Suggestions about multiplayer game development on iOS and Android? [closed] - iphone

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I'm working on a simple game to experience the multiplayer game development on mobile plaforms especially on Android and iOS. I'm now planning network/multiplayer side of the game and need some advice.
Firstly i think about Google App Engine as the server side of the game. But i learned that app engine cannot connect directly to clients. So updates of the users cannot be send to others directly with this method. Then i started to think about serving the game on one of the gamers of the current session. But of course some of the features will be on the server. You think it is a good idea?
Second, I'm looking for a protocol to communicate iOS and Android. YAML and JSON are the ones i looked so far.
Any other suggestions about multiplayer game development would be appreciated. Thanks...

Free solutions:
Market leader: http://openfeint.com/developers (>40,000,000 Users)
Scoreloop: http://www.scoreloop.com/
Out of the box solutions:
Photon by Exit Games: http://www.exitgames.com/
Elektrotank http://www.electrotank.com/
Smartfox: http://www.smartfoxserver.com/
It would be pretty pointless to develop a solution on your own (assuming you want to earn money).

While this thread is quite old, it seems like interest in multiplayer is growing, so I hope this answer will be relevant.
Disclosure: I work at Nextpeer. We provide hosting and client SDK aimed at casual mobile games seeking to implement a multiplayer option, so I'd like to add our solution to the mix. We take care of the server-side, of player-to-player communication, matchmaking, and the social aspect (we offer Facebook integration). And we aim for easy integration. Our SDK is available for both Android in iOS, as a native SDK and as a Unity plugin.

I too evaluated OpenFeint and Scoreloop. I'm particularly impressed with Open Feint's rich feature set. RIM acquired ScoreLoop in June so I'm not sure how long they'd support non-BlackBerry platforms. I found that both these SDKs do not provide multiplayer support. If multiplayer social game development is what you are talking about, Skiller seems to be a good option.

I have tried to develop multiplayer game and checked SmartFox, Exit Games, Skiller and AndEngine.
From my understanding AndEngine (download: http://www.andengine.org/ ) works great for close proximity multiplayer (on the same WiFi network), but i was trying to create long distance multiplayer experience.
Smartfox and Exit Games required me to get my own server and server maintenance, and unfortunately it is out of my budget.
Skiller (download: http://www.skiller-games.com/ ) host their own service, so i downloaded the SDK and checked it out.
After playing with their SDK it seems to have what i needed and i was able to create the multiplayer experience i was looking for.
So i have chosen Skiller for my project and it works great.
Hope i have helped.

I don't think developing your own game engine is a good idea. If anything, you will end up re-inventing the wheel. You might want to look at Skiler as well. It's free, provides an easy to use SDK for building single and multi-player Android games. They publish a TicTacToe multiplayer game which provides a good indication of the platform's capabilities.

As mentioned by others, SmartFox, Exit Games, Skiller and AndEngine are all good options for the networking/engine portion.
OpenFeint and Scoreloop, as well as Swarm are all good options for the user/leaderboard/achievements system.

Related

Multiplayers online game (MMO) | Architecture | Learning Path

I want to learn game development.
I'm coming from Web, Desktop and Mobile Applications.
where is no really REAL-TIME programming.
And all architecture templates and life cycles is very different.
Now I have 1 idea for game. I don't know if this will very good game, but for first game my main goal is - Get experience
My game is online game with 2 players.
The players has cards (like in Clash Royal) and will player release the card - game need to do something.
Now question is in Architecture....
In applications that I made - all business logic was on SERVER SIDE..........
But If i understand right - here is Game on Players phone do all business logic..and server is just "message provider" ??
The second question is - If I have to use online service (like Photon) or build my TCP/UDP server.. (Its not so hard and for first game I think I can do it by myself)
UPDATED:
The main question what is resources I need to read for get more information about type of Architectures in Game Dev?
Thank you for your answers.
There is no RIGHT ANSWER for your question, as there are many ways to do an on-line game, and everyone have their pros and cons, like:
Host & Clients, where one of the players is acting like a server.
Authoritary Server, where all the logic is calculated on one side, and then update the others.
If you are working on Unity I recommend you to look the different network api's over there: Photon, Unet...
You can use the server services that Unet provides, or build your own system.
But one advise: don't mess with physics on on-line games, will be punishing.

