I'd be very keen to know how to develop a social game on android which includes 2 or more than 2 players. Let's say chess..for example or scrabble.How to begin? Are there any online resources or tutorials available on this subject?
The best resource out there is Google's Android developer guide: http://developer.android.com/guide/topics/ui/index.html
This not only gives you an explanation for all the major classes of the android sdk, it also gives you tutorials into things such as reading from contacts (specifically the "content providers" section).
As for sockets, I don't think there is anything special with Android's Java implementation for that, you should just be able to find any Java socket tutorial and use that.
I think this is a good article on writing Android games: Getting Started in Android Game Development
Yup Skiller is a really cool social and multiplayer SDK. (you can download from here: http://www.skiller-games.com)
Also, you will need some kind of framework or a graphic environment, i recommend AndEngine which works for me, but you can use box2D (which rumor has it that it is being used in Angry Birds).
Good luck.
From my experience there are a couple of social SDKs. One that worked for me is Skiller multiplayer SDK. They take care of the multiplayer protocol and server side so you dont need to mess with this part and only handle the game logic. Currently they support only 2 player multiplayer games which was fine for my game and probably will satisfy your chess game but they said that they will release massive multiplayer SDK soon as well.
Good luck with the game.
Related
I would like to add the multiplayer functionality to my Android game. In particular it must be turn-based. I don't want to reinvent the wheel, so i need a framework/API or whatever that avoid to write the server side. It is just a personal project of mine, so i have not special requirements. Now, i know 3 possibilities:
Google Play Services API for Turn-Based game
SmartFoxServer
Parse
I would like to know if there are other technologies or if any of the ones that i've written above is good.
https://developers.google.com/games/services/android/turnbasedMultiplayer
As someone said in comments, Google Play services is cross-platform and will work for iOS if you ported it in that direction. Also, the support in the way of tutorials and documentation is very great for this.
On top of that, you can integrate other Google goodies like high scores, badges, etc.
I'm looking for some kind of 2D graphics engine for Android. In my special case I only want to move some Sprites, play short sounds and perhaps play some simple animations.
I know, I could do all these things for my own but I'm interested in some other solution for personal reasons. So is there a good, slim, efficient and most important, open source engine out there one can use and contribute to?
AndEngine is a good option. It's free, it's open (source included) and it offers extensions for Box2D Physics, Live Wallpapers, Aug. Reality (Camera games) and allsorts of other stuff - LOADS of game in the market using it already (no royalties).
Cocos-2d is also a good option.
I mostly recommend Unity3d as it is simply awesome! It has a great documentation and many resources and tutorials. But for Android development, it is not free. Here is the price details and comparison of features.
Also check out the list of some game engines Here
The following engines have been available for years and developers are actively improving them:
GDevelop is a very good open-source engine by Florian Rival that can export to Android without having to do traditional programming. The primary developer has plenty of ways you can contribute to the project.
Unity is an excellent choice if you're interested in entering the games industry but it isn't an open-source project that you can modify. From the Unity blog on March 26, 2018, by Aras Pranckevičius:
We are not releasing Unity as open source. Not even a little bit. (Sorry.) It’s not that we don’t like open source. We’d open source all of Unity today if we thought we could get away with it and still be in business tomorrow, and we do have a growing number of open source projects. But the main engine will remain proprietary for the foreseeable future, and the C# reference source code is released under a license which only permits you to read the code, not modify it. Please consult the full license text for details before you get carried away.
With that said, Unity apparently is open to contributions from developers:
Our decision to start open-sourcing components of Unity is intended to help us engage with you, our customers and users. We want to provide you with all of the securities and flexibilities that having source access provides.
We always welcome collaborative participation and community development. It is our hope and expectation that with this initiative, our community will be able to extend Unity in ways that were previously not possible.
After those, you have choices that involve more programming than game or graphic design:
LibGDX is a powerful, open-source engine if you are interested in traditional programming.
Cocos2d-x is another open-source option if you are looking for traditional programming.
