Marmalade SDK the ultimate cross platform SDK for phone, tablets and emerging technologies – the best kept secret?

I spent a few days browsing the web from the point of view of a potential developer looking for a cross platform development software developer kit (SDK)  and I was very surprised and woefully disappointed to find that very few developers are actually aware of the existence of the Marmalade SDK. This tallies with the many developers that I have spoken to over the last year or so and introduced to the Marmalade SDK, who had no idea that it existed.

I searched social media, Google, Bing and other search engines as well as a number of well known developer forums for terms such as “cross platform development”, “cross platform sdk”, “cross platform phone sdk”, “cross platform mobile development” and many others. I came across many top 5, top 10 cross platform SDK’s etc.. but the Marmalade SDK was not listed on any of them. I did leave behind a few posts mentioning the Marmalade SDK to the original posters, so hopefully they will pick up on it and mention it.

We have been using the SDK for over a year now, launching a game across 5 platforms and an augmented reality app across 4 platforms with great ease and very little effort. We also have three additional games in development using the Marmalade SDK, so we have a fair amount of experience with the SDK.

The thing is, the Marmalade SDK is a remarkable piece of software engineering that appears to be  largely going unnoticed by the wider developer community. I mean you can deploy the same native code and in some cases the same art and audio assets to 10 platforms including emerging platforms such as LG TV. I have looked at many of the cross platform SDK’s and cannot find anything  that can directly compete. Some of the HTML / Javascript SDK’s offer wide platform support which is cool but don’t really offer the raw native speed that the Marmalade SDK does.

Here are a few cool things to know about the Marmalade SDK:

  • Marmalade supports 10 platforms to date, including iPhone, iPod Touch,  iPad, Android phone and tablets, Samsung Bada, Blackberry Playbook, Symbian, webOS, Windows, OSX, Mobile Linux and LG TV
  • Producing 2D & 3D games with Marmalade is very simple as all of the components are already written for you using the 3D Studio Max / Maya / Collada exporters and graphics, math and audio modules
  • Marmalade has good UI and font support as well as native access to UI coming October 2011. Coupled with existing Marmalade modules such as http access, video, web view and others, Marmalade allows the user to create apps as good as in in many cases better than using native platform SDK’s
  • Marmalade EDK allows developers to use native platform specific plugins
  • Code developed using the Marmalade SDK is compiled as tight as is possible using modern ARM & MIPS compilers
  • Marmalade SDK deployed apps do not need to carry around bloated VM’s or other unnecessary baggage, ensuring that deployed app sizes are minimal
  • Marmalade SDK allows high and low hardware access
  • Marmalade SDK has some great out of the box modules that support the likes of iOS iAds, game centre, in–app purchasing, market billing and web views.
  • With Marmalade you simply build and deploy your game directly to the phone or tablet on a PC or a Mac, no other hardware required
  • Amazing support, including the apps program and device loan program to aid testing
  • A simulator that lets you test across an unlimited set of screen resolutions and simulated access to Accelerometer, GPS, Camera, Audio, Multi-touch screen, SMS, Compass and more
  • Test actual ARM code without even deploying to an ARM based device
  • Access to a large collection of open API’s such as Box2D, AdMob, Flurry, Chipmunk,SVG, Python, LUA and tonnes of other cool stuff (Full list available at http://github.com/marmalade)

If you are a happy Marmalade developer then help bring the Marmalade SDK to the wider developer community. Mention it in your blogs, tweets, Facebook posts, conversations with clients, fellow developers, PR , so on and so forth.

I have added a new page to my blog that will outline exactly what the Marmalade SDK is and cover all of the cool stuff it supports here

Also, at the end of my Marmalade SDK tutorial blog series the community should have a good basic game engine that new users can use as a base for their own games, with new advanced features added week on week.

You can find out more about the Marmalade SDK at http://www.madewithmarmalade.com/