GameCenter or OpenFeint

Getting Started Announcements
#41

“If we are to commit to Corona, even for a test, we are totally at the mercy of ANSCA for feature set and it is a massive investment in time and money in staff. We can’t expand features by writing new native libraries for things that are missing and use them in Corona and we can’t bug fix ANSCA code”
We are indeed @ their mercy for bug fixes. I just want to take a simple screenshot in Landscape mode and save it to the user’s Photo Album on iPhone … but due to a Corona bug, this is impossible. (It works fine in the simulator, but not on the actual iPhone itself – which is of course the only place it DOES need to work.) So I’ll throw another plea here: Fix this evil nasty screenshot bug ASAP, please.

… Now, to the topic… if you read the various forums here, it seems to me that most people are working towards iOS development if for no other reason than that at this time, there’s just too many things to worry about for smaller developers (like me). I don’t want to deal with a zillion screen sizes and/or input options. I’m happy to cater to the near 100 million (or more) iOS users who easily know how to use the app store.

That’s not to say if I had an app go “gangbusters” I wouldn’t want the ability to port to Android easily … but for me, I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.

IMHO, Android will mature and come around – and/or when they have a killer android device that attracts 10’s of millions of users, perhaps more developers will focus energy on catering to that specific screen size… but for now, smaller folks who are using Corona are all about the Apple.

Best wishes,
~~Kenn

(Please fix the landscape screenshot bug. ;-)) [import]uid: 13859 topic_id: 5213 reply_id: 19815[/import]

#42

Your Q4 2010 (not 2020) results are skewed because you’re looking only at phones. Apple also sold 7 million iPads and 19 million iPods – though I’ll be honest and say I have no idea what % of the iPod sales were iPod Touches which run iOS and the app store.

All the same, it’s still much closer to 30 million new iOS “app enabled” devices… And, unlike android, every single one of those people knows how and where to buy apps. IMHO. Of course. :slight_smile: [import]uid: 13859 topic_id: 5213 reply_id: 19855[/import]

#43

Thanks, added a note above. Can’t say whether the Android figure includes Tablets either for that matter as the results are for Smartphones only.

It’s not hard to buy through the Android market that sits on all Android phones… I think they could all be better and assume it will be over time for all… iOS and Android. IMHO… :slight_smile: [import]uid: 28534 topic_id: 5213 reply_id: 19858[/import]

#44

@kennwags…

Well yeah the bug things is a scary thought for any serious developer. I see that ANSCA does it’s best but you would be left helpless as you can’t fix it yourself. Not a good situation.

I still stand by the Android push and hence Openfeint. It is a must to concentrate on things that are cross platform if you are to claim to be a cross platform development system. Otherwise, just drop Android and save us all the trouble of going down this route with this development system only to find an ever growing bunch of things that are not cross platform supported. This makes no sense. It’s not like Openfeint is not well supported, so why would you choose a system that you know will definitely not work on the other platform you claim to support as a development system? Perhaps it makes sense to later add some differences, but to add them now at the expense of cross platform ability makes no sense at all.

Whether you choose to dev for ios only because of some perceived screen res differences on Android is a choice you make. The system itself is supposed to abstract that kind of detail so that it does not matter so much anyway and you have to do it now if you want to support an iPad in any case.

My point really is… Support Android properly or just say that you are not going to and we can all just forget about this tool for Android development. But don’t say you are supporting Android and then just make it a token support only. That is just misleading.

Just one more thing to ponder. Q4 2010 sales results according to Canalys are:
33.3 Million Android units
31 Million Symbian units
16.2 Million Apple (assumed iOS) units
14.6 Millions RIM units
Yes, it would be silly to not be ready for this market now in a cross platform manner.

