scoreloop vs open feint vs plus+

Discussion in 'Public Game Developers Forum' started by Jamie, Jun 17, 2009.

  1. AgentSimon

    AgentSimon Well-Known Member

    Oct 12, 2009
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    18
    Male
    Game Designer
    Melbourne
    Agon vs Open Feint

    We are using Agon and Open Feint in our games at The Voxel Agents. We initially started with Agon, and now we're switching to Open Feint.

    We released our first game, Dolphin Hero, with Agon enabled, and it was an absolute synch to integrate. It took about 30 mins, from downloading, to compiling and working in-game. As everyone has said before me, they've done a great job there. I think the game profile page on their site is also another excellent step forward for them. They really seem to have developer's interests at heart which is very promising.

    @MindJuice: I agree with so many of your points. I think the cloud storage is a great idea, but I don't think many players will find its usefulness (you have to be switching devices and that doesn't happen regularly). And by the time many users are, I'm sure OF will have it too. and I agree that 44x44 is too small, and we'd rather roll our own achievements display too. :D

    But we're actually going to integrate Open Feint in our second game, Train Conductor. We have chosen to do this because we feel Open Feint seems to be more player oriented and that is really what is important to us. We don't care if it takes a bit longer to integrate, ultimately it is about the features that the players want. Some key reasons for us are:

    • It is much more visually appealing.
    • It has chat, players seem to like this and who are we to argue with how they like to spend their leisure time.
    • More popular titles are using it, and therefore more players are likely to already have an account before playing our games.
    • The Agon update expects you to put in a password and email address now (for multi account support) which detracts from the simplicity of Agon just a couple months ago when we initially chose it. We already find some people won't bother to enable the Agon features in our game. I don't want to make it harder for them.
    • The discovery feature of OF makes it more likely for players to cross pollinate across to our game from others, and vice versa.
    • We will be able to access the number one player in the high score table from within our code (so I'm told ... I only speak design). So we can show the player a reference point in our high score screen.

    There are more reasons, but these are the major reasons we have chosen Open Feint. We just decided to do this today, and we will be integrating later this week... so I will report back on our experiences.
     
  2. I think the cloud storage feature can go way beyond handling users simply switching devices. Imagine a game with a level editor where you can automatically share your levels with others by uploading them to cloud storage and setting a "shared" flag.

    Or you could use it to coordinate turns on a turn-base game. Each player uploads their turn data to the server. When the other player comes online, the game downloads the latest turn data file (security issues aside :)).

    As you say though, OF could easily add a similar feature. I expect all these social networks will end up with very similar feature sets in the end, although they may still have some fundamental differences in the development approach and ease of use/integration.
     
  3. blt3d

    blt3d Well-Known Member

    Dec 22, 2008
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    President/Lead Designer
    Florida
    I'm in the same boat. I started with Agon Online for my games, but I'm on the fence about switching over to OpenFeint.
    I use Unity iPhone Basic, and the way Agon's notification system works is not ideal. Basically, only one function can be called at a time per Frame Update. If there's more the one, the user will never know that something happened. (Unlocking an Award without seeing it is pretty lame I think.) OpenFeint has an automatic pop-up system which works much better. It took much longer to integrate with Unity/Xcode, but the combined features of the Discover engine, One Touch iPurchase and auto notifications are too much to ignore.
     
  4. AgentSimon

    AgentSimon Well-Known Member

    Oct 12, 2009
    109
    4
    18
    Male
    Game Designer
    Melbourne
    @MindJuice yeah I see what you're saying. If they add the ability to share data through the cloud with other users (a definite possibility) it will take much of the load of us building that server side tech elsewhere, which would be fantastic.

    I wonder if a competitor might then make available technology which has data sharing but also includes real-time communications between players, enabling internet multiplayer?
     
  5. georgosu

    georgosu New Member

    Jun 19, 2009
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    @bit3d We actually released v2.0 of our Unity plugin yesterday which completely unifies the interface between Unity Basic and Unity Advanced. This means that callbacks are no longer necessary for return values and any number of calls can be made per frame. This makes development from Unity Basic much, much easier than with any other platform, guaranteed.

