There's now plenty of activity in the mobile games middleware space; from the rise of console products such as Unreal and Unity, through to the spread of mobile oriented solutions like Airplay and Shiva3D.

There are fewer options for the prosumer or hobbyist though.

Gendai Games' GameSalad Creator supports iOS and PC, and while GameMaker handles PSP, iOS and Android, it's only via custom coding work through provider YoYo Games.

But there is another company looking to fill this gap. For the past 10 years, The Game Creators (TGC) has been bootstrapping entrylevel PC game developers with its DarkBASIC range of products. Now it's switching to mobile.

Making the switch

As the name suggests, the DarkBASIC packages use the easy-to-pick-up BASIC programming language, hooking into advanced features offered by industry standards such as DirectX or OpenGL, behind the simple syntax.

It's an approach that's being extended to smartphones and tablets.

"We've been thinking about this for two years, experimenting with the tech for a year, and working on the product for six months," says TGC's CEO Lee Bamber.

During that time, the company has been releasing its own mobile games, most recently The Blobs on iOS but also titles on Symbian and Samsung's bada, while retooling its main PC business into a open source project so it can be supported by the community.

This leaves the core team able focus on its smartphone and tablet solution, App Game Kit (AGK).

Good foundations

"Our goal is to offer a product that is robust with a core set of commands, supports the maximum number of devices, and is well documented," Bamber explains of AGK.

It's also provided the development team with the opportunity to revisit various aspects of DarkBASIC.

"We're building on six years of feedback from the users," Bamber says, of tweaks to the coding language's syntax such as the order of commands, and use of spaces and brackets, which will make code more readible.

Making it easy

DarkBASIC users will be able to get up to speed quickly on AGP - "it should only take a hour," Bamber says.  

More generally, he claims the different mindset required for cross platform mobile development will be handled by the package itself.

"Mobile development requires you to think in a different way in terms of screen size and control methods," he explains. "We've learned that the hard way over the past year."

AGK will enable developers to make games so they are agnostic in terms of resolution and inputs, with the engine automatically handling device fragmentation issues using a matrix approach to swap, emulate or mediate problems.

"We just want people to make their game. Everything you write will work everywhere - that's our guarantee," Bamber enthuses.

Still, there's some time to go before we see if The Game Creators make good on that claim. It's expected a community release of AGK will happen in June 2011 so early adopters can test it out, with the full release hopefully following a couple of months later.

The first release will handle iOS, bada and PC/Mac, with an update adding Windows Phone 7, Android and MeeGo later in 2011.

You can keep informed about AGK via its website.