[casual_games] Salutations. Seeking Recommendation for an Android/iPhone Game Development Platform for a Multiplayer Card Game...

[Mahesh Khambadkone]

We build alot of games in Flash and port some of them to iOS and Android.
 We've also tried Cocos2D, native java, Unity and Corona for our game
development.

1) Regarding Flash, here are my 2 cents :
a) Online - awesome.  Check out smartfox for a easy but versatile
multiplayer server.

b) Android - the device needs to support AIR - so if you're looking to
support ALL the phones out there, it won't work.  Some devices with ARMv6
would work, else it needs ARMv7.

c) iPhone - surprisingly, this works, but loading assets dynamically (unless
they are images), is going to be a pain.  i.e. you may develop your online
version, and it works great, but porting to the iOS is a task.

Commercial - if you're going to need to integrate with 3rd party APIs like
OpenFeint, AdMob, Flurry - there are no native solutions, so you're going to
have to search around or build your own!


2) Corona is promising, but don't expect a game written for the iOS to work
out of the box with Android.  You're going to have to get some porting done.
 We found the iOS builds run faster than the Android, but this could be due
the device.

You have similar challenges getting APIs to 3rd party libraries like Admob,
etc. again.

3) Unity, surprisingly, is being used in a couple of our 2D games (and I
know of a popular game developer who does the same).  It's great for the iOS
and Android (though the developers you work with are probably going to have
to 'learn' how to develop 2D in Unity), but remember Unity's plugins aren't
as ubiquitous on the web as is Flash.

4) Honestly, I would use something like Smartfox to implement the rooms,
multi players and databases, and build native apps for each platform.  At
best, I would build natively.  At worst, I'd take a risk on the Flash path -
but make sure you're sure what is expected of the app - devices it should
run on, ads, etc.

Best of luck,
Mahesh



Mahesh Khambadkone
COO and Co-Founder - Games2win
India Handphone + 91 98335 21313
Skype : mkhambadkone
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