[Announcement] free service for 3D (game developers) solving Android fragmentation - Android Apps and Games

Hi guys, if you are developing Android games, we have a service in private beta that allows you to capture your OpenGL workload, upload it to our web where you create checkpoints (mark important frames) and select frame ranges where you would like to measure performance.
We run the workload on 100's of real devices in our lab and get you report on FPS per device, any errors while running and the actual renderings so you can visually confirm everything is nicely working.
We are looking to expand the beta so if you have a game under development, are evaluating different game engines (Unreal, Unity3D etc.) we can help. Its all free and we would like to ask for your feedback on how to best capture the workload (sdk add on vs library you can link to vs on device agent) how to best fit into your workflow etc.
PM me for access or you can send email to lrbeta at lunarg dot com and tell that you are XDA dev.
Thx!

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[Q] SDK for Android Multiplayer gaming

What’s the best SDK to develop Android multiplayer games? I’ve been looking at a number of SDKs including Skiller, OpenFeint and Scoreloop. Does anyone know if these SDKs support multiplayer games? If yes, how easy/ difficult is it build one using their SDK?
Hope I'm not stirring any ghosts since this thread is quite old, but it was not answered and I hope my answer will be relevant.
Disclosure: I work at Nextpeer. We provide both a server-side and client-side solution for adding a multiplayer option to games. This means you don't have to worry about hosting, player-to-player communication, or matchmaking. Our SDK is available for both Android and iOS, both natively (so you can integrate it with any other native framework) and as a Unity plugin.
I should say that there are other SDKs for multiplayer, for example Google Play Game Services, and they all have their pros and cons. Some are not as cross-platform as you'd like (Google's Game Services don't have Multiplayer support on iOS), others have tie-ins you may not be interested in (Google's framework is tied to Google Plus, while our SDK works with Facebook).
Nextpeer Multiplayer SDK
gauravkheterpal said:
What’s the best SDK to develop Android multiplayer games? I’ve been looking at a number of SDKs including Skiller, OpenFeint and Scoreloop. Does anyone know if these SDKs support multiplayer games? If yes, how easy/ difficult is it build one using their SDK?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Our company, Nextpeer, offers a free, simple cross platform multiplayer SDK. We have the simplest integration which can be done in as little as 15 minutes, leaderboards and cross platform technology. Check out our website or email our support team at [email protected].

I have started a site/service that lists well designed and honest Android games.

I have started an ad free site/service that lists well designed and honest Android games. Every game that is listed on this site is either completely free with no advertising, has a one time up front cost or one time IAP to unlock the full content ad free.
For each game posted on the site I have a brief bullet point list. This list consists of information like the up front price or the price of a one time IAP that unlocks the full game or removes ads on an already full game. Also listed is the info on if the game has multiplayer, if so what kind of multiplayer (online, local wifi, pass and play). There is also a description of whether the game supports Google Play Services or whether the game supports immersive mode from Android 4.4. Gamepad support and if the game plays in landscape, portrait or both is also included in the description along with whether the Play store or Amazon offer a demo. All of these things I verify myself by playing the game. I also include the permissions of each game so everyone has an upfront idea of what the game has access to. So after the brief bulletpoints and permissions there will also be the devs description of the game from Google Play/Amazon Appstore.
There is a certain criteria I hold of all of the games I post.
- Upfront priced games with full content.
- There will not be any games listed that have pay walls or wait times.
- IAPs will only be allowed if they unlock the full game with a single purchase or removes ads in an already full versioned game.
- No ports of games that were heavily controller designed (SNK ports, Sega ports, Rockstar Games ports and DotEmu ports).
- Ports of touch based games from DS and PS Vita will be allowed as well as ports such as World of Goo or Chu Chu Rocket that happen to lend themselves quite nicely to touchscreen play. There is also a new trend of games being designed at the same time for consoles/pc as Android (such as Leisure Suit Larry or Shadowrun Returns), games designed like these (with touch controls in mind at the start of developing) will be included on the site as well.
- Games must be designed for Android and look correct on all of it's screen resolutions. That means no letter-boxing or low res graphics. This way bad iPhone ports that don't fit on our screens or games that don't bother to support HD devices like tablets will be weeded out.
- Games must look good. Some games out there have great gameplay but their graphics sometimes look like they were designed on Linux in the nineties. Games that fit this description will most likely not be listed as I am trying to encourage well designed pleasing to the eye kind of games. Of course the new trend of retro pixel art games are perfectly fine.
- Developer ethics also come into play. While Square Enix do not have IAPs their crazy online DRM schemes and complete lack of support (Chrono Trigger sound familiar) makes their games more than likely to not be listed. Gameloft, Glu and EA fit in this category pretty well too.
For me personally I feel it has been difficult at best if not almost impossible to navigate the Play Store to find truly well made games that aren't designed from the ground up to nickel and dime you. With most Android gaming review sites lacking any good list of games and most Android blogs publishing mainly articles about the newest Glu games (looking at you Android Central and Android Police) I feel a site like the one I have created will hopefully provide a much needed service for the Android gamer.
Basically this site lists games that look great on phones and tablets alike while also playing great on touchscreens all while ignoring the nickel and diming slum of Android gaming. So if any of this sounds good to you please check it out.
http://honestandroidgames.com
p.s. The site is still growing and new functions will be added. I am also open to ideas so if you guys have any please let me know.

