When it comes to the tools and middleware used to develop mobile games, beyond standard options such as Java and SDKs provided by device manufacturers, there’s not really a lot of choice.

UK studio Ideaworks3D has been looking to the future for some time now with its Airplay technology however. This is designed to enable developers to make games for a range of different devices from smartphones, N-Gage and BREW through to iPhone and iPod touch from one single version - or as they call it in the business - a single binary.

It must be good too as it’s been used to make great mobile games such as Resident Evil Degeneration, Metal Gear Solid Mobile and System Rush: Evolution.

But in order to further increase the usefulness of Airplay, Ideaworks3D has announced a new partnership program which will enable companies with their own development tools and middleware to link into Airplay.

It’s the sort of approach that’s become very popular in the console world with companies such as Epic (Unreal 3 Engine) and Emergent (Gamebryo) proving similar options.

How well it will work for more limited mobile devices, we’ll have to wait and see, but the first company to sign up with Airplay is well-regarded UK animation company NaturalMotion.

Some of its animation technology featured in GTA IV, but in terms of Airplay it’s offering its more functional morpheme middleware, which is an animation authoring solution.

Anyhow, we caught up with Ideaworks3D’s chief technical officer Tim Closs (pictured) to find a little more.

Pocket Gamer: Can you explain the reasons for setting up the Airplay Partners Program (APP)?

Tim Closs: There's a perfect storm brewing in native smartphone development. Performance at the upper end of the device spectrum, increased publisher development budgets on those platforms, and high user expectations of quality levels (driven primarily by iPhone) means that mobile middleware can now play a key role in serving the ecosystem.

Airplay acts as a key enabler of mobile middleware by removing the fragmentation problem, meaning that middleware providers simply focus on creating a strong and relevant product for mobile.

How much has this been directly driven by iPhone/iPod touch?

iPhone has been a key factor. But it's not the only relevant platform. In fact, the APP idea was originally kicked off at the end of last year when a triple-A independent Japanese developer, which is building a game for N-Gage using Airplay, needed to use some console/DS middleware within the title.

The middleware provider ported their offering to Airplay without any input from us. It made us realise that there was the appetite there, and we started thinking about what other middleware offerings might make sense.

How limited will you be in terms of the processing minimum specification of the platforms you're targetting?

Airplay's base spec has always been ARM9 150MHz, so we are looking at solutions which can augment the native gaming experience on these and higher-powered platforms.

The partnerships make most sense when the middleware offering contains a high degree of value in the offline tools, and any associated runtime is sufficiently light and optimised for mobile.

It will vary between solutions; for example, some might require hardware floating point, some might require hardware graphics acceleration. We will make it clear to developers which platforms are appropriately supported for each partner offering.

Even on the likes of iPhone, most games are 2D vector graphics-type games, so isn't providing an all-singing-dancing game development pipeline a bit of overkill?

In terms of numbers of apps, yes the average quality and ambition is still low. However in terms of revenues generated, it's becoming increasingly important to differentiate through quality.

Apple will soon launch a premium channel directing users towards these higher-quality apps. All the publishers are now spending handheld-sized budgets on iPhone content, and as the distribution opportunities for other smartphone platforms continue to improve, much of this content will also migrate onto other platforms.

How does the pricing model work?

We work with the providers in helping them understand the economics of mobile development. Obviously the budgets are much smaller than console development but they can be not far off handheld development.

The providers know they have to find a business model which works in this space. Ultimately we leave the model up to the provider; they have to find a model which works for mobile developers, but also sits happily with their existing console biz models.

When will Morpheme 2.0 be available as part of APP?

Morpheme is available today for any Airplay licensee or evaluation customer. Any developer can get a full free evaluation of Airplay by contacting bizdev (at) ideaworks3d.com.

Will you be offering a reselling option and/or first line support for the third party companies?

It will vary between providers. We will work with each partner to ensure that suitable support is provided.

How open will the APP be in terms of potentially competing companies - i.e. will you take a selective best-of-breed approach?

We are taking a selective best-of-breed approach. I think the appetite from mobile developers will be more along the lines of "I need a great solution to this problem", rather than "I really want to use great solution A rather than great solution B".

In many cases, there won't really be any competition. NaturalMotion's morpheme really is a unique product.

How much work do you/thirdparties have to do in order to plug into the existing Airplay system?

This can vary to a large extent depending on the offering. In the case of morpheme, we undertook the integration work, which took about two weeks. However, in another case, the middleware provider did all the work themselves and it took less than a week.

One of the great things about Airplay is that it provides really great support for all C/C++ standards and common open source libraries, which means porting middleware, applications or game engines from (for example) PC is usually a very easy process.

How important do you think a single binary feature will be in terms of enabling mobile, smartphone, iPhone, DS or PSP development?

Airplay doesn't support DS or PSP right now. However, there are publishers today using Airplay to deploy a single game to iPhone, multiple smartphone platforms (S60, WinMobile, N-Gage) and netbooks.

The single binary approach has great value across the smartphone platforms, as it means the quality assurance and duration is vastly reduced.

It's up to the developer to break this paradigm when it makes sense; if they want to deploy a separate binary to iPhone, because there is a lot of specific code which they don't want bulking out the smartphone SKU, that's up to them.

The binary will still be 99 per cent the same as it is still built using the same Airplay build chain, not using the platform-specific compilers etc.

What are the recent changes you’ve added to Airplay?

As well as continuing to support new devices as they come to market, we have added new functionality related to OpenGL ES 2.0, and improvements to the development environment including integration with the open source QEMU desktop ARM simulator, plus a whole heap of other cool stuff.

Do you have an idea of how many companies you'd ideally like to have in the APP?

By the end of Q2 2009, we'll probably have half a dozen. I can think of maybe ten in total that would make sense today. We'll have to see how the market develops.

Thanks to Tim for his time. You can find out more about Airplay at the Ideaworks3D website.