This promotion just arrived in my email and I figured a few of you might be interested.
How do you get a Free Marmalade SDK Licence?
- Sign-up or sign-in below
- If you don’t already have a Marmalade SDK, download an evaluation licence
- Submit a draft BlackBerry 10 app using your existing Marmalade SDK or evaluation licence within 30 days. You will need a BlackBerry® World™ Vendor ID to do this. You can get one here. Don’t worry if it’s not ready at this stage – draft mode BlackBerry 10 apps are only verified to determine if they have been created with the Marmalade SDK, and thus qualify you for the offer. They are only reviewed for sale after the BlackBerry Vendor changes the app status.
***Please make sure you come back and input your BlackBerry® World™ Vendor ID (we only need the email address you use to register on BlackBerry World).***
The first 300 qualifying Vendors* will receive a free BlackBerry Dev Alpha testing device- Once your app is submitted for final review and approved for sale, you will receive a full Marmalade Indie licence worth $499 (existing Indie licence holders will have their licence extended by a year and new licence holders will convert to a full Marmalade Indie Licence).
- Go cross-platform: once your app is approved on BlackBerry World, reap further rewards on other app stores, using the full capabilities of your Marmalade cross-platform licence.
I am a little confused about part 3. From the sounds of it, you can create a simple Hello World application and submit it, so long as it was compiled with Marmalade and you are one of the 300 first people to do it, you then qualify for a free BB Dev Alpha device. It could be that I am reading that wrong. Once your application is approved for sale on BB store, you then receive a Marmalade license ($499) enabling you to publish to other environments. Makes sense in a way, as Blackberry is sponsoring this, so they effectively get the first release, but then you can bring your app to other devices. You can read the entire release right here(PDF Link).
For those of you that have never heard of it, Marmalade is a cross platform game development kit that supports just about any device you could think to target. It is C++ based, although it now ships with Marmalade Quick, a RAD tool built on top of Cocos2D-x and Box2D and scripted using Lua. Marmalade has been used to publish hundreds of mobile titles including Cut The Rope, Plants vs Zombies, Need for Speed and tons more. Marmalade has been around for a number of years, starting life as the AirPlay SDK. Marmalade have both a free (and limited) version available, as well as a 30 day trial of each of their versions. The version being offered is a single seat for a year of the Indie version, which allows you to target BB, iOS, Android and Windows Phone 8.
Blackberry is a Canadian smartphone manufacturer, who outside of the business world were more or less a non-factor. This is rapidly changing though with their most recent releases. The recently released Z10 and Q10 smartphones, as well as the Playbook tablet are all powered by the QNX operating system, which RIM acquired a few years back. After some serious teething pains, Blackberry is back and has a number of great devices for running games. While the install base is smaller than both Android and iOS, it is said to be a lucrative market and hey… you’ve got nothing to lose, you can still port to iOS, Windows Phone and Android.
EDIT: I figure I should point out that the Indie license they are giving away still has some limitations. You cannot have an annual revenue of more than $500K and you need to give a Marmalade attribution. Unlike the community version, this doesn’t involve a splashscreen or anything that intrusive. A “Made with Marmalade” logo in your about or credit screen is sufficient. Here is the full details regarding attribution:
As a technology business we thrive by sharing details of the amazing apps and games that are made with Marmalade.
It is for this reason that we ask licensees to reference Marmalade in one or more of the following ways:
Marmalade Community Licence holders
- A Made with Marmalade splash screen will be displayed when your app loads. The splash screen will display automatically, and will remain on screen for a short time.
Marmalade Indie and Plus Licences
- Include the Made with Marmalade logo and our website address www.madewithmarmalade.com within the credits and/or about screen. If possible, this should link to www.madewithmarmalade.com.
- In the event that technical restrictions prevent the above, the wording “Made with Marmalade” and our website address www.madewithmarmalade.com should be included within the app credits and/or ‘About’ screen of your published app. If possible, this should link to our website www.madewithmarmalade.com.
- An optional Made with Marmalade splash screen will be displayed when your app loads. The splash screen will display automatically, and will remain on screen for a short time.
- Assets can be downloaded here.
EDIT2: I just did the Blackberry World vendor application, a bit of a warning, this doesn’t appear to be a real-time process! I created a Blackberry ID, then a vendor account and cannot yet log in. It appears there is a verification process before your account is created. If it’s a race for the first 300 people, this disconnect, well, sucks. Basically it means people with Blackberry World accounts already registered are basically guaranteed to get in first.
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