New games for iOS4 - Game Center or OpenFeint or both?

Discussion in 'General Game Discussion and Questions' started by Acceleroto, Oct 27, 2010.

  1. ezone

    ezone Well-Known Member

    Mar 3, 2009
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    Game Developer @ Ezone.com
    Perth, Australia
    ... but are they the people likely to spend money to buy a game?

    Does anyone have stats on iOS % by version?
     
  2. Acceleroto

    Acceleroto Well-Known Member

    I don't have any recent stats. Good point about that. Of course, we're not all about doing nothing but making money...however...it does take sales to keep the lights on.

    I don't make games to make money. I make money to make more games.
     
  3. ezone

    ezone Well-Known Member

    Mar 3, 2009
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    Game Developer @ Ezone.com
    Perth, Australia
    Well, we are just in it for the money ;) - which is why our new app will be titled:

    "Angry Doodle Zombie Jump"

    I did find this article:

    http://www.localytics.com/blog/post/why-are-apple-iphone-users-slow-to-upgrade/

    Which says: "Two months after the release of iOS 4, over 20% of iPhone 3GS users still haven’t upgraded to iOS 4"

    ...which I thought was a pretty good uptake.
     
  4. ChaoticBox

    ChaoticBox Well-Known Member

    Oct 8, 2008
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    Developer
    Toronto Canada
    Right now the path of least resistance for developers is to implement Game Center through OpenFeint. I opted to support Game Center directly and found it requires quite a bit of support code.

    When the network is down but the user was previously logged into Game Center things get a bit weird since you can still authenticate the user. You can't send or retrieve any new scores or other info in this state so you're forced to save everything off to disk and have to try sending it later. I even go as far as caching the user's last known high scores and achievements so my app isn't totally blind when offline (though it may very well be out of sync till the network is back up). Then there's the question of what to do when a user isn't logged in or Game Center isn't supported. OpenFeint should handle most of these details without any extra work.
     
  5. noelbernie

    noelbernie Well-Known Member

    Mar 22, 2010
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    Well, my personal opinion is

    Mainly that GC is dead simple, no frills, clean UI and instant load, compared to OF.

    look at the first run experience .. it's terrible with OF ... it requires 3 screens to authenticate, set up things, ...for every single game you install !
    GC requires a 1 time set up for a device, then you're done.

    OF has many features, for sure, but at the expense of the user experience.
     
  6. Nicolinux

    Nicolinux Active Member

    Oct 21, 2008
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    Don't underestimate the marketing effect of OF. Their established user base seems to be quite enthusiastic about playing games. These are the best people you'd want for your game.
     
  7. pbhogan

    pbhogan Member

    Jun 16, 2009
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    Game Developer
    Edmond, Oklahoma
    Drop OF, go with GC. The UI is simpler, FAR less cluttered and it's snappier. The first launch experience is somewhat better, it doesn't try to stick it's brand on your product and it supports online matchmaking with GameKit out of the box. The code really is pretty simple if you use blocks. I have one support file with my few snippets in there.

    Of course saving scores and achievements offline is the one thing you need to do yourself, but really -- how hard is that? Throw it in a plist if you can't submit and retry when appropriate. Blocks make it dead simple. You barely have to think about delegates.

    I really appreciate what Jason did with OF to fill the gap, but OF is deprecated now to my mind.
     
  8. ChaoticBox

    ChaoticBox Well-Known Member

    Oct 8, 2008
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    Toronto Canada
    Unfortunately just tossing scores into a plist makes it real easy to cheat...

    I do agree the overall user experience with GC is simpler and there's far less bloat all around, but that simple API turns into a bit of a beast when you realize how much support code and extra UI you'll need. Just look at Apple's GC example project - it's kinda hideous, and doesn't even handle offline scores.

    Not saying devs shouldn't go with GC directly (I'm in that camp too) just be prepared to spend some time building a wrapper around it to fill in its shortcomings.
     
  9. Acceleroto

    Acceleroto Well-Known Member

    True. However, much like pirating apps, there are going to be some people who crack/spoof/cheat whatever high score stuff you do (no matter how crafty you are). It's too bad there's no developer back end for OF or GC leaderboard management right now. It'd be nice to be able to zap impossible high scores (like people with negative 30 second win times in Air Hockey!).
     

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