Best Game Development Tools for Cross-Platform Game Development

Picking the best platform can be the key to successfully build and deploy a game that becomes popular. It depends upon individual preference to choose Native Game Application Development where application needs to be developed individually on all platforms or cross platform which will allow you to write a programe, runs on all the platforms and will save extra cost to develop an app on each platform individually. Cross-platform game engines offer some real advantages and, there are quite diverse and plentiful options. We provide solution and expert consulting so that you can choose the best game development platform for cross game development. I have worked on comparison between the cross platform engines which will help you in identifying the best game development cross platform engine for your game.

Unity

Unity was first released in 2005 and the interface has not changed much since. Unity game developers work with an integrated development environment for engineering 2D & 3D games with consistent graphics, amazing layout, intuitive design and engaging gameplay. It is widely used for developing video games for desktops, consoles, mobile devices and even websites. For instance, Unity 3D is one of the top choices of Nintendo game developers to build console games. The Unity Free version comes for free whereas the Unity Pro can be bought for a fee.

Languages supported: Three development languages are officially supported: C#, UnityScript (basically JavaScript with type annotations) and Boo.

Unity 3D game engine is a leading cross-platform tool because through unity graphical editor it is easy to design the required graphics, light effects, insert objects etc. For a Unity game development company, overall development time gets minimized as:

1. It supports all the relevant features of the website with consistency
2. A solid system works for every major platform
3. Easy to learn
4. No need to compile every change and easy to test
5. Rich feature set
6. Has an embedded editor and a very nice component architecture

Game Examples: 300: Rise of an Empire - Seize Your Glory Game

PhoneGap or HTML5

PhoneGap is well known cross platform tool for mobile game development. Building an application using PhoneGap will use HTML, Javascript and CSS which can then be deployed to iOS, Android and more without losing any native feature. One of the big reasons for PhoneGaps popularity is that it's completely free open source. PhoneGap Build, which is the cloud-based version, does come with a subscription fee.

Languages supported: HTML, Javascript

Here are a few reasons, why PhoneGap is used for cross platform app development:

1. Native App development and API's are almost completely abstract to the end developer
2. Using single codebase, you can deploy your app to multiple platforms
3. No native SDK's needs to be maintained for App store ready apps using Phonegap Build service
4. It follows a plug-in architecture access to the native device APIs can be extended in a modular way

Cocos2D-x

Cocos2D-x is a game engine which many game app developers use as it’s cross-platform, open-source, free and mature. It can be used to publish games for mobile devices and desktops, including iPhone, iPad, Android, Kindle, Windows and Mac. The good news is that only one game codebase has to be written in order to publish it to all those platforms.

Languages supported: There are different versions of Cocos2D available in Objective- C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript and Ruby

Here is why we use Cocos 2Dx for cross platform app development:

1. A very wide future set
2. Native language is extremely fast
3. Can output for every major mobile platforms

Games examples:

Badland: Badland is developed on Cocos 2Dx and is one of the most popular game having more then 900,000 downloads. Badland is an interesting 2D, side-scrolling platform game with a touch of puzzle thrown.

Adobe Air

Adobe AIR (formerly Adobe Integrated Runtime) is a cross-platform runtime system developed by Adobe Systems for building desktop applications and mobile applications. It is programmed using Adobe Flash, ActionScript and optionally Apache Flex.

Languages supported: Adobe AIR applications are developed in Flash and coded using ActionScript.

Game examples: Bardbarian

Under Adobe Air these are the following game engines:

a) Starling

Starling is a part of Adobe Air and Adobe has developed this open source engine. Starling Framework is a free, open-source framework written using ActionScript 3.0. The primary purpose of this framework is to make it extremely easy for developers to build games for the Adobe Flash Platform.

It is:

1. A well designed game engine
2. Is fast enough for 2d games
3. Can output for every major mobile platforms
4. Can benefit from opensource AS3 libraries
5. One setup and can be deployed everywhere
6. Lots of tutorials and examples for startups

Game Examples:

Angry birds: One of the most popular game developed in starling engine written in ActionScript 3.

b) Away3D

Away3D is an open source framework for developing interactive 3D graphics within Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR, written in ActionScript 3. Away3D runs on current web browsers utilizing the Adobe Flash Player, and uses Stage3D for GPU-accelerated rendering. Away3D is an open source, real time 3D engine for the Flash Platform.

Features:

1. Completely open source
2. Interactive
3. Physics enabled
4. Animation support
5. GPU Acceleration
6. Powerful rendering
7. Starling integration

c) Stage 3D

Stage3D is an Adobe Flash Player API for rendering interactive 3D graphics with GPU-acceleration, within Flash games and applications. Stage3D is the new Flash API that Adobe has released. It is dedicated to real-time 3D rendering. With Stage3D, you can take full advantage of the hardware accelerated capabilities of the user's computer GPU directly from Flash. Flash Player or AIR applications written in ActionScript 3 may use Stage3D to render 3D graphics and such applications run natively on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Apple iOS and Google Android.

1. Stage3D was introduced facilitate GPU- acceleration of 3D content in Flash applications
2. Accelerated GPU Rendering
3. A language for writing programs that run on the GPU such that they can be converted to OpenGL GLSL Shaders and DirectX HLSL Shaders by Flash Player

Stage 3D uses:

1. DirectX on Windows systems
2. OpenGL on OSX systems
3. OpenGL ES on mobile

We discussed above the best tools currently being used for cross-platform game development. If you also have a game idea and want to convert it into a reality, outsource your technical  requirements to game development company in India and get you quality game built fast from specialists, that too at a very reduced cost.