Game Services ANE

[marchbold]

Help us create the next distriqt native extension

We are aware that there's a lot of interest in creating an AIR native extension (ANE) to handle cross platform game services (as our suggestion site indicates here). While we have made a start on this extension we just don't have the time to dedicate to developing this extension.

So we are asking you to help us. We've started a kickstarter project that will allow us to dedicate the resources necessary to create an well polished AIR native extension to access the Apple Game Center and Google Play Game Services.

The pledges vary from a simple website credit, to the complete finished source code, however we imagine most will be interested in the large discount on the final extension license.

Even if you can't donate please help us spread the word and continue making AIR a great platform to develop on.

Cheers,

Michael

[marchbold]

The game services project has gotten off to a great start but we still need your help to make this extension a reality. As you may know, we've started a kickstarter project that will allow us to dedicate the resources necessary to create an well polished AIR native extension to access the Apple Game Center and Google Play Game Services.

We're making progress but we still need your help. In the past week we've added some FAQ's and have provided some information on the proposed API.

It would be great if you could take the time to share the project with anyone you feel who may be interested and hopefully we can get this project completed.

Cheers,

Michael

[xTLS]

I feel the need to point out Milkman Games already has Game Center and Games Services ANEs that works just fine.

[marchbold]

Hi,

Yes you are correct, there are currently a few basic gaming extensions available.

We believe that none of them truly encapsulate the AIR development methodology. The available extensions, including those from milkman games, are single platform and single operating system. So for example if you wanted to use Google Play Services on iOS and Android it currently isn’t possible. Or if you wanted to quickly switch from Game Center on iOS to Play Services on Android, you would have to write two completely different code bases to handle each OS.

In our own experience this makes integration of game services much harder in a cross-platform development environment and doesn’t support the AIR cross-platform development methodology.

Our aim is to provide a single API to access multiple game services (initially Google Play and Apple Game Center, extending to Amazon and others in the future). This would allow you to use the same code base, with some configuration options and package for both Android and iOS.

Additionally, we are planning to be the first extension to provide turn-based multiplayer functionality through the game services.

Lastly, the cost of our extension through the kickstarter project is significantly less than the equivalent extensions available elsewhere (less than half I believe). Our license is more liberal than most, not requiring any profit share, just the upfront cost of the extension and is assigned to a developer, not each individual client.

Cheers,

Michael

[xTLS]

Come on now, let's be honest about this. It takes about 5 lines of code to use the Milkman Google Games ANE and another 5 lines to use the Apple Game Center. Your claim about needing "two completely different code bases" is totally facetious. They provide simple methods to check which platform you are on so you can call the corresponding methods; I wrote a single class to handle both platforms using the separate Milkman ANEs in about ten minutes and I can use this single codebase on either platform with no changes to my code.

Milkman's ANEs are also a single up-front cost with the extension assigned to the developer rather than the client. Heck, does anyone take profit share or charge per-client fees for native extensions, or is that just hot air? I suppose you should point out that your native extensions also don't steal credit card information, spy on you with your phone's camera, or obtain sentience and self-replicate like Skynet.

You have some nice goals for your extension and your Kickstarter price-to-own is low but I'm not impressed with your approach of pretending like the competition is worse than they are.

edit: I am pleased to announce after a minute of research I discovered that you aren't the first to support turn-based (or real-time) multiplayer through a native extension: Vitapoly already has one.

[marchbold]

xTLS Sorry if I came across as being facetious but that wasn't my intent. I definitely didn't mean to put down Milkman's extensions if that's how you took it and I wasn't just referring to their extensions regarding the licensing either (and yes we have had people tell us that other extension licenses involved profit share). I was merely trying to point out why we are attempting to do this, we're just 2 developers trying to make things easier to develop with AIR.

I will make one note though, while you are correct that it's not hard to create a wrapper in several lines of code that performs the simple tasks, once you start talking about some of the more important features, multiplayer, loading leaderboards, friends, achievements, your wrapper class will become quite large, with different data structures and conversion utilities.