I'm planning on writing a multiplayer game with Android as my primary focus as far as OS/platform, but I would like the ability to port the game to at least the web. I'm looking into Andengine as I'm just starting out with java and android and it seems the most noob friendly. The game shouldn't be too demanding as it will be a 2d turn based game with simple animations and chat.
So my main question - is it possible to port a Andengine game to the web?
If not what would you suggest?
I looked at libgdx, but I'm concerned that it might be a little to advanced for someone just starting out with java/android. Am I correct in my assumption?
Another idea I've been playing around with is writing the game in Flash and porting it to Android with Adobe Air - does anyone have any experience with this? Is it a bad idea? I kind of have my doubts of how well this will work, but if nobody can really talk me down from this idea, I might just go this route.
I've also considered writing the game in pygame as it seems easier but I don't like the idea of players having to download something like Pygame Subset for Android or Kivy to run the game. So basically if the other options are either too difficult or wont work on android then I'm probably just going to go with Andengine and consider rewriting it later for the web if people like it enough.
Moai SDK is an open source multi-platform framework for game developers.
One codes in lua - a dynamic programming language (that is easy to learn).
Apps made using Moai can be deployed to iOS, android and the chrome web store.
Moai could be an alternative.
Andengine makes a fine starting place. (I have made 3 projects with it now and I really like it). but it does not deploy to anything other than android. That is its strength and its weakness. As a strength, it is very easy to integrate android OS features and libraries with your project and has good performance. And as a weakness, well, it only runs on android.
Code-once publish anywhere platforms trade off development time for speed and size usually.
Some top competitors in that area are:
Ancsa Corona
AppMobi
PhoneGap
Unity3D
Adobe Flash(bonus of web distribution)
and others. (Moai SDK listed by #andrew, for example)
Each platform has had successful games launched with them. Find the one that suits you and your projects needs best. Do not forget to check for things you will want to integrate, such as using Facebook for mobile, or AdMob, or OpenFeint or other 3rd party services.
Good luck and enjoy you game making!
Just a side note, user do not need to download "Kivy" to run the game. As other toolkit, your application will provide Kivy as other libraries you'll use.
I have an iOS app (developed natively in Objective C) that provides a week-long diet-plan of recipes, plus with shopping lists, and coaching video and audio. The app heavily relies on UITableViews for navigation.
The client has now asked to make this app cross-platform with Android and add some extra content for in-app purchasing.
I've used Corona for a story-book app (also iOS) and I see that tableviews are supported on iOS using Corona Widgets... but I can't find whether they are supported on Android (I don't yet have a device to test on) or whether there is another (reasonable) way to code a UITableView equivalent.
As a bit of background info, I also tried Appcelerator Titanium, but found the loading of tableviews tend to lag as soon as you want to do anything creative with them (like adding images or backgrounds). Also I already have a Corona subscription and don't really want to have to pay for the Titanium+Mods subscription, to support in-App purchasing. ;-D
I would appreciate the insights of those who use Corona for cross-platform of non-game apps.
Thank you.
Yup, they sure are supported on Android. My client asked the same and I am about to submit next week. No issues at all on Android :)
yes... Corona is much better sdk for ios..
I'm interesting to develop an android turn-based online game. I read that is possible with OpenFeint, but I didn't found any library. Does anyone know any tutorial for this? Any other alternative?
I'm not interesting in WiFi or Bluetooth solutions, because that is "easy" to solve with sockets...
Thank you!!
I have also users the Skiller Platform and found it very useful.
I have combined it with Andengine (for its physics engine) and got a really cool multiplayer gaming experience.
Here is a link to OpenFeint developers site, It should contain everything you need.
http://support.openfeint.com/dev/welcome/
I'm interested in this same subject for my brand new game and I felt on Skiller.
Even if it was difficult to find out info about this service from other users, it seems to have all I need for my turn-based game, so I suppose to use their SDK and test it on the field.
Besides, I have already used Scoreloop and it seems not have a real-time turn-based multiplayer feature and I think OpenFeint neither.
You need to download the openfeint multiplayer API.
It was (maybe still is) removed from the site for maintainence, but someone has posted a link to it in on of these posts:
https://ofdev.zendesk.com/entries/20256407-where-is-the-multiplayer-api