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Google wants game developers to capture the growing market of mobile games by harnessing the power of Google Cloud Platform to expand their games to more users.
The idea, according to a Nov. 3 post on the Google Cloud Platform Blog by Grzegorz Gogolowicz, a Google cloud engineer, is that by using the company’s powerful cloud platform, mobile game developers will have the infrastructure behind them to make their games successful, no matter how many users play them and push them to their limits.
“Using Google Cloud Platform can help you build an application that scales seamlessly from hundreds to millions of users,” wrote Gogolowicz.
Without a sturdy and scalable infrastructure, a successful mobile game could be hit with all kinds of performance problems if the network where it is stored isn’t up to the task, he wrote. “You launch your mobile game and get a million downloads in a few days. Your dream is coming true! But your success is bittersweet, because your servers struggle to keep up with demand and your users, frustrated by timeouts, start publishing negative reviews while you scramble to increase server capacity. It doesn’t have to be that way. The platform you choose to build on can help determine whether your launch is successful.”
That’s where the Google Cloud Platform can help, wrote Gogolowicz.
To show game developers more details about the platform and how it can help them with their mobile games, Google created two sample open-source games as well as a technical paper and reference architecture to provide a road map for developers who want to explore using the cloud platform, wrote Gogolowicz.
“The first open source game is Griddler, which allows you to solve riddles against the clock,” he wrote. “It demonstrates how to build a casual mobile game with both single-player and multi-player modes, invite friends using push notifications, store data in a NoSQL datastore and manage some basic game statistics.”
The second game sample by Google is called “Cloud Adventure,” which is a text-based adventure game that follows the traditions of games such as Colossal Cave and Zork, he wrote.
“It showcases a few interesting scenarios, such as a pre and postgame lobby for multiple players, unique nickname selection and saving points in the game.”
The full source code for both sample games can be found on GitHub.
“Both of these games are ready for you to download, deploy and play,” wrote Gogolowicz. “You can explore the source code and extend them too, such as adding a visual clue to each riddle in Griddler.”
Google is always busy making improvements and advances in its cloud platform components and services for developers. In late October, Google replaced its old Google API Console with a new, expanded and redesigned Google Cloud Console to help developers organize and use the more than 60 APIs now offered by Google. The new Google Cloud Console makes managing the over 60 Google APIs housed within easier than ever, according to Google. Soon the new cloud console will be set as the default choice for the console by Google, though users will have the ability to revert back to the old version.
Earlier in October, Google released several technical papers to help cloud developers learn more about the development tools it offers through its Google Compute Engine services. The papers, “Overview of Google Compute Engine for Cloud Developers” and “Building High Availability Applications on Google Compute Engine,” offer insights and details about how the platform can be used and developed for business users.
In September, Google unveiled its second version update of the Google App Engine since August, with the latest release 1.8.4 including a host of features that the company says will make it more flexible and simpler for developers to use for their applications. Included in 1.8.4 is support for Dynamic Web Projects in Eclipse to better support Google Cloud Endpoints and App Engine Backends, as well as fixes for several bugs. One other important new feature is the ability of Google App Engine to handle differential snapshots of a Google Compute Engine persistent disk, so that only the most recently changed data is updated.
The August launch of the previous App Engine 1.8.3 was also accompanied by deeper features for Google Compute Engine and the Google Cloud Datastore as the search giant continues to add functions and robustness to the Google Cloud Platform.
The new tools included Layer 3 load balancing for Google Compute Engine and improvements to the PHP runtime in the latest Google App Engine release. The Layer 3 load balancing capabilities were a key addition in the Google Compute Engine, to provide Google-scale throughput and fault tolerance to manage Internet applications.
In July, Google unveiled several new features in the Google Cloud Storage environment to make it easier for developers to manage, access and upload data into the cloud. Those new capabilities included automatic deletion policies, regional buckets and faster uploads as part of a wide range of services.
In June, Google unveiled a new Cloud Playground environment where developers can quickly try out ideas on a whim, without having to commit to setting up a local development environment that’s safe for testing coding experiments outside of the production infrastructure. The Cloud Playground is slated as a place where application developers can try out all kinds of things, from sample code to viewing how production APIs will behave, in a safe, controlled place without having to manage the testing environment, according to Google. The new Cloud Playground initially supports only Python 2.7 App Engine apps.