Back in November we covered Onyx Online from Steve Demeter of Demiforce, maker of Trism. Onyx Online is Steve’s attempt to bring all the gaming community goodness of the Xbox Live Arcade to the iPhone platform.
In a nutshell, Onyx Online is the XBox Live Arcade ecosystem brought to the iPhone. I wrote this kind of system into Trism as a case study, and it’s been a complete success. Since Trism launched in July, we’ve been hard at work adapting this online code for use in any iPhone game, and the results are stunning. What we’re going to do is allow any developer to insert the Onyx code into their game, which will instantly enable online scoring, achievements, leaderboards, and customized forums.
As Offworld reports, Steve’s not the only one working to bring an open community to the platform we all know and love. The makers of Aurora Feint, Danielle Cassley and Jason Citron, are throwing their hat into the iPhone social network ring. They have launched OpenFeint.
Currently available for private beta, Danielle and Jason will host the server (compatible with Google’s OpenSocial REST API) and is available through the OpenFeint Client code library and sample UI code. They are planning to keep the platform free for developers up to an unspecified “limited" number of concurrent clients. The product goes live in March.
What OpenFeint offers:
— Profiles: Players can upload any avatar photo or one from their phone’s camera
— Walls: Each player gets a wall where other players can leave comments and view wall-to-wall conversations
— Asynchronous Real-Time Chat: Game-specific chat rooms for meeting other players, sharing tips, strategies and experiences within each game community
— Friends List: Players can friend other players within their game community or across the gaming community
— Newsfeeds: Players can keep in touch with all of their friends’ activities (wall comments, actions in games, befriending people)
— Global Community Chat: Game-independent rooms for players to discuss recommendations, tips, and experiences on other games
Stay tuned for more info on both OpenFeint and Onyx Online as it surfaces. In my opinion, Apple should have set this up in the first place. Let’s hope, absent that, a third party solution can successfully bring iPhone platform gamers together in a meaningful way.
