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I am looking for some cross platform game development frameworks. The game i am focusing on wouldn't require high-end platform dependent resources. Just a simple card game. I believe HTML5 platform would work fine but I am not sure which one.
Secondly, I want to implement multi-player functionality in the game. There are 2 things which i am not sure about
If i want to allow four friends to play one game, how should I do it? Does mobile platform has something like LAN or some other inter-connectivity options?
I want to give online multi-player options as well. Is there any server/framework which provides such functionality?
P.S:
This is my first ever project on any mobile app. Corona is good but it isn't free.
EDIT:
I am looking for some Free framework.
If it's a mobile app, try Corona SDK. You can use it to make games (or apps) for iOS, Android, and I think NOOK and Kindle Fire. It's also very easy to learn. I started using it when I was twelve, and I learned it in an hour. A simple card game could be done in less than a few hours.
As for multiplayer, you could use AutoLAN (http://developer.coronalabs.com/code/autolan or http://www.mydevelopersgames.com/AutoLAN/) for both local and online multiplayer, though I've never tried it. It used to be something like $20 but now it's free.
cocos2d-x is the best known cross platform game engine for 2D games.
Here is link: Cocos2d-x
Here is some good discussion on best cross platform game engine. click here
(1) You could in—in theory—build a networked game that communicated over SMS messages, or something wacky like that. But the general presumption these days is that people running apps and games on phones have Internet via 3G, 4G, WiFi/etc.
(It could be an interesting exercise to write a game that can be played over Bluetooth on two phones in a remote mountainous area where's no reception...but I'm not sure how big that market is.)
So the decisions come down to the usual ones for a networked app. Are you going to make it peer-to-peer so that the only software involved is one app per player on their phone? Or will you do have a server sitting out on the Internet that each client connects to, and the game is run without any player connecting directly to any other?
(The latter is easier for various reasons. One of the more interesting reasons why peer-to-peer card games are hard has to do with one client trusting another when there's no "game master". The Wikipedia article on Mental Poker may be illuminating.)
(2) Can't vouch for it myself, but people on the net appear to like mages on Android. iPhone, I dunno.
But if you're doing this as a learning exercise, you might try tinkering around from scratch just to get a better handle on the issues, rather than jumping in the specifics of any particular framework. Use JSON messages and talk to a simple server written in whatever server-side environment you feel most comfortable with (Node? Rails? Django? PHP?(no!) :P)
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I'm a web developer that is new to mobile app development and need to start a project asap. Despite researching for the last few weeks, (I have listed what I've done so far at the bottom of this post) I still have not decided between Phonegap or native (for iOS/Android only). Googling “Phonegap vs native” and the like seems to give results with a fairly even split, but there seems no doubt that native will give a faster / better end result, but at the expense of having to learn so many new things in a short timeframe.
One common thing cited about Phonegap is that is runs slowly – but I have also read that since V3 it now runs much faster – is this the case?
The app I need to build is really pretty much like a mobile static site (but the customer insists it must be an app) – just text and a few images and some PDFs. There will be new content added like news, so I was thinking rather than release a new app version for each new item, the app will fetch new data from a web API (JSON or XML) and finally a requirement for push notifications.
There will be no need to access the camera, GPS or any other hardware (bar the file system to cache images/PDFs).
I've looked at similar apps (the competition) and they all appear to make extensive use of web views, which might suggest they were made with Phonegap (or would it?).
So my question is, given the simple type of app I need to do, would there be a big benefit in going native for this, or would Phonegap (latest version) work just as well. Or on the other hand, since it is a simple app, would it be easy to do (i.e. from zero to both app stores in 10 weeks) in native?
I do have a mac with ADT/Xcode installed so that is not a factor in the choice.
My research so far.
Followed the Android getting started to here http://developer.android.com/training/basics/actionbar/styling.html but got lost with the tabs
Then got a book, SAMS teach yourself android in 24 hours, on about hour 6
Followed iOS to here https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/referencelibrary/GettingStarted/RoadMapiOS/ThirdTutorial.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40011343-CH10-SW1
Several Phonegap tutorials such as http://coenraets.org/blog/phonegap-tutorial/ but all seemed to have issues getting them to work as is.
Clearly native has some benefits over the web frameworks like phonegap. But the thing is what you want & need? If you want a quick solution then phonegap is best for cross platform. You can do it in easy way for all common platforms. But if you want your app to be fast & efficient, of course native has it's benefits.