Note: this refers to smartphones only. Not tablets and not pods… It seems. See below for more possible numbers… [import]uid: 28534 topic_id: 5213 reply_id: 19820[/import]

#45

We really need both of them!! [import]uid: 9190 topic_id: 5213 reply_id: 20102[/import]

#46
  1. iAds/Admob
  2. Openfeint

simple as that [import]uid: 15361 topic_id: 5213 reply_id: 21215[/import]

#47

GameCenter =)

Regards
aalzanki [import]uid: 5451 topic_id: 5213 reply_id: 21457[/import]

#48

One more for GameCenter, all $10.00 … although I might be too late. :slight_smile: [import]uid: 7101 topic_id: 5213 reply_id: 21579[/import]

#49

I remember a bunch of games I had on my phone that had the OpenFeint logo on their icon and used it. Days after GameCenter came out, those games released updates that removed OF and used GC instead. It seems like a more ‘integrated’ option for leaderboards and achievements from the end-user’s perspective and seems to be the preferred method of recording scoring info on IOS these days.

So I’d like to see GameCenter support too, but please don’t make it add ~5MB to your build to include it! (looking at require(“openfeint”)!) [import]uid: 9428 topic_id: 5213 reply_id: 21997[/import]

#50

I assume it takes more than this 14-minute video tutorial to add it to Corona? :slight_smile:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9avpP0hYwik

[import]uid: 6084 topic_id: 5213 reply_id: 22009[/import]

#51

GameCenter for the win! [import]uid: 37094 topic_id: 5213 reply_id: 23380[/import]

#52

overheard a little bird that the competition might be adding GAMECENTER soon…if that happens before corona implements it…not sure how things might look around here :\

Just throwing it out there.

GAMECENTER FOR NEXT BUILD!!! [import]uid: 7856 topic_id: 5213 reply_id: 23383[/import]

#53

Didn’t think Corona had any serious competition. Be interested to hear who this competition is. I assume it is not Flash or Game Salad. [import]uid: 7863 topic_id: 5213 reply_id: 23389[/import]

#54

http://www.pocketgamer.biz/r/PG.Biz/OpenFeint/news.asp?c=27610

Check this out. [import]uid: 8192 topic_id: 5213 reply_id: 23485[/import]

#55

FYI, If you use Game Center, your app will be on the front page of the new Game Center apps in iTunes for a couple days. (depending on how many other Game Center apps that are newly released after yours) Any extra exposure for your app is always a welcome thing. [import]uid: 8891 topic_id: 5213 reply_id: 23827[/import]

#56

Game Center [import]uid: 792 topic_id: 5213 reply_id: 25938[/import]

#57

GameCenter

[x] Please
[x] Quick!
[x] Thanx [import]uid: 10666 topic_id: 5213 reply_id: 26418[/import]

#58

This is why I say we need advertising support ASAP.

http://androidcommunity.com/for-developers-android-platform-looks-to-be-most-profitable-20110308/

We are missing out easy revenue even if our free app is rarely downloaded. [import]uid: 15361 topic_id: 5213 reply_id: 26988[/import]

#59

To me it would be both should be supported, but I understand that this could be an issue as far as maintenance is concerned. So for now I would say OF is a more robust platform. Until GC catches up with the feature set, I’d rather have OF.

I’m a bit worried that I’ll be building a game now that has OF integration which may one day no longer be supported by Corona. When do you anticipate making the call on this so we can know whether we should avoid using OF or if it’s safe to continue with?

Another option would be to offer these as modules. I’ll pay another $25 or whatever a year to have access to the OF and/or GC modules.

[import]uid: 27145 topic_id: 5213 reply_id: 27431[/import]

#60

I’m a bit worried that I’ll be building a game now that has OF integration which may one day no longer be supported by Corona.

If it’ll help put your mind at ease, note that you can easily develop everything else in your game first and then tack on leaderboards right before you start beta testing. When we get multiplayer support in either OF or GC there will be more complex integration to do, but for just leaderboards all that’s really involved is a couple lines of code to initialize OF when the game starts, and a line of code that submits data to OF when the level ends. If there was a sudden change (unlikely; you’d certainly know in advance) then switching systems would be as simple as changing those couple of lines. [import]uid: 12108 topic_id: 5213 reply_id: 27456[/import]