Tag Archives: LiquidFun

Google Developer Day at GDC

Day 2 of Game Developers Conference 2014 is getting underway and today Google is hosting a special Developer Day at Moscone Center in San Francisco.

Join us at the sessions

Building on yesterday’s announcements for game developers, we'll be presenting a series of sessions that walk you through the new features, services, and tools, explaining how they work and what they can bring to your games.

We'll also be talking with you about how to reach and engage with hundreds of millions of users on Google Play, build Games that scale in the cloud, grow in-game advertising businesses with AdMob, track revenue with Google Analytics, as well as explore new gaming frontiers, like Glass.

If you’re at the conference, the Google Developer Day sessions are a great opportunity to meet the developer advