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As a personal hobby, I would like to program a web-based card game with a few tokens and write an AI for it. I do not want to spend time and effort on standard elements such as maintaining a list of games and coordinating who's playing who, or even writing a login system (ideally I'd like to use Google accounts).

My choice of programming language is flexible, but would prefer something I could run on Google app engine.

I know Google Play Games provides some of the APIs but I was hoping for something more comprehensive. Even better if it works with Google Play Games.

Can you recommend toolkits that provide all or most of this functionality?

epsalon
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  • You tagged google play game services already. You don't need GAE, it works peer to peer. – user2259824 Dec 29 '13 at 00:44
  • I've tried Google Play Games, and while it does do a lot of nice things, the peer-to-peer approach makes cheating trivial, and it still doesn't have a complete matchmaking module that's plug-and-play. Basically, I want to focus on writing my game rules, AI, and display rather than deal with matchmaking and identity. – epsalon Dec 29 '13 at 08:28
  • Leaving as a comment, as it only answers part of your question: The App Engine SDK provides the [UserService API](https://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/java/gettingstarted/usingusers) to handle authentication with Google accounts, with minimal effort. – Jon Newmuis Dec 31 '13 at 07:03
  • Google is also an OpenId provider so you are not limited to the UserService API. UserService does make stuff much easier though. – Philipp Gayret Jan 06 '14 at 11:54
  • "Questions asking us to recommend or find a tool, library or favorite off-site resource are off-topic for Stack Overflow as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, [describe the problem](http://meta.stackexchange.com/q/139399/) and what has been done so far to solve it." [What topics can I ask about here?](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic) – Anil Jan 23 '14 at 20:03

3 Answers3

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Board Game Arena supplies the community and lobby for your online board game, and also provides hosting and the community of players, and helps deal with licensing. The big downside is that you must comply with their system, and must write in PHP, and they don't work with Google accounts.

That said, it is a solution for the problem presented in the question, at least in some cases.

epsalon
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Though I am sure this is a little less fully formed than you were hoping, I would propose WT Toolkit, which allows for javascript-less C++ web applications.

Does it support a login system? Yes it does! supporting both google and facebook, with an easy path to integrationg other OAuth methods (hotmail for example)

List of games? std::vector List of current people playing others? std::unordered_map

Games are closer to native apps than they are to web pages; a framework that allows you to leverage typical game design methods and exposed WebGL through a unified interface, like WT does, might make it easier for you by allowing you to focus on the GAME, not the WEB.

Alice
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Maybe not complete answer but at least it didn't belong to comments. (Doesn't have to be correct)

On Google App engine things that will help:

The above will get you started with a simple game. Recommend to look at the channel api for the tic tak toe game.

I hope it helps

Jimmy Kane
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  • Technically correct, but functionally, only for like a couple people - the channel API is [incredibly limited](https://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/quotas#Channel) in how many and how fast you are allowed to make channels. You can use GAE for games, but don't expect it to be realtime / low ping. – Philipp Gayret Jan 06 '14 at 11:46
  • @Philipp Sure! The channel api is limited also to 60 concurrent channels. I wouldn't go with GAE for games no way – Jimmy Kane Jan 06 '14 at 12:34