The last few days I am a happy owner of a BlackBerry Playbook. The device was offered to me by RIM (thanks to Luca Filigheddu) in order to port Pop Corny to it. To tell you the truth I never owned a Blackberry device before, not to mention develop for it. It was a totally new experience, where I had no idea what to expect.

It turns out RIM has done an awesome job with Playbook and probably with its upcoming phones (just speculating I don’t know for sure). The system is based on the QNX operating system and it has strong support for standards and open libraries. I found myself right at home with it! I am going to come back with more details about the process (probably with an altdevblogaday article), but by cutting the long story short, I was able to port the engine with only native code (no java glue code like on Android) with OpenGL, OpenAL (even ALUT), freetype, etc all coming bundled with the system.

Below are my done, and to do check lists:

Implemented

• Compile and run on the device
• Video output with OpenGL ES
• Sound through OpenAL
• Input handling
• Handling of application “thump-nailing” and suspension according to the Playbook application life cycle
• Opening urls to Facebook and twitter

Unimplemented

• Native dialog window handler
• In app purchases

All the above were implemented in just 2 days…

(edit: The game is now available on AppWorld. Get it HERE)