One C# game to rule them all(iOS, Android, WP7, W7, Mac OS X and XBOX)

Question

Hey, I'm learning C# and just thought of a cool idea. Considering that a game was simple enough. Say, a remake of a classic text-entry style game, a C# game could theoretically be ported to all of the platforms I listed above, with little to no change of the original source code, correct?

Obviously the UI would have to be tweaked, and I highly doubt such a game would really survive on each of those platforms!

But, although C# is really MS heavy, through different methods, that could work, right? Or, would I have to change the C# source to Objective-C? Does Android even have an official language that they support like Apple and MS do?

This is kind of an odd question, but if this is true, then C# is really a nice all-purpose language even though it's largely based on and endorsed by MS.

Answer 1

I decided to post an answer cause I thought of a few more relevant things to say.

First to answer your questions: Yes it would work. No, you wouldn't have to port to Objective-C. Android's apps often use Java.

And a bit more background...

I'm hearing good things about MonoTouch and MonoDroid for cross platform development using .Net, C#.

You've already accepted that you'll have to handle UI layers specifically for each platform, so you're on the right path.

Importantly, on Sept 9, Apple relaxed their guidelines that previously prevented apps built using Monotouch from being released in the marketplace.

Statement by Apple on App Store Review Guidelines

In particular, we are relaxing all restrictions on the development tools used to create iOS apps, as long as the resulting apps do not download any code. This should give developers the flexibility they want, while preserving the security we need.

Also of interest, from Craig Dunn's blog...

ConceptDev (Craig Dunn's blog): MonoTouch meet WindowsPhone7

Answer 2

Mostly it is a pipedream, you could use C#/XNA to make an Windows/Xbox/WP7 game and likely use C# via Mono/MonoTouch to make a OS X/iOS implementation. Android doesn't have a suitable mono implementation at the moment to support this though.

This is not at all meant to be discouraging, also MS has given the C# language to the community so that is positive..

http://www.microsoft.com/interop/cp/default.mspx