15 December 2013

PlayN for Games

PlayN ("Cross platform game library for N>=5 platforms") allows one to provide one gaming solution across multiple front-ends. In process, making it a lot easier to bridge the different support requirements of front-end technologies by just implementing to one. The abstractions are generic enough to provide a number of different compatibilities at compile time: Java on Desktop, Android, HTML5, iOS, Flash, and provisions for a lot more. The framework is Java oriented and is built on top of GWT.

Another, alternative to PlayN is libGDX with similar multi-platform options. More options, include:

Unity 3D - designed for ease of creation
GameMaker - visual programming simplified
GameDevelop - visual game development
Unreal Development Kit - game development with advanced visualizations and simulations
Visual 3D Game Engine - rapid development of next generation 3D games

It would be interesting to see in future how Dart and GWT transgress with the PlayN framework. Dart also incidentally has its own gaming engine Dartbox2d with examples as well as DartFlash.