Given your requirements, phonegap could be better to serve your purpose. You can continue with same code, and exact same design for all platforms. Not only for ios and android, but also with windows phone, amazon fireos etc.
One of the thing is that there are thousands of app building in phonegap these days, so it can be told that it meets with the expectation to a certain extent. Phonegap is efficient enough to fill these apps' terms. With proper use of frameworks like sencha, jquery mobile, kendo UI and many more phonegap can be highly efficient.
I don't think it's possible for anyone to tell you that if the app could be completed in 10 weeks in native apps or not. I would go for phonegap to continue with same design and same code. It would be easy to make change in the app if needed in future. But decision have to be yours based on the issues and requirements :)
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I'm developping now a social network (I can't tell exactly of what) and I want to hear some opinions.Should I use phonegap or use android and iOS?.
I asked the same question when I first started our App, but my answer was easier because I have a "time" restriction which result in us choosing PhoneGap. Here are some of my reasonings:
Do I really know how to write native app? No.
Do I know HTML5, css, and javascript? Bingo.
First, you have to understand that PhoneGap is just a embedded webview/browser inside of the resulting native app. You still have to use native code to build PhoneGap App, so you can consider learning PhoneGap as step 1 toward learning how to write native app.
PhoneGap has taught me a lot about the native app and project structure on each platform. I pretty sure it will be easier now for me to write native app than if I were two months ago.
We develop single application for multiple clients. Part of our agile approach, PhoneGap has allow us to get the application out to the client for review, feedback, and quickly make changes to fit the client need with regards to UI layout and design. Once the client approve the design; obviously, we can always convert the design to native App if the client is willing to pay for the extra effort.
If you want a good app and you are willing to put some time in it, go native.
As a matter of fact, always go native
Well, if you intend to start with something not that complex, I would say go Phonegap.
As you probalby know, the big advantage is that the HTML/JS code you produce is packed into several platforms (Android, iOS, symbian, etc..). However if you need to have more specific services like Background services to interact with the user and so on, you surely will need to develop natively, at least this part.
For example, if you need a service to warn user of updates, etc, you'll have to develop the central application (your html assets) and a background service for Android, and also a bacgrounf service for iOS, it's not possible to reuse code in this case.
So, depend on what you are going to aim at.
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I am interested to find out if there are any good platforms that are cross platform compatible for business apps. I know that Adobe AIR for Mobile is good for business apps and can be compiled for both Android and iOS devices(iPhoone/iPad). Outside of AIR, I don't know of any. I've looked at Corona, Unity, and Shiva 3d, but these seem to only be oriented towards game development.
My problem using AIR for Mobile is that from the experimental apps I've done in this fashion, the performance of AIR apps on Android and iOS always seem to be sluggish. Are there other SDKs that support a more responsive "write once deploy everywhere" model?
here you'll find a great article - http://mashable.com/2010/08/11/cross-platform-mobile-development-tools/
it contain mainly 5 of them -
1) RhoMobile
2) Appcelerator
3) WidgetPad
4) PhoneGap
5) MoSync
if you are looking for great performance then go for Appcelerator. It convert JS code in native app.. so performance is as good as native app.
Did you look at MonoTouch and Mono for Android from Xamarin? http://xamarin.com/
They say you can re-use up to 90% of your application logic across iOS and Android phones and tablets, and Windows Phone and then create device-native user experiences / UI with access to all the native platforms API and device sensors.
Have a look at PhoneGap http://phonegap.com/. However, testing this myself I have also found slugish performance. Having looked around on the web there is a strong battle of native vs the write once run anywhere solutions with the native option seeming faster.
check out www.madewithmarmalade.com.
Its allows you to write directly down to the bare metal, creating a single native binary that means you don't compromise speed, which I've found the problem with a number of proposed solutions.
There an English outfit, part owned by ARM, so the tech is pretty good.
For $499, you can't go wrong.
There is also AeroGear you can try.
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programming is my hobby and I am not ready to leave my other profession yet. I have developed few windows applications, mostly on VB, some small scripts in python, C++, and so...never touched java or objective C
Now, I have few game, app ideas and I am sure they don't exist in iphone and android yet, and even browser based. Now , I want to develop those games in 5-6 months of time and I want users to be able to play from any platform, browser based, android, iphone, etc. just say like Zyanga poker.
I can pretty much give the details of games and even come up with some algorithms and /or idea in most states. So, how much it will cost to develop such program? Should I learn and do programming myself? or should I use unity like program for cross-platform deployment? what about looking for some investors or giving share to programmers, if so, where can I find such possibilities?
