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Choice of Programming Language: Frontend for a turn-based single player game

Unity
Started by Raptor Kwok Jan 5, 2013 at 2:55 PM 4 replies 1.6k views
Original Post
Raptor Kwok
Raptor Kwok

I am working on a turn-based single player game. Requirements:

  • Sprites move & rotate in turn
  • No need 3D
  • able to view it in mobile (can separate into 2 languages, one for desktop, one for mobile)
  • connect to server-side to save & load game data
  • server-side is written in PHP5 & MySQL
  • Apache web server (with Ruby-on-Rail & Perl support)

I have the following choices of programming languages:

  • Flash / ActionScript 3 : it was the best game frontend programming language. It was, but it is fading out
  • Ruby / Ruby on Rails ? my web server supports this, but I'm not sure if it fits
  • LUA ? same
  • HTML5 + JavaScript + CSS : good fit for animations, not good to guard from game hackers
  • Objective-C / Java with Cocos2D / Cocos2D-x : a promising game engine for iOS & Android, but it is mobile only
  • Silverlight / C# / XNA / WMF : Microsoft's Flash replacement. Mine is a Linux server, so can't.
  • OpenGL + C++ : it is supported in modern browsers, but development time may be longer
  • Unity 3D or other game engines with browser plugins : possible, but I prefer a free solution. Also, I only need 2D.

Game Developers, please advise.

Stroppy Katamari
Stroppy Katamari
Which mobile platforms do you want to support?

Qt seems like a potential fit. It covers desktop (all major platforms), Symbian, and Android support has just gone into beta (see Necessitas).

UI dev with Qt Quick 2.0 is nice and fast. "Sprites moving and turning" can be handled with QML built-in animation (it's got everything from basic transitions to particle systems) and/or integrated Javascript. For efficiency and/or anti-hacking, you might want to stick the client logic and communication in the C++ back-end. If the client logic is lightweight, you won't need much C++. You also have the option of writing logic in Javascript and sharing it with a HTML5 or other client.
Raptor Kwok
Raptor Kwok

My ideal support platforms are :

- Browser ( Facebook game )

- Mobile ( iOS & Android )

but they can be separated into 2 phases . I will try to look into Qt .

UPDATE: Looked into Qt . It seems it's not suitable for browser games ( it produces desktop applications instead ) . Any alternatives ?

Stroppy Katamari
Stroppy Katamari
Ah, so you don't want a desktop client (which is what you said in the original post) but a web client.
Dwarf King
Dwarf King

Torque 3D has a browser plugin and is free. Go to garagegames and see for yourself. Also the engine is free to download from github smile.png

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Raptor Kwok
Raptor Kwok
Torque 3D has a browser plugin and is free. Go to garagegames and see for yourself. Also the engine is free to download from github smile.png

Thanks for recommending Torque 3D. However, I work in 2D only.

I tried to look into Torque 2D, but it is non-free ( costs me US$128 ).

Latest Update:

I'm looking into cocos2d-javascript ( http://www.cocos2d-javascript.org/ ) , cocos2d-iphone & cocos2d-x .

They seem working well in both web client & mobile phones.

Do you guys recommend cocos2d series libraries ?

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