Forums » Everything else » App Engine Game Portal?

thought of using Google App Engine to create a 'Kongregate' style game portal

basically, the main app/server hosts the player's data (points, experience, email,etc)

and the individual games are run independently (also using App Engine), and make REST calls to the main server to update the player data.

any thoughts on this?

how does this compare to a JS Game Portal?

The discussion on JS Game Portal is here:
http://impactjs.com/forums/everything-else/js-game-portal

someone wrote a ready made App Engine REST server that could be useful
http://code.google.com/p/appengine-rest-server/

I think it is a good idea. I'm actually working on something similar in php/mysql. With the server hosting the player/game data and then the game can talk to it via a simple api. I'm hoping to have the beta available in two weeks.

I have never used Google App Engine and I think what you are talking about is similar to that thread but yeah I think some sort of community or portal is a good idea. Good luck.

@ Ken, hehe, we may be doubling up our efforts, I'm done with the API in my version in CodeIgniter, now I'm just working on the CRUD / workflow for people to add their games. Hopefully one of us has success on this... since it would be great to get some more recognition to what HTML5 and JS (specifically ImpactJS) can do.

@MyShuitings lol nice. I'm using CakePHP. I knew I wanted something for what I develop and figured it would be easy to open it up and allow others to use it as well. Sounds like we are at a similar spot in development.

I totally agree about getting html5/js games more attention. I look forward to seeing what you and others develop. As for success, I'll be happy if when its complete some folks find it useful and use it. No plans to become kongregate, although I would not complain. :)

I am happy to see that several of us have the idea and are building it out. Kinda fun to be at the early stages (as opposed to Flash game sites which are pretty well established).

Best of luck to you. I can't wait to see what you have built. Happy coding.

Great to hear that so many folks are putting time and effort into fostering the community! A couple things i'd like to chip in:

A high score API would be great. If its fairly easy to implement into an existing project, I bet most developers would be willing to do so. Also, the icing on the cake would be support for badges or achievements. This is nice for developers, but ultimately, its better for your site. If people have a stack of shiny things they've earned on your site, they'll be more likely to play a game on your site that they could just as easily play elsewhere.

One other simple thing that game creators will greatly appreciate it some form of analytics tracking. Even if its something fairly simple, like being able to see page views, number of plays, number of unique page views or plays, etc. Both Codeigniter and Cake likely have prebuilt plugins or extensions to handle this sort of thing.

As an aside, I'm a professional PHP developer for my 9-5, and one framework that I can highly recommend which doesn't get very much attention is Solar. Fantastically put together with a wealth of features, but it tends not to hold you to a single style of development. It doesn't have nearly the community size of CI or Cake, though, but the lead developer is a super nice guy, and hangs out in irc in #solar-talk on freenode if you need any tips. You can find it at: http://solarphp.com/

Keep on rocking, and definiately post more about your progress!