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I am looking for some cross platform game development frameworks. The game i am focusing on wouldn't require high-end platform dependent resources. Just a simple card game. I believe HTML5 platform would work fine but I am not sure which one.

Secondly, I want to implement multi-player functionality in the game. There are 2 things which i am not sure about

  1. If i want to allow four friends to play one game, how should I do it? Does mobile platform has something like LAN or some other inter-connectivity options?
  2. I want to give online multi-player options as well. Is there any server/framework which provides such functionality?

P.S: This is my first ever project on any mobile app. Corona is good but it isn't free.

EDIT: I am looking for some Free framework.

BenMorel
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Em Ae
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3 Answers3

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If it's a mobile app, try Corona SDK. You can use it to make games (or apps) for iOS, Android, and I think NOOK and Kindle Fire. It's also very easy to learn. I started using it when I was twelve, and I learned it in an hour. A simple card game could be done in less than a few hours.

As for multiplayer, you could use AutoLAN (http://developer.coronalabs.com/code/autolan or http://www.mydevelopersgames.com/AutoLAN/) for both local and online multiplayer, though I've never tried it. It used to be something like $20 but now it's free.

Jutanium
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(1) You could in—in theory—build a networked game that communicated over SMS messages, or something wacky like that. But the general presumption these days is that people running apps and games on phones have Internet via 3G, 4G, WiFi/etc.

(It could be an interesting exercise to write a game that can be played over Bluetooth on two phones in a remote mountainous area where's no reception...but I'm not sure how big that market is.)

So the decisions come down to the usual ones for a networked app. Are you going to make it peer-to-peer so that the only software involved is one app per player on their phone? Or will you do have a server sitting out on the Internet that each client connects to, and the game is run without any player connecting directly to any other?

(The latter is easier for various reasons. One of the more interesting reasons why peer-to-peer card games are hard has to do with one client trusting another when there's no "game master". The Wikipedia article on Mental Poker may be illuminating.)

(2) Can't vouch for it myself, but people on the net appear to like mages on Android. iPhone, I dunno.

But if you're doing this as a learning exercise, you might try tinkering around from scratch just to get a better handle on the issues, rather than jumping in the specifics of any particular framework. Use JSON messages and talk to a simple server written in whatever server-side environment you feel most comfortable with (Node? Rails? Django? PHP?(no!) :P)

Community
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HostileFork says dont trust SE
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  • Its a personal project and i want to practice on LAN. I was wondering if i have to re-invent the wheel or not. **AutoLAN** looks like which can help me but lets see. Thanks for the advice though. – Em Ae Jul 16 '12 at 00:07
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cocos2d-x is the best known cross platform game engine for 2D games.

Here is link: Cocos2d-x

Here is some good discussion on best cross platform game engine. click here

Guru
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  • A lot of people are actually switching from Cocos2D to Corona SDK because of its ease of use (it uses lua instead of C++ (not that I have anything against C++!), for example). – Jutanium Jul 15 '12 at 20:47
  • @Jutanium, ok, I don't know Corona SDK, I used only cocos2D, so i told its one of the good sdk for cross platform sdk. You asked about that only. In cocos2D, objective C version also there not only c++. – Guru Jul 16 '12 at 05:34