This is just a thought so feel free to discard it, but I think it's still worth thinking about even for only a moment.

Many games that have pretty much been done before have come back as great successes because of their integration with Facebook. Candy Crush Saga for example... horrible game that pretty much already existed but successful none the less. The number of times I've had a notification on FB telling me to play Candy Crush Saga.... I'm not surprised it does so well.

A Facebook API built into the engine would be pretty cool. In addition to shoving your game into thousands of people's faces and having your current player base pretty much advertise your game for you you could also have things like leader boards on FB for your games.

Now once again this is totally not a vital feature but I just thought I'd throw it out there. Worth a thought maybe for the future. At the end of the day I guess I could use an external API if I ever wanted to do this.

I agreed with this idea. Sound good

Excuse my ignorance as I've never used facebook (and probably never will, reading stuff like this) but what is the purpose of integrating fb into stand alone 3D engine like EE exactly? Letting one log-in to his fb account in-game and automatically spamming invites for the game to his friend circle? (basically game advertisement?)

I think it's exactly the idea, Para ... this is marketing :/

(10-02-2013 04:58 PM)para Wrote:  Excuse my ignorance as I've never used facebook (and probably never will, reading stuff like this) but what is the purpose of integrating fb into stand alone 3D engine like EE exactly? Letting one log-in to his fb account in-game and automatically spamming invites for the game to his friend circle? (basically game advertisement?)

Precicely. Personally I hate Facebook. I only have it by necessity because my friends don't know how to send invitations to events without it lol. However, I'm not going to shoot myself in the foot by not exploiting a medium that is so widely used.

There are a number of things you can do with facebook integration:
1. As you said the friend advertising thing
2. Game Leaderboards
3. Log in to online games with your FB account and automatically find friends. <-- This I like a lot, no need to register account and find friends.
4. Possibly more I haven't thought / don't know about

I think it is especially useful for android and IOS games but I guess it has the same benefits on PC as well.

My game doesn't need it for it's initial release which will just have single player but in the second release / first major update I plan to add multiplayer. Below is an example of how I would like to use it in my game... (I'm pretty sure I can integrate and external FB API even if this feature never gets added)

My game involves taking over the world in terms of business in whatever means possible. The game looks like a Sim City like game at first glance but it plays completely differently. To buy buildings and land you can "Buy It Now" (like eBay) at max price, or you can make an offer on the building, the player or AI that owns that building will have to either accept that offer or submit a counter offer, or reject any further offers.... haggling in a sense. I basically want to get friends fighting for domination and negotiating with each other competitively. So if I had FB integration, I would use it to notify players (i.e. your friends) that they have an offer waiting for one of their buildings that they need to respond to... then they'd come into the game and address the offer.. and maybe play a bit more of the game. I would do the same things for other situations like, "Hey your building got destroyed because of a disaster / sabotage / space monkey bombs, you might want to log in and take a look at it."

(On a side note push notifications on android and IOS would also be great for this kind of thing)

So.... essentially if I was able to do that ,it keeps people coming back to the game for more... It won't let them forget about it and if they do, their friend is going to be like "Dude! get online, I want your building!"... lol

Well that's how it works in my head minus the details. If my game is advertisement and/or "in app" cash shop based, getting players to keep playing is super important.

Hope this helps understand the intentions.

(10-03-2013 12:39 AM)aceio76 Wrote:  If you are going incorporate any sort of FB integration and access its userbase (some 690 million active user some months ago), then you should also include Google+ integration into this mix as well to gain access to its userbase (some 350 million active users some months ago). And since Youtube (more than 1 billion unique user visits each month) and Google+ pull viewers between each other, and Google+ on the incline (25+% jump year over year) and FB on the decline (down about 24% and continuing), it might prove to be a better future-proofing move.

Yup, I'm of the opinion that google will eventually take over completely someday. Same principals.

(10-03-2013 12:39 AM)aceio76 Wrote:  But I think this is just a good discussion item. I'm sure Esenthel has got tons of very good things lined up in the road map that he'd like to do first, assuming he likes this idea at all.

Yup agreed, but nothing wrong with putting it out there .

An integration like this only really makes sense if the engine would be able to run in the web browser. Integrating a client game into Facebook won't help much. Facebook users expect to play a game in the web browser right away. That's where the term social game came from. If you want basic Facebook integration, use Overwolf for your game.

I'm sure a web browser integration is not an easy task. But maybe it could be a long-term goal. Right now I think there are much more pressing tasks which should have priority in my opinion.

