The lack of support for network games.

Games
#1

I feel  the lack of support for network games.

Is corona planning to support something like Amazon’s gamelift?

Or are there other services available?

The current gameNetwork has a fatal flaw that is platform dependent.

#2

I wouldn’t call it a fatal flaw. It is merely a limitation.

If you want real-time multiplayer, you could use Photon (https://docs.coronalabs.com/plugin/photon/index.html).

#3

Or GameSpark RT

https://docs.gamesparks.com/documentation/gamesparks-real-time/

#4

Amazon Gamelift isn’t a fair comparison really. Amazon were an established cloud hosting provider with one of the world’s biggest networks before offering this service, and without a comparative network of their own, Corona just don’t have the resources to compete there.

That’s the kind of thing that would be so costly to implement and maintain that we’d all need to be paying hefty subscription costs to cover.

Corona does incorporate network communication libraries though so while they don’t offer this kind of a platform, they do make it possible for you to build your own.

#5

Also please note that Gamespark is owned by Amazon. 

#6

We would love nothing more than to offer a cloud gaming platform. We even tried twice to build our own, and in both cases it wasn’t something that made sense for us.

Support for third-party solutions is often fraught with peril.  Apple should always maintain GameCenter and Google should always maintain GPGS, but beyond that, you’re dependent on people trying to setup and manage a networked gaming platform and that has a history of businesses that come and go. Even sometimes products with big company backings end up closing their doors (Parse.com/Facebook.com for instance). 

Before we pour engineering into anything beyond Apple, Google and Steam’s official product, we have to feel pretty confident that will be around for the long haul. This is where our plugin system comes into play.  Services can build their own plugins and maintain them. It just doesn’t make sense for us to do so.

Rob

#7

I wouldn’t call it a fatal flaw. It is merely a limitation.

If you want real-time multiplayer, you could use Photon (https://docs.coronalabs.com/plugin/photon/index.html).

#8

Or GameSpark RT

https://docs.gamesparks.com/documentation/gamesparks-real-time/

#9

Amazon Gamelift isn’t a fair comparison really. Amazon were an established cloud hosting provider with one of the world’s biggest networks before offering this service, and without a comparative network of their own, Corona just don’t have the resources to compete there.

That’s the kind of thing that would be so costly to implement and maintain that we’d all need to be paying hefty subscription costs to cover.

Corona does incorporate network communication libraries though so while they don’t offer this kind of a platform, they do make it possible for you to build your own.

#10

Also please note that Gamespark is owned by Amazon. 

#11

We would love nothing more than to offer a cloud gaming platform. We even tried twice to build our own, and in both cases it wasn’t something that made sense for us.

Support for third-party solutions is often fraught with peril.  Apple should always maintain GameCenter and Google should always maintain GPGS, but beyond that, you’re dependent on people trying to setup and manage a networked gaming platform and that has a history of businesses that come and go. Even sometimes products with big company backings end up closing their doors (Parse.com/Facebook.com for instance). 

Before we pour engineering into anything beyond Apple, Google and Steam’s official product, we have to feel pretty confident that will be around for the long haul. This is where our plugin system comes into play.  Services can build their own plugins and maintain them. It just doesn’t make sense for us to do so.

Rob