Parse vs Google Play Games Services

Solar2D General Questions/Discussion
#1

Hi,

I used to think that Parse was a really good BaaS provider, partly because the incredibly wide range of services they offered. When it came to their pricing model, I don’t know, its difficult to compare e.g. total number of API calls “per month” with “per second” so I can’t really say if they were reasonably priced or not. However, I’m now wondering if Google Play Games Services would be a nice replacement, now that Corona has a new plugin available and all. Otherwise, my backup options are currently Backendless and App42.

Anyone who has any experience of comparing these?

#2

I have not used any of these (yet) but if I were developing exclusively for Android, I would most certainly use GPGS. It’s native to the platform, feature-rich, and free. Since I personally target multiple platforms with iOS as my primary focus, I will wait and see how much of the GPGS api is supported by the upcoming Corona SDK plugin. Until then, the BaaS providers I am most strongly considering are App42 and Firebase.

#3

The thing with App42 is that there is a Corona API, which makes it easy to integrate. I haven’t tried it yet but looking at the documentation, it has a lot of the features that I need. With Backendless, however, I need to write the Corona API myself using their REST API. They have completely different pricing models. Backendless sets the limit at requests per second and App42 per month. Extremely difficult to know which model is best beforehand. Assuming that the Corona GPGS plugin also supports iOS enough, it might be the better choice considering that it is “kind of free”…

#4

Can anyone from the Corona staff give an approximate timeline for the delivery of iOS support in GPGS? I just saw the tutorial from 2013 announcing the first version of the plugin. There, you said that “we’ll soon offer iOS support as well”. Just trying to get an idea of how long to wait…

#5

An engineer is actively working on it now. It’s going to be a complete implementation which means there are quite a few API calls to hook up. We don’t have an ETA.

Rob

#6

I have not used any of these (yet) but if I were developing exclusively for Android, I would most certainly use GPGS. It’s native to the platform, feature-rich, and free. Since I personally target multiple platforms with iOS as my primary focus, I will wait and see how much of the GPGS api is supported by the upcoming Corona SDK plugin. Until then, the BaaS providers I am most strongly considering are App42 and Firebase.

#7

The thing with App42 is that there is a Corona API, which makes it easy to integrate. I haven’t tried it yet but looking at the documentation, it has a lot of the features that I need. With Backendless, however, I need to write the Corona API myself using their REST API. They have completely different pricing models. Backendless sets the limit at requests per second and App42 per month. Extremely difficult to know which model is best beforehand. Assuming that the Corona GPGS plugin also supports iOS enough, it might be the better choice considering that it is “kind of free”…

#8

Can anyone from the Corona staff give an approximate timeline for the delivery of iOS support in GPGS? I just saw the tutorial from 2013 announcing the first version of the plugin. There, you said that “we’ll soon offer iOS support as well”. Just trying to get an idea of how long to wait…

#9

An engineer is actively working on it now. It’s going to be a complete implementation which means there are quite a few API calls to hook up. We don’t have an ETA.

Rob