(10-03-2013 12:31 PM)MrPi Wrote:  I'm sure a web browser integration is not an easy task. But maybe it could be a long-term goal. Right now I think there are much more pressing tasks which should have priority in my opinion.

Agreed

Flop web browser games. Yall are forgetting that Mobile games have heavy FB integration as well. But yeh not many people care about mobile I know... myself barely...

Despite the general nature / pre-conception of "feature requests" being a lot of people wanting something 'now now now', I don't actually want this before many many other features that the engine could provide. As I've said it's just a thought.

I'll probably try Overwolf sometime but I don't really need it right now anyway.

(10-03-2013 02:40 PM)aceio76 Wrote:  Yea I believe someone wise once said that we shouldn't plan our future game features on engine features that may not be implemented in the future

Yup... and I'm sticking to that... I don't need this for my current game...

If I can't have it / can't integrate it myself then I simply won't attempt to make that future game unless the game still works without that feature.

Either way this is beside the point. If yall want to argue about that philosophy again you can go make another thread that I can ignore because I really don't care anymore if you guys want to base your games on non-existent features.

(10-03-2013 02:40 PM)aceio76 Wrote:  Yea I believe someone wise once said that we shouldn't plan our future game features on engine features that may not be implemented in the future

That's the very reason I moved to Esenthel, because I've learnt the hard way not to rely on implementation of road map features. When I first looked at Esenthel it had to already have all of the core features I needed to develop my game, and it does. Sure I'd too like to see some of the road map features implemented and I suspect some may well be. But I'm in no way reliant on those.

What I did need to see was that if those core features proved to have bugs then the developer would respond in a timely manner, and I got that reassurance watching Greg fix issues as others highlighted them.

The bottom line is ... once you've had your fingers burnt once your not about to stick them in the fire again so you plan accordingly. There is risk in all ventures, but you plan to minimize those as much as possible.

Not that I would actually consider using this for my own games (I like to think I respect my players) but hypothetically I'd much rather use an external lib (preferably open source) or make my own wrapper, then this being offered as a core engine feature.

The main reasons being:

- you can even use it with other apps and engines!
- easier coping with api changes and potential new sites
- if the engine goes bust (god forbid), you can still update your advertising/monetizing scheme if need be (related to point above)
- leaner 3d engine, less maintenance for Greg, the less you rely on external code and factors the better. (And EE already does rely a lot)


Also, I'd just like to point out that games utilizing schemes like these or being labeled as "free to play" but then try to make you spend money in-game are a no-go for me. But I guess for every "intelligent" player they loose, they gain three "mindless" ones, and you can't really argue with math like that.

(10-03-2013 08:52 PM)para Wrote:  Not that I would actually consider using this for my own games (I like to think I respect my players) but hypothetically I'd much rather use an external lib (preferably open source) or make my own wrapper, then this being offered as a core engine feature.

The main reasons being:

- you can even use it with other apps and engines!
- easier coping with api changes and potential new sites
- if the engine goes bust (god forbid), you can still update your advertising/monetizing scheme if need be (related to point above)
- leaner 3d engine, less maintenance for Greg, the less you rely on external code and factors the better. (And EE already does rely a lot)


Also, I'd just like to point out that games utilizing schemes like these or being labeled as "free to play" but then try to make you spend money in-game are a no-go for me. But I guess for every "intelligent" player they loose, they gain three "mindless" ones, and you can't really argue with math like that.

Respecting your players doesn't mean not having an aggressive marketing campaign/plan but I do understand what you mean. I think there is a fine line between being an avid game developer that wants to do well to make money for future games and being a money grabbing bastard like EA.

Regarding business models (i.e. free to play, pay to play.... whatever) I can't really say there is a right or wrong way to do it. Everyone has their own tastes and there are benefits and disadvantages to both methods for both the developer and the gamer. Personally I never really buy from in game stores even in free to play games.. I'd rather pay up front and get everything. However, I know many people who want something for free and have the option to pay or not. IDK I'll worry about that when I get there.

You are probably right about using an external library... I'm glad we could have this conversation

I agree, the engine should remain lean and mean with good solid 'core functionality'. The rest can be handled by developers integrating external libs themselves.

Who says facebook integration has to spam all one's friends like so many do? Why not just have the option to post screenshots, a high score, achievement, or whatever if the user so desires? It's marketing, but less likely to be viewed as spam. But I would agree-external libs would probably be better. It would be nice if there was a something set up to work with Esenthel quickly and easily, though.