scoreloop vs open feint vs plus+

I do think the apps using OpenFeint do tend to use more Battery but that could be the game, so hard to quantify without testing it properly myself. But yes the OpenFeint menus and interactions are sluggish, from when the game first loads, to choosing options within OpenFeint. There has been a new version since I last looked but looking at the standalon app on my iPhone it still has the same kind of feel, as it does in the games I play with it (though I obvious don't know exactly what version of OpenFeint they are using)

I'm going to spend as much of the weekend as I can though messing with Agon, ScoreLoop and OpenFeint and decide then, the trouble with that is it takes time to integrate these things and you can only really doa proper comparisson when they are fully integrated, so I imagine intergration time is going to be a factor as well.

 

Thanks for your time experimenting If you have time to report back, we’ll all be interested!

I’ve never used any of these as a developer (my game is a slow-moving side project at best) so I’m just wondering: does OF sit in memory or do anything when you’re not in the OF menus? (Other than the moment of transmitting a score/achievement, that is, and the moment of logging you in to display your username at the beginning.) If not, then I’d hope it could not impact battery life.

However, I can imagine that ANY online score/achievement system, if games are short and you transmit a lot, might reduce battery over long play sessions, if it’s firing up the network a lot when the WiFi or 3G radios would otherwise be dormant? Maybe that’s what happening to you? Or, as you say, it could just be your game. Anyway—good luck with the investigation.

 

Oh I wouldn't call my project fast moving at all, it's a side project which got sidelined when we moved house, but slowly getting some free time again now.

And I *think* OF because it broadcasts what your playing, achievements in game, and has the additional functionality like the chat channel it keeps a constant open connection. This though could be totally wrong, it might be the game itself, but at the very least playing my current favourite game Space Station by Origin8 which has OF the load time feels longer, and after each game when the OF bottom bar pops up with the score update it seems to be sluggish.

Given that I've got this weekend to play I'm going to start with Agon which appears to be the easiest to implement, play around with that, then move onto ScoreLoop which is also an easier integration, then finally spend any time I have left with OpenFeint, I like the look to the chillingo one, but timings don't fit as I really want to get this update done and rolled out.

 

Are you talking about OF 2.4? The previous version was so-so, but I've found this version to be very fast in terms of loading etc.

 

great to hear
I'm Junde from Scoreloop. Let me know if you need any help, even if it's during the weekend!

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

 

Well I have no status report to give here, due to the weekend becoming all about fixing people's PCs (can't really grumble as it makes me more money than iPhone development ), so instead of getting to try things out I fixed two computers, one printer, and had a painful fight with a virus to remove it.

I am going to put aside this coming Sunday as the day to do things, and then post up my thoughts. From my research so far though Agon while I hear is easy to integrate the instructions on the site appear to have something missing which I guess will make sense when I actually do it, but the library and where it goes seems abit unclear. ScoreLoop instructions still to me seem the clearest, and OpenFeint is certainly clearer than it used to be. I will compare them properly though on Sunday.

 

I just released Befruited with OpenFeint.

I originally looked at ScoreLoop and can't remember why I didn't integrate it back then (months ago for another game). Oh yeah: I wanted to store more than just a couple of values for my game Fruity Match and spent some time creating an online high score system myself (fruitmatch.com) which turned out to be a waste of time.

Plus+ looks very good but when I applied I didn't have anything "ready to go" and I was asked to reply with some information that I did not have at that time, I'm sure it was a filtering/qualifying technique and I just couldn't be bothered with that (sorry ngmoco). Might try it another time.

So OpenFeint it was!

In Befruited I implemented OpenFeint because it was very easy to integrate, sending high scores and awarding achievements are just 1 line, and OpenFeint is very popular. This forum thread helped the decision too.
OpenFeint so far has work out well: I got a comment from a player today that "The high scores in Befruited are sooo much better than the ones in Fruity Match", which (again sadly) shows that I pretty much wasted my time making my own online high scores before.

I haven't noticed any real sluggishness with OpenFeint other than that in my stupidity I show achievements as they are achieved which can cause a frame rate drop at those times.

Have fun!
Jeroen

 

Btw, you can have achievements unlocked as they are achieved without drops in frame rate. I do it in Sniper Strike inspired by MW2 challenge unlocks. You need to override the notification and use your own custom notification. If you initialize all the objects and load all textures before the game play scene, then the drawing the achievement is just the same as any other text or texture. I use cocos2d and have posted the details on that forum.

 

Thanks MrBlue, I'm looking at that like I said: "...in my stupidity I show..."
And now you've got me looking at Sniper Strike too!
Have fun!
Jeroen

 

As a user i prefer openfeint