How to improve the performance of video game graphics on all mobile phones

You can actually increase the gaming performance for games with video graphics, on all or any smartphone, be it Android, iOS iphones/ipads, Blackberry, Nokia etc. So if you are experiencing poor Video Game Graphics, maybe due to the type of mobile phone you are using or may be from the game itself. Then, here comes a guiding tutorial to improve your video game graphics to that high quality Graphics you always wish to play your games on.
These tips will actually cover how to use full hd graphics booster without downloading any apk app or rooting your device to improve and cause a better performance for your video game graphics designs, on all Android devices and other different OS mobile phones.
You could believe with me that enjoyment of video games lies on the graphics designs the game came with. As a game lover and controller, spending time with playing high quality games especially vr video games remains your best in leisure times or time set out for catching more fun with friends. I must tell you, Games have been one of the most world self-entertaining thing that almost all the masculine and few but coming up famines, are enjoying these days. And due to that, there are many game developers trying to offer the best from their own companies. Some are trying in terms of graphics customization, while some are still learning to do so.
So having thought of the issues I faced while playing games with low video graphics designs, I devised a means through some little research and in all, I was able to come up with a better solution and that’s what am sharing with you right now, in case you are experiencing low quality graphics and would want to do something about it.
Whenever you are playing most of these games on your smartphones, and you notice they phones are still functioning very well, no overheating or any misbehave of any sort, then that simply means your mobile phone still have some extra power reserved. Your work now is to turn the reserved power into use in order to improve and make a better performance on that smartphone image quality. Are you experiencing overheating on your smartphones before now? If yes, then we have got you covered with some tips to stop such from happening to your entire android device, even in hot weather conditions. The solution can be found in our previous post on how to stop Android overheating system problems.
Now, to the very reason why you clicked this post, that is how to improve your video game graphics played on your own smartphone.
Steps To Improve Video Game Graphics On Your Smartphones
(All Samsung smartphones, All tecno mobile smartphones, All htc mobile smartphones, All gionee mobile smartphone, All infinix mobile smartphones, All Google pixel mobile smartphones, All iphone smartphones etc).
STEPS:
>> 1. Ensure to Enable the Developer Mode settings:- To do that, navigate to your Android settings, click where you see More, and then tap on the section where you see build number for seven 7 good times. Doing that will enable the device activate developer option for use.
>> 2. Now, navigate back to the main menu settings, and you will get to see the developer option which you tried to activate in step one in order to have access into it. Just click on the developer option, and scroll down to the bottom of the page where you will see Advanced. Ensure to click it and then scroll down to where Force 4x MSAA is displaying and tick the small box beside it.
That’s all. Now whenever you are playing any game, the characters should be nice and smoother around the edge. But should in case you notice crash frequently after setting up the required set ups. Then go back to the Force 4x MSAA and un-tick the small box beside it.
SOURCE: www .techbmc. com
I cannot find that option.
This large text for... Almost nothing. Smaa x4 is an anti aliasing code. It cost many CPU and GPU ressource.
If you have a bad GPU with low framrate don't touch Smaa setting. Just download 2D games.
If you have a high end smartphone you can check this but you may not notice any "boost", some games already use smaa or any equivalent (sometimes more accurate and efficient).

Game development on Linux!