For someone who has already developed a set of code for one platform, it does mean a lot of work to refactor once they move to packaging for another. And honestly it's unnecessary work.

[xTLS]

Michael, I don't know if you've ever even looked at Milkman's Google Games/Game Center ANEs, but there is no need for "data structures" or "conversion utilities" in utilizing them. The only unique data structures used by either ANEs are the events, which are trivial to deal with. Displaying a leaderboard is a single function call. I really can't imagine anyone having to refactor to transition from one to the other.

Again, it's fine to focus on the planned merits of your product, but making up complaints about your competitors is unprofessional.

omrill, Vitapoly's ANE is iOS-only but it is still enough to prove that Michael's claim about being the first to have turn-based multiplayer to be blatantly false: "Additionally, we are planning to be the first extension to provide turn-based multiplayer functionality through the game services."

[marchbold]

I don't want to have an argument with you, I've never said anything bad about any of our competition. I'm just going to show 2 of the data objects in Milkman games Game Center and Google Play extensions, this is not a complaint, I'm merely showing you where a wrapper class will start to fall down. I could do this with any API.

com.milkmangames.nativeextensions.ios.GCAchievementData

com.milkmangames.nativeextensions.GPGAchievement

Cheers

[xTLS]

Michael, those are internal data structures. You never need to use them. All of the functionality of their APIs is exposed through simple methods that take primitives as arguments. Using the Game Center ANE as an example, everything you need is encapsulated in this class: com.milkmangames.nativeextensions.ios.GameCenter

[Guest]

@xTLS Actually you *do* need to use those classes. After a quick look at the documentation, most of the methods for loading data will respond with events that contain instances of their data model classes. So do you never load any player, achievement, score data or anything else for your game?

If you don't like the idea of a kickstarter project you could always just *not* back it? If you've already bought alternative game services ANEs why don't you just use them if they are sufficient?

The thing that always made Flash and AIR great was the community spirit between developers and sharing of code, ideas, and supporting each other. The ane Michael is suggesting just sounds like it would just be a good alternative option for developers and be more affordable instead of paying double for both platforms, or only having single platform support for some features? Why be so negative?

[xTLS]

I concede I was mistaken about the data structures, which you do indeed need if you need to load some of the more advanced metadata from events. Would it require hours of refactoring to switch between the two? No, even if you did need the advanced metadata.

I don't have a problem with making a newer, potentially better extension - it sounds great - or the Kickstarter, but I have a problem with Michael misrepresenting the competition, not to mention pretending like their license is different than the license of any other native extension developer.

[bryan6721]

If you can one up the competition and provide a more convenient and functional product then by all means do so. This is one struggling developer that appreciates ease of use, cross platform and multiplayer capability.

Flash and AIR made it possible for this graphic designer/animator to build games the way I'd always dreamed of doing, but code and computer science is not my natural habitat and cutting through the weeds really wears me out.

Please, carry on.

[omri11]

just checked vitapoly...

its only IOS..no android.

even though IOS ANE looks really good, giving all options with real time and even voice chat...most AIR developers develop for android and IOS.

[marchbold]

omri11 Thanks for the support, though I'm sorry to hear you've had a hard time with Milkman. It's never good to hear bad things about the platform.

But you're exactly right, cross platform is what we are trying to provide. So when we say first, we mean first cross platform, our research has all been based around that.

[xTLS]

With Omrill's English skills I wouldn't be surprised if he simply didn't understand how to use the extension correctly.

[omri11]

You just showed who you are xTLS

English is not my native language.

And how i didn't know how to use the ANE correctly ?

anyway, i'll leave this thread which is really wasting my time on angry people (xTLS)

for the record...

quotes from Milkman interaction:

Me:

"regarding Local Notifications extension

in Android, if i close the application in memory, will the notification work ?

