Marmalade, the cross-platform development tool, has launched Marmalade Juice, a technology which it says removes the need to port iOS games to Android and other platforms.

Marmalade Juice enables OS developers looking to target other ecosystems to recompile Objective-C and native OS APIs, formerly only usable on iOS and Mac, within the Marmalade SDK. Apps can then be deployed directly to Android, as well as many other Marmalade-supported platforms, including BlackBerry, Mac desktop, and selected Smart TVs. Optimisations for the target platforms can be made within the original Objective-C codebase, and source-level debugging with the Marmalade simulator is supported.

The company says Marmalade Juice is the only cross-platform SDK for taking Objective-C to multiple other platforms. The technology has been used to deliver Pocket Gems’ iOS game, Tap Paradise Cove, to the Google Play and Amazon app stores.

Written entirely in Objective-C, the Android version was created using Marmalade Juice without requiring a code-porting exercise. iOS API calls remained intact, and Xcode UI files were able to adapt to address Android screen resolutions.

“Tap Paradise Cove is already a major hit on iOS, so the opportunity through Marmalade Juice to deploy to additional platforms without rewriting the game was extremely valuable to us,” said Arjun Dayal, Android Product Lead at Pocket Gems. “Since launch, we have reached over 1m additional players on Google Play and Amazon Appstore.”