Hellboy Studios Developer Diary Part 2: Google’s new Games API a developers opportunity
This month Google announced tools to help developers make their games more social at the Google I/O Conference.
The new Google Play Services API will allow developers to implement; Cloud Saves, Achievements and Leaderboards, and Multiplayer Matchmaking.
The interesting part is that these services are available to Android as well as iOS developers.
These services are available for all Android users, on Froyo and up.
Android Cloud Saves
This means a gamer can shift from one device to another, and the data will refresh once they switch to a different device, weather it is their phone, tablet , desktop browser , or –wait for it– even their, iOS device. Developers like Rovio(developers of Angry Birds), have taken it upon themselves to implement their own cloud-saving features, but this should make it easy for any developer to do the same without much effort at all.
Achievements and Leaderboards
Developers can now add leaderboards and achievements to their games that exist on Google Play. Now gamers can compete with people from around the world, or just with people on their Google+ circles, through highscores.
Achievements can be set to different actions performed in the game, such as beating a particular level or unlocking the highest difficulty mode.
Multiplayer Matchmaking
The multiplayer API allows you to challenge your friends online to games through Google+. The multiplayer aspect of the service will feature both a matchmaking aspect, but the focus is clearly on connecting you to your Google+ friends. Multiplayer is a very big problem to tackle, with difficult netcode making the feature an extremely big hurdle for a lot of small developers. Developers will be able to access tools that allow the multiplayer to load quickly.
Sadly, part of the demo failed at the keynote on the day, but these are services that game developers will latch on to.
Progress on our first Android Game
Meanwhile, this month has been really interesting for us. The plan was to finalise the character this month, but that didn’t work out that well. But we did finalise on the artist who would be helping us with the artwork of the game.
Also, as Google came out with a new API, a major part of this month was spent on learning. Going through reference codes and tutorials given by Google to help integrate their services in the game.
The multiplayer feature is the one that excites me the most. Other than that, we do plan on using the Cloud Save, and Leaderboard too for the game.
We had already set up our server with which we were planning on syncing the Leaderboard, so for now we’ll be using that for our final game. But no doubt, the new API is amazing, and gives developers a lot more to do, and make their game interesting.
Do you think these additions will help Google developers? Let us know in the comments.