Sony PS4 app development

I am an experienced Android developer and with a team of developers we have created a app for Android, a mobile app that is used to mirror the contents of a TV channel. We have had a request to maybe make a PS4 app similar to the one we have on mobile platforms. The question is that is it possible or not? Also would like to know if our physical location is relevant to having a license? We are located in Germany. I am really new to this topic so any advice, hint or whatever if appreciated.
You need to register as a developer in Sony's Developer portal of your area. For Germany, that would be SIEE (Sony Interactive Entertainment - Europe). You can still ship apps world-wide, but that would be your starting portal. Start at https://www.companyregistration.playstation.com/ and make sure you pick Europe when asked.
Good luck!
Depending on how complex the app is, you also have the option of using Java.
Playstation 3 and 4 and Xbox One all runs Java because they feature a Blu-ray player - and all Blu-ray players run Java as part of the Blu-ray specification.
It's called Blu-ray Disc Java - and it will only run from disc.
It will of course run on any Blu-ray player - but for the gaming consoles you benefit from the much faster CPU.
A few YouTube example videos of various BD-J Xlets running on PS3:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_E9VaXywG0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxMpLB_ZsDs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKadWBm9CQA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bC5FV-2AY4
A few useful links:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/javame/bluray-142687.html
http://www.tvwithoutborders.com/
http://www.java-gaming.org/index.php?topic=38044.0

Multiplayer with multiple app ids

I am interested in making an iOS game with a 2 player multiplayer aspect. I'd like to use Game Centre to send the data, which seems to work well with 1 app. What I would like to have is a paid and free version of the game, with the ability to play multiplayer between the paid and free versions.
The problem I have is:
Is it possible to use Game Centre to send data between the paid and free versions of the game, even if they have different app ids?
From what I've seen online, I don't think that it is possible, and I'll most likely have to have my own server to handle the data transfer. Any insight though would be much appreciated. Thanks!
There is such option in iTunes-connect.
Here is guide to it
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/LanguagesUtilities/Conceptual/iTunesConnect_Guide/15_GameCenter/GameCenter.html
Here are two options you should be looking for
Groups: allows you to share your leaderboard and achievement data between apps. Apps in a group do not need to be multiplayer compatible.
Multiplayer Compatibility: allows you to specify which apps are compatible with a specific app and therefore, allow multiplayer games between the apps. Apps do not need to be on the same platform or in a group to be multiplayer compatible.

Embedded computer vision platforms [closed]

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I am planning to start a computer vision based project on a smart phone platform.
I know iPhone and Andriod have openCV support. I am interested in knowing how was your experience with the level of integration, support and ease of building good apps on either platform.
Also I do want to consider windows phone 7 ( and Zune) as a platform, Are there any Computer Vision libraries for that platform or any good development tools( does Aforgenet work or any other good suggestion) ?
Also can you suggest some popular augmented reality apps which uses cutting edge technology (I am aware of Pranav Mistry's SixthSense)
Thnx in advance!
Unfortunately on Windows Phone 7 there is no access to the camera's data stream currently. Instead you are limited to launching the camera app, letting the user take a picture, then receiving that picture data.
This is a much requested feature so could change at any time.
Check out WordLens for cutting edge AR.
I've built AR and other computer vision apps on iOS using OpenCV and found it to be a solid platform. If nothing else, it provides you with a fast, robust set of libraries for Matrix mathematics as well as optimised versions of some of the more common vision algorithms from feature extraction to 3D reconstruction. It's pretty much a defacto standard so there's a great support community out there too and I'd definitely recommend it.
From a development point of view, I tend to write command line OpenCV apps on my Mac and then, when debugged and running, I look at moving them to iOS. This shortens the test/debug cycle (as I don't have to worry about deploying and debugging under iOS) as well as allowing me to focus on the problem at hand rather than vagaries of the mobile device.
It also makes it straightforward to move on to Android platforms though I've found the Java wrappers for OpenCV on Android to be less great. Again however, focus on getting your core algorithm and processing pipeline working on the desktop in (say) C++, then moving it to a mobile device wrapping in the necessary native code format.
Most probably you will use deep learning If yes you need to optimize everything like deep learning networks to smaller networks, mobile dl frameworks such as Tensorflow lite, etc.
You also need to consider the inference time depending on the hardware

iPhone to iPhone networking

I am interested in developing an iPhone application that creates ad-hoc networks between iPhones.
Is such an application feasible?
I am a novice with iPhone development, so I apologise in advance for my naiivety.
Thanks
In iPhone OS 3.0, Bluetooth is used to create an ad-hoc network and has been developed for this purpose.
Here is some documentation.
http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/NetworkingInternet/Conceptual/GameKit_Guide/GameKitConcepts/GameKitConcepts.html
On a side note, there are some games that use the current access point and scan the subnet that they are on and find other listening clients. Then they create a game that way.
I know this is an old question, but since I just researched a similar topic, I wanted to share the results in case it's helpful to someone who searches for this in the future.
Newer iOS versions include Game Kit, a set of APIs allowing developers to create peer-to-peer networking systems over WiFi or Bluetooth. This appears to be exactly what the poster is requesting.