So we've been looking heavily into using Haxe for some upcoming game projects,
and we've invested a lot of time into researching whether or not it is a viable
solution at this point (with Unity & Unreal both "freely" available now, as well
as several other lesser known cross-platform game engines).
We got together and came up with the following list of game requirements that
we feel are essential to developing our future games. This list is probably
relevant to most game developers out there, so I figured I'd share it with you
and ask for your feedback on this.
If you have any experience that you'd like to share with any of the libraries
below, or you have suggestions for other libraries that we might have missed
your input would be greatly appreciated.
While I know that many developers feel that recommending one persons code over
another may not be appropriate, I feel that not being able to find these libraries
at all is detrimental to the future of Haxe in general, and that's probably a
bad thing...
We're primarily targeting iOS, Android, Windows & Web (either HTML5 or Flash).
Mac & Linux are less of a priority, but a "would be nice" feature.
Who knows - there might already be a "Haxe Game Engine" that supports 99% of
what we are trying to do which would certainly make things alot easier! :)
FUNCTIONALITY NEEDED
====================
MOBILE
iOS
- GameCenter Integration
Android
- GooglePlay Integration
Generic (All Mobile Platforms)
- Ad-Network Integration (AdMob, ChartBoost, Flurry, Etc)
- Touch Gestures (Shoebox Hypertouch?)
- Device/Hardware
- Unique Device ID
- GPS/Location
- Tilt
- Accelerometer
- Camera
DESKTOP
Windows
- Nothing specific
Web (HTML5 or Flash)
- Flash Obfuscator - Kindi SecureSWF?
- HTML5 Obfuscator
- Achievement/Leaderboard support from WHERE? (Playtomic? Custom?)
Generic (All Desktop Platforms)
- STEAM Integration (SteamWrap? Last update 2+ years ago. Not for Linux)
Mac (Low Priority)
- Nothing specific
Linux (Low Priority)
- Nothing specific
GENERAL (ALL PLATFORMS)
- Friend Share for Scores, Achievements, etc. (OpenFL Extension-Share?)
- Facebook Integration (HypFacebook? Last updated 3+ years ago.)
- TCP/Socket Library (OpenFL.net.Socket seems to be working so far, but could use some abstraction?)
- UI (No XML config files, 100% code, no extra crap to get in the way.) -- StableXUI?
- Localization System (found bits & pieces, but not a complete solution)
- Particle System (Zame-haxe-particles?)
- 2D Graphics (OpenFL? Luxe?)
- 2D Physics (Box2D? Nape?)
- 3D Graphics (Away3D?)
- 3D Physics (Bullet Physics? Away Physics? OimoPhysics?)
- Analytics (Google Analytics or GameAnalytics, or both? other?)
- In-App Purchase (GameCenter for iOS, GooglePlay for Android, STEAM/??? for Desktop/Web)
- Leaderboards (GameCenter for iOS, GooglePlay for Android, STEAM/??? for Desktop/Web)
- Achievements (GameCenter for iOS, GooglePlay for Android, STEAM/??? for Desktop/Web)
- Local Game Data Storage (SharedObjects seems to work well so far)
- Testing framework (some way of easily & automatically testing various classes)
- Documentation (some way of auto-generating documentation based on code comments?)
NOTES:
* It would be NICE to have a single API for accessing the following:
- Ad Networks (Sempai MultiAds but only has AdMob support?)
SamCodes Admob & Chartboost look good, but 2 separate API's.
- Leaderboards (Sempai MultiGames?)
- Achievements (Sempai MultiGames?)
* We really need libraries that are being maintained. I've noticed alot of the libraries
on HaxeLib seem to have not been updated for years now..
* Cross-platform API's are preferred (We don't want "a" for physics on Android and "b" for
physics on iOS when it can be helped).iOS GameCenter Integration - https://github.com/openfl/extension-gamecenter
Android GooglePlay Integration - for IAP - https://github.com/openfl/extension-iap , but I don’t know library for Google Play Games
Ad-Network Integration - AdMob - https://github.com/openfl/extension-admob
Device/Hardware - probably many of these things already in OpenFL or Snow / Luxe. There is Capabilities class in OpenFL, probably you can get something from it