Want to write games on Linux? I do! Here's how to hit the ground running.
This post is a (non-exhaustive) overview of the tools available on Linux, just to show that it is possible to use Linux at every step of the game development process. It's the first blog post of what will be a multi-part series on getting going with indie video game development on Linux.
Linux Gaming: The Golden Age
Once upon a time, the words "Linux" and "games" rarely went together. Linux came in dead last as a viable gaming platform. Of course, over the last few years this has completely changed.
The same story could be told for game development on Linux -- while there have always been a litany of free software graphics engines, the modern indie dev scene tends to shy away from this more "DIY" approach and go for the "batteries-included" game engines. Well, the good news is these, too, are making their Linux debut, and so us Linux nerds now have a glut of options available for making games.
All software I suggest here is free software, and almost all should be available in your repo (e.g. Ubuntu Software Center) for free. I'll go over all the options, and the reasoning for the choices I made.
-------+++---------------++----+-------
Top engine choices for Linux game dev
Non-free: Unreal Engine 4, Unity 3D
Free game engines: Godot, Atomic Game Engine, Torque1
Free 3D graphics engines: Ogre 3D, Irrlicht, libGDX, three.js2
Free 2D graphics engines: LÖVE, Cocos 2D, pixi.js2
1: Has non-free tools
2: For browser-based games
---------+-+------------++++------------++--
There are already tons of articles comparing the two most popular game engines available, both of which have native linux versions, so I won't waste your time with that. Instead, I'll quickly go over the reasons I didn't go with either, but instead went with the Godot Engine.
Versus this proprietary competition, the most obvious advantage is licensing: Godot costs nothing, and I own 100% whatever I make with it, no legalese-thinking required. Similarly, no vendor lock-in. I don't want my game-making business dependent on a corporation that can legally pull the rug out from under me, either through new licensing restrictions, closing off their editor from my platform, or just making controversial decisions and cutting off support for old features that I depend on. I may seem too severe, but I for one have been burned too many times to go down that route again.
Licensing aside, I also simply prefer its approach to scene structure, terse scripting language, light-weight distributable (30MB for the entire thing!), extensible C++ source code (so I will never encounter a brick-wall that can't be broken), and, well, free software ethos: as community-driven software, it keeps the "indie" in "indie game dev"!
2D Graphics: Inkscape, GIMP, Krita
Linux has everything you need for 2D graphics for game development. These tools are useful for building everything from UI elements, painting assets in 2D games, or creating textures for 3D games.
Inkscape is my favorite vector editor. That basically means you deal with "lines and shapes" as opposed to pixels. If you are creating scalable, clean, sharp images based on shapes, this is the way to go.
GIMP is a raster image editor, great for manipulating photographs or tweaking textures. If you haven't used it in a while, you should: It's recently caught up with proper built-in layer folders, a PS-like single window interface, and improved text tool.
Krita is a popular and powerful tool for digital artwork.
3D Graphics: Blender
Under Linux, there is really one way to go for 3D graphics, and fortunately it's a great way: Blender. Although dauntingly complex, it's one of the most popular 3D creation suites available, and integrates excellently with engines like Godot. Personally, I'm a noob at 3D modeling ("UV mapping, y u no work"), but I do know that Blender is pretty dang powerful in the right hands, being used for everything from 3D-animated movies, to level editing. The canonical use of Blender is for creating and texturing 3D models to be imported into your game engine.
If for whatever reason Blender isn't your thing (and you're willing to fork over quadruple digits of cash, yikes), the old industry standard of Maya also has a native Linux version, as does Modo.
Sound effects: Audacity
Despite its out-dated interface, Audacity remains a solid option for recording and editing little sound effects. This has built-in OGG and WAV support, and so it plays very nicely with Godot.
Music: Ardour, LMMS, KXStudio
If you haven't looked into this in a while, you might be surprised at how far Linux audio has gotten. If you are intending to write your own music for your game, you can do quite well with Linux.
If you want to throw together some catchy video game tunes or retro sound-effects, LMMS has you covered, with dozens of built in instruments (including retro synthesizers) and pre-packaged samples. It has a shallow learning curve, so you'll definitely be able to create, well, "something" right away.
Ardour is a "pro-tier" DAW and sequencer. It has both built in MIDI and raster sound support, hosts VSTi and other instruments, and sports non-destructive NLE, basically everything you'd expect. If you want to record and mix a track, or delve a little deeper into music production, it's worth checking out.
It's worth mentioning that a few popular proprietary DAW's have native Linux support also, such as BitWig studio.
For Linux audio, I highly recommend getting this software (and a lot more goodies) via the KXStudio repos. These guys are awesome, they've put together a bigger and more recent selection of audio software than most standard repos. I also recommend that you consider the approach of having a dedicated partition just for music production. If you want to get set up with this, check out my other article: getting started with music production on Linux.
Everything else
Version Control: It cannot be stressed enough... use version control! This keeps you from losing work to mistakes, and makes collaboration much, much easier. While Git (esp. with LFS for game assets), might be the most popular, some prefer Mercurial.
Text editor: Sometimes you'll need to dig into source code or scene files without the use of the IDE. There are a crazy number of high-quality text-editors for Linux, so even pre-installed options (e.g., gedit) are vastly superior to Mac/Windows counter-parts. Personally, I use vim for all my coding and text editing. It has a very steep learning curve, so if you are interested, be prepared to sink a lot of time into it!
Video editor: For editing your trailer, OpenShot is a solid choice
Enter the penguin army
Perhaps for the first time, top-notch tools for authoring everything from game code to graphics to sound on Linux are here! Although I'm new to full-time game development, I have been working on game and audio projects (both on Linux and Windows) for 15+ years now, and today the offerings have never been better.
Do you write games on Linux, or are considering it? Do you prefer other tools? I'd love to hear in the comments!
SOURCE # http://michaelb.org

[APP][5.0+] BoardGameHub

BoardGameHub is an app to help you discover your next board game, whether it's a new board game or an expansion for your favorite game.
You can search, sort and filter to show most relevant board games first. Detailed information is available for every board game including type of game, categories, mechanics, designer, publishers and more. You can easily find any video related to it, so you can find a video play through or maybe rules review from your favorite YouTube channel easily. Old searches and the latest board games you've visited are saved so you can easily go back to what you were doing last.
You can also build your own collection in the app or just import it from BoardGameGeek.
For a video demo of the app see https://youtu.be/vwkPRrgBhy8
This is the first version so it'll be improved going forward, but includes a fair amount of features already with this 1.0 release.
If you have any questions about the app I'll be happy to answer them!

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