Sprite Kit, Box2D, Performance and LiveCode's Approach to Game Coding

Geoff Canyon gcanyon at gmail.com
Tue Aug 20 14:46:22 EDT 2013


On Sun, Aug 18, 2013 at 4:23 AM, Richmond <richmondmathewson at gmail.com>wrote:

> To illustrate this consider a possible future scenario:
>
> 2030:
>
> Desktop computers are largely a thing of the past.
>
> A large array of handheld devices run on successor systems to Android,
> Linux and Mobile versions of
> Mac and Windows, as well as 4-5 completely new operating systems. AND,
> before I forget, systems presenting a 'screen' in a lens of one's glasses
> and a keyboard fixed onto one's sporran (maybe that is why Richmond still
> wears a kilt; in expectation of the day . . .).
>
> Many of these devices have no local storage facilities at all beyond their
> operating systems, possibly stored
> on ROM chips or somesuch, everything (including apps) being stored in a
> cloud or on a dedicated server.
>
> Without wishing to pass myself off as some sort of seer (I am NOT the 7th
> son of a 7th son), I think
> that there is a chance I may be at least 50% right there.
>
> AND . . . in 2030:
>
> What we think of as 'Windows' and what we think of as 'Mac', and the
> conglomeration of related systems we
> think of as 'Linux' will either be extinct or have transmogrified to such
> states that they bear little or no resemblance to what they are now.
>
> Now, I don't know the exact age of Kevin Miller, but I plan to be a
> sprightly 77 year-old who is still up to
> his "light-programming" and his "heavy stirring" on the Use-List and or
> Forums. What DO KNOW is that Kevin is quite considerably younger than me,
> and does not indicate any great urge to retire . . . .
>
> SO; RunRev should not go chasing platform specific innovations lest they
> be Boojums [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/**Snark_%28Lewis_Carroll%29<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snark_%28Lewis_Carroll%29>].
>


Ooh, ooh, I want to play! 2030 is 17 years away, which is a *long* time. 17
years ago was 1996: Win 95 was storming the marketplace, Apple was nearly
dead, and the internet was barely started. 17 years before that, in 1979,
most people had no clue what a computer even was.

So I'll be short-sighted and say by 2018:

Windows, Mac OS, and Linux are largely dead as consumer OSes. Microsoft is
in serious decline as a consumer OS vendor because they will never give up
the idea that Windows with a coat of paint is perfect for all devices/use
cases.

Consumers use phones/tablets for most of what they do. iOS and Android are
95% of that market, and 80% or more of the consumer market as a whole.

iOS is a minority, but a larger minority in tablets and monetizable users.
Android is the numbers victor in phones and lower-value users, and likely
tablets as well.

Android is beyond Google's control. Samsung and/or Amazon are the obvious
replacements, but further fragmentation, followed by eventual consolidation
on who knows what standard, is possible.

Everything will have local storage, even wifi devices. Local storage will
be absurdly cheap, and it's too useful. It may be obscured from the user --
the Apple TV has 8gb of internal storage for
caching<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_TV>.


Alternative interfaces -- voice, eyeglass display, watch display, input
based on motion/position (myo <https://www.thalmic.com/myo/> is a
candidate) -- will be marginal *unless* someone with marketshare comes up
with something good and pushes it. Apple is an obvious candidate, then
Samsung or Amazon, with Google *slightly* ahead of Microsoft at the far
back of the list.

As an aside, Google *is* positioned to revolutionize driving, perhaps by
2018. Especially commercial
driving<http://online.wsj.com/article/the_game.html>(paywall, sorry),
which is a >$100 billion opportunity.

gc



More information about the use-livecode mailing list