulation awesomeness, then you have something to control the games with, too

It's also about the screen. Most mobiles have a for shit slow, pixelporridgy screen which is absolutely terrible for emulating everything that moves... I'm still impressed with my age old GP2X, even if the Amiga emus are not super good on it.