I have ANE from distriqt.com , which is working as long as the app is in the memory. if you clean the memory or restart the device..the notification will not work. they said they don't support it, as its more complex.
"

Milkman:

"Yes, of course our extension will still deliver the notification if you shutdown the app / remove it from memory.  When you then select the notification, the app will open again."

after buying and telling notification doesn't work i get

Milkman:

"

On Gingerbread, a forcibly stopped Application's services will still continue to register broadcast intents.  (So even the 'force stop/clear memory' with task manager approach will not prevent the notification from firing.)  Google intentionally removed this in Android 3.2+- it's a security hazard and if the user is electing to forcibly remove the application from memory it's services should stop with it.

However the key point is that the action of forcibly removing the app from memory will never happen in a real life scenario (other than the user forcibly removing it the way you are.) In other words, if the application is taken out of memory organically (the system is low on memory after a few days and the application Activity is stopped) - in this case the service will still survive and trigger the notification.  This is explained in the Android documentation.

One thing we do not currently do is recreate the service in the case where the phone is manually powered off.  Doing so would require a few additional permissions so it doesn't seem to be worth it for most users, but we'd consider the feature as an option for a future revision."

[furian]

I don't know how I've missed this conversation. And the only reason I'm going to write something in it is very simple - guys like xTLS‌ are just trying to confuse regular users, for reasons I cannot understand. I won't argue about classes or anyone's language. I will just point out, that I've bought numerous extensions from both companies, and I've never had problems with Distriqt (despite using 5+ extensions), while I had problems with at least 2 of Milkman's.

While making a real production apps, you don't just "wrap" something up, or find a way to "hack" through the problems. You can't explain to your clients that they lose money BECAUSE of some third party folks didn't do their job right. It's very obvious you just didn't use enough extensions or you don't use them for business.

Support is very very important! I can ALSO confirm that Milkman's extensions DO have bugs that their support is NOT willing to neither investigate nor accept. Rude attitude and days spent in debugging very simple ANE while sending zipped project files to the company, receiving "it works here" answers. It's not even hilarious I also did a clip of the bug.. We're talking about real life development, not some college homework!

I'm writing this just to support the well established opinion that Distriqt do their job properly. If someone doesn't like them - buy something else, stop whining, come back few weeks later to try Distriqt.

p.s.
I'm not working with nor for Distriqt. I just like them, as their fast support and well working code saved my client's project, which had a budget thousand times more than the cost of the extensions I bought. And I spent more money and time on faulty ones, that nearly failed everything. Cheers!

[marchbold]

furian‌ Thanks for the support! It's great to hear feedback like this!

Just in case you haven't heard the GameServices ANE is now available!

We've released the licensed version along with a comprehensive "Getting Started" guide, code samples, ASDocs and the example application.

http://airnativeextensions.com/extension/com.distriqt.GameServices

[omri11]

Check milkman ANE..they don't have multiplayer. distriqt also planning realtime mulltiplayer if they get to their goals.

+ all support of milkman, is for 1 year. afterwards you need to pay again 70% of ANE price to get more support. (with distriqt i understand there are no limits on updates)

+ i just bought Local notification of milkman, i asked him before if the local notifications work when you close the app in memory in android..he said yes (and i got emails to prove everything)..thats why i bought the ANE, later discovered they don't support it. I even have to prove to him, sending him video of me closing from memory and its not working. I refused to give me the money back even though he did mistake telling me wrong before buying. So from now on, i try to stay away from his products..

milkman DID NOT warn people of this limitation of his ANE even after i explained to him the problem. he still claim the notification work after 3 days and whatever...even though apps close in memory and then notification doesn't work.

you basically paying 2 times for IOS and Android..instead of 1 ANE for both (with many ANE's of milkman, which i'm sorry i bought already!!!!!!)

i got several milkman's ANEs and also distriqt..so i know the difference 🙂

distriqt GAME SERVICE IS NOW ONLY 50$!!!!!!! its already cheaper than milkman