XAGE on iPhone

About a year ago if I'd been asked the likelihood of XAGE running on any of Apple's handhelds, I'd have said it was about as likely as Duke Nukem Forever being released.

However, after several weeks of tinkering, head-scratching and cursing, it's finally up and running on the iPhone/iPad emulator using the magic of MonoTouch and XnaTouch:



Caveats:

• Obviously, this is an emulator and not the real thing. It's difficult to say what performance will be like on the actual hardware.
• Audio isn't working yet, and various things are currently unsupported in the XnaTouch framework (RenderTargets etc - the usual suspects).
• Zero thought has been put into the touch interface. It's likely any game that uses more than one mouse button will need to have the UI re-designed.
• MonoTouch is a commercial framework, with a slightly eye-watering $400 one-off license fee (although thankfully Novell do offer a non-expiring free trial).

Apple's announcement yesterday that they're relaxing the Terms & Conditions of their Developer License could not have come at a better time, as it pretty much guarantees the safe passage of any XAGE game to the App Store.