Thanks..
how much it will cost to develop such program?
Cost? money or time? Estimating game project (or all software project) scope is much harder than you think especially when you don't have enough experiences on developing similar types of games. 5-6 months of time could be more than enough to make one simple game but it really depends on the game you want to make and your skill. You think you can give the details of games for implementation but you will soon realize you need much more details to finish the job. Because it's your first time to make a video game, my advice here is that "forget scope, start making the game and see how it goes". It might sound silly first but you will be able to estimate cost more accurately as you build the game.
Should I learn and do programming myself? or should I use unity like
program for cross-platform
deployment?
You probably should learn and program by yourself. Even if you decide to use a game engine like Unity, you still need to do programming with the engine. Also, a game engine can save you a great amount of coding but you should spend sometime learning the engine itself. Unity seems a solid choice and please go check its documents, forum and tutorials.
what about looking for some investors or giving share to programmers, if so,
where can I find such possibilities?
This is more like a business question. You can ask this question here : http://answers.onstartups.com/
Before you search for investors or publishers, you better have a playable game demo. Game design documents do NOT work for getting a publisher unless you have successful commercial games you made before. Good Luck! :)
Whether it be IOS, Android, or WP7, they all want to lock you to work with the tools they support directly. IOS has arguably been the most strict, but that seems to change with the direction of the wind. There are some cross-platform development tools, but most of them are fairly expensive. IMO if you want it to be truly cross-platform, and isn't very graphics intensive, your best bet is probably HTML5 and Javascript. There are new Javascript libraries coming out every day it seems to help with gamedev, and while the support in different current generation browsers can be hit or miss, IE9, Chrome FF4, and most of the new mobile browsers have enough support for Canvas and other extensions to make it a credible platform.
YMMV
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i would like to buy a new cell phone that runs Android. From what I heard I assume it's quiet programable and customizable. What are your Experiences?
Are there any good books on the topic?
Android is a wonderful platform, both to use and to develop for (IMHO, obviously).
I've been developing Android applications for a while now on my 1st generation developer phone, and I've just ordered the HTC Hero. For the most part, it's a joy to work with. The open source approach works really well - I often find myself looking at the source of the applications that comes with the platform for solutions.
I had no previous experience with Java before I started developing for the Android platform, but quickly learned the language and the platform. Googling for Java solutions usually leads to some hints or a direct solution.
The documentation could be a little better - but it's usually acceptable. The "getting started"-parts are fairly well explained, and the samples will get you further. The android-developers group is usually helpful, and if not there's always IRC (#android and #android-dev on freenode) and community forums where you can get help.
For reading material, I strongly recommend Reto Meier's "Professional Android Application Development" - it's far better than most other books I've read about Android. If you're lucky, you will also get answers from the author here on Stack Overflow :-)
I would say that Android devices are the most programmer/developer friendly smartphones you can get at the moment. After all, it's part of Google's strategy to attract as many developers as possible, in order to get a fast growing software landscape.
Here are some key advantages of developing for Android:
even though it's not a Sun JVM running your programs, the programming language for applications is Java, which makes it easy to jump the Android bandwagon for many developers
the developer tools can be used both on the command line, or via an Eclipse plugin called the ADT (Android Developer Tools) on all major platforms. The plugin/emulator is solid and comfortable to use.
Even retail phones are very developer friendly. Though not rooted, you can simply hook them to your developer machine using USB, enable USB debugging and off you go. You can one-click deploy your apps from Eclipse to your phone. Excellent.
While this hasn't been true for quite some time, the online documentation now actually is pretty decent
As a developer, this is maybe my favorite one: You can easily download the Android source code and read it. It's very readable, and often very helpful to get more insight into how a typical app is built, and how the Google devs solve typical tasks.
Publishing to the Android market is as easy as registering a developer account and uploading your app with a description. There is no reviewing being done by Google up front (versus the one plus months ping pong you go through with Apple each time).
Having worked with Android since over a year now without any prior experience in mobile application development, I can wholeheartedly say it has grown into a solid, well designed and easy to use platform.
I maintain a roster of available Android application development books on a wiki page and a knol.
Full Disclosure: I wrote a few of those books.
Android is very easy to program for, especially if you have experience in Java. Overall in my experience programming for it, and attempting to port an application currently on the iPhone to the Android platform is that the iPhone interface is a bit more polished still. I think they have a few more iterations of polish to go through before it can truly stand on its own in the marketplace against the iPhone. Just my opinion, though