    Additionally we've made the entire API availble from Unity now, including cloud storage.

    We've put up the plugin and a stand-alone sample using it on our downloads page.

    The synchronous calls actually aren't supposed to be possible with Unity Basic as it dissallows direct communication with external libraries... but when you're told something is impossible it often just means it is really hard and hasn't been done yet ;)

    Best regards,
    The AGON Online Team
     
  6. blt3d

    blt3d Well-Known Member

    Dec 22, 2008
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    President/Lead Designer
    Florida
    Thanks for the info on the update. I'll check it out!
     
  7. I just integrated OpenFeint into Zombie Karts and I would have to say I'm very impressed. I'm stoked about getting v1.2 released with it integrated. :)
     
  8. Question!

    Of all these...

    Which will allow me to track some simple statistics passively without having a log in requirement?

    For example, for marketing reasons an application like Paper Toss would want to advertise "over 10 millions papers tossed!". To back up the claim, you'd need data. It'd be nice if the data was collected passively. It'd be stored locally when there is no network connection, and uploaded in a batch when a connection appeared.
     
  9. PixelthisMike

    PixelthisMike Well-Known Member

    You should be able to do this with PinchMedia tracking no sweat
     
  10. CommanderData

    CommanderData Well-Known Member
    Patreon Indie

    Resurrecting this thread to ask a few questions about Plus+!

    Has anyone used the form at http://plusplus.com/developers to "express their interest in becoming a Plus+ partner"? And more importantly, did you receive any response at all, canned, personal, or otherwise? How long did it take?

    I know that they're keeping pretty tight reigns on their "baby" right now so not just any old game will make it in. Of course no one can judge whether my "secret project" will be worthy of the Plus+ network yet, as they have not seen the game design details, or the high level of art and animation being commissioned for it! I'm ready to sign into mutual NDAs and so forth to provide that confidence level in my next project, but first I need to get a response of some sort to work with ;)

    Maybe they are busy or on vacation? Or maybe I'm just impatient? It's only been about 1 week (5 business days) since I submitted some information to them, so either of these is possible... :D

    Anyone have recent Plus+ experiences to share? Maybe Neil still follows this topic?
     
  11. chum

    chum Member

    Aug 8, 2009
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    When I wrote them, it was a couple of weeks before they replied.

    My understanding (and this is NOT the final word, just what I've gathered) is that they're looking to be the publisher/distributor of games. In this way, it's not like OF or the others, which are geared toward self-publishers -- Plus+ is more of an application process, where your game is reviewed and scrutinized against all the other submissions, and the Plus+ folks decide whether or not you're up to Plus+ standards.

    Good: you can expect a consistency of quality.

    Less-Good: Plus+ doesn't appear to be generally available, the way OpenFeint and the others are.

    Yeah, give it another week or so, then ping them again.

    Good luck!
     
  12. I thought so too, which makes it all the more hilarious to me since one of the Plus+ titles is "Chase the Dot"! Seriously? WTF?

    Also, I contacted them and got no reply either.
     
  13. JonathanJ

    JonathanJ Well-Known Member

    Apr 20, 2009
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    Programmer for Core Concepts
    Southern California
    I, too, have contacted them with no reply. I have also wondered why "Chase the Dot" is one of the plus+ titles. There are actually a few titles that are suspicious.
     
  14. Allen at ngmoco

    Allen at ngmoco Well-Known Member

    Oct 18, 2008
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    Producer
    Hey guys,

    I wanted to jump into this thread on behalf of Plus+ and let you all know that we're absolutely not ignoring emails. Since the launches of Eliminate and Touch Pets Dogs, coupled with the success of Plus+ enabled games like Skee-ball, the Plus+ team has an overwhelming number of enquiries it is sorting through. Since Plus+ does not currently have an Open SDK, the team is evaluating and responding to developers individually.

    Plus+ has many new features to be announced soon, and an Open SDK solution is still on the horizon - so please be patient with us as we try to craft the best customer experience possible and bring aboard more awesome development partners. In the meantime, we're trying to address this rapid growth with some changes to the plusplus.com website and implement some measures that will allow us to respond more rapidly to all the requests we're getting.

    Thanks for your interest and patience.
     
  15. Thanks for chiming in Allen. Keep us up-to-date with the developments here. I'm interested to see what your Open SDK brings to the table.

    Any idea on a timeline? 3 months? 6 months? A year or more?
     
  16. simplymuzik3

    simplymuzik3 Well-Known Member

    Aug 12, 2009
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    Yeah, I would also like to know. If it's less than 3 months I would consider it, otherwise forget it; just use OpenFeint.
     
  17. nazara_tech

    nazara_tech Well-Known Member

    Apr 17, 2009
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    16
    project manage
    India
    I also completely agree with simplymuzik3
     
  18. CommanderData

    CommanderData Well-Known Member
    Patreon Indie

    Allen,
    As others have said, thank you for posting. At least we have an idea that the lights are on and someone is home at Plus+/Ngmoco street! Since I appear to have no other avenue for contact, I'll post it here publicly. :)

    The one thing I feel the need to stress is that you should make contact with virtually everyone that submits their info to you. Otherwise you could miss out on the next great gem, merely because an existing game offering a developer had was not a good "fit" with your vision. I think I sit right in the middle of that boat, with a solid but old-school first game that is certainly not glamorous enough for Plus+.

    However my next game (in early production stages now) has an entirely different look and feel, and the production values will be through the roof in comparison. I've brought on paid artists with solid work history on Nintendo DS and PSP games, and am currently in negotiations with companies on the musical score and sound effects. The design is my own, based on my 30 years of gaming (yep, arcade games since '79, baby!) with input from gamers ranged 10 to 50 years old. It's been a really fun project to work on so far.

    As an iPhone gamer and developer I've experimented with all the major networks, and I like the clean, simple elegance of Plus+ over the others. That makes Plus+ my first choice. We understand that there is no official SDK yet, and you're very busy. The other side of the coin is that I'm putting tens of thousands of dollars of my own personal cash, and countless hours of work on this project. It's still several months out from completion, but I would like to know that there's some hope for inclusion, and have that knowledge and code needed to integrate before I hit the final crunch time of this project.

    So, Allen, any chance we can chat sometime between now and mid-January 2010? I can be very patient as long as I know you or appointed Plus+ representatives are planning contact at some point :D

    Thanks for reading, and hope that everyone at NGmoco, and here at TouchArcade, has a good holiday!
     
  19. Junde

    Junde Member

    Dec 7, 2009
    12
    0
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    Business Development @ Scoreloop!
    Beijing, China
    Hey everyone, I'm Junde from Scoreloop and I'm here to help! Thanks very much for everyone's feedback.

    @Jamie (thread starter)
    We're late, but Scoreloop SDK 3.3 now has achievements.

    @BoiledGoose @TouchTouchDev
    We do support multi-level challenges and high scores. Examples of these are Plan it Green(different maps) and Parachute Panic (easy, medium modes). Challenge levels are passed at the point of selecting an opponent to challenge, before the game is actually played. So currently, the level lock is not supported.

    @zaw
    1. We do not have an authentication system that screens all usernames before they go live. We have instead, an admin backend which we and our partner developers have access to. They will be able to manage users, as well as view usage statistics.
    2. Yes, landscape mode was available already sometime back.

    @satishvarmadandu @MrBlue
    Thanks for your compliments. We are working on improving our documentation. Sincere apologies for the support that you did not receive. Please feel free to reach me directly at [email protected]
    As an additional resource, here's a brief integration tutorial written by one of our partner developers: http://www.torquepowered.com/community/forums/viewthread/104079

    Cheers,
    Junde
    http://Twitter.com/scoreloop
    http://Twitter.com/junde

    http://www.Scoreloop.com
     

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