Develop Games for BlackBerry!

Hey BlackBerry devs! We’ve got a great guest post for you today from Sean Paul, who’s put together a must-read list of links and resources for BlackBerry game developers. Check it out! – Ed.
The BlackBerry® Native SDK for Tablet OS gives you the power to create rich C/C++ games. For those of you just getting started with developing for the BlackBerry platform, these links will help you quickly get a jump on making your own games using the BlackBerry Native SDK.

• Download the BlackBerry Native SDK for Tablet OS for Windows®, Mac OS X or Linux.
• Get started with the BlackBerry Native SDK for Tablet OS by creating and deploying your first OpenGL ES application.
• Learn about the QNX® Momentics® IDE with full suite of debugging and profiling tools.

Once you’ve gotten a good start, be sure to check out the Developer’s Guide, Tutorials and Libraries available in the BlackBerry Native SDK including:

• STL and POSIX library support
• OpenGL ES 1.1 and 2.0 for 2D and 3D graphics
• OpenAL for cross-platform 3D audio
• libpng and libjpeg for encoded images
• FreeType for fonts
• Scoreloop SDK for integrating social gaming capabilities

If you’re looking for additional resources, be sure to take advantage of blackberry.github.com, where you’ll find many Open Source game engines and libraries ported and available including:

• GamePlay: a cross-platform 3D gaming framework
• Cocos2D-X: a cross-platform mobile 2D game framework
• Box2D: a 2D physics engine
• Bullet Physics: a 3D physics engine
• ALUT: a companion toolkit to OpenAL
• Lua: a powerful, fast, lightweight, embeddable scripting language
• SDL: a cross-platform multimedia library

3rd party game development kits have also added support for BlackBerry® Tablet OS:

• Unity Technologies supports BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet through its Union service
• Marmalade SDK provides ‘Beta’ support for BlackBerry Tablet OS
• ShiVa3D Game Engine with Development Tools

You’ll also be able to find support for casual web gaming using Adobe® AIR®, HTML 5 and WebGL through BlackBerry® WebWorks™. Finally, you can distribute your finished game through the BlackBerry App World™ storefront with $0 registration and submission fees – browse the current BlackBerry App World game catalog to see some great examples of apps.
Got any questions about developing games for the BlackBerry platform? Leave a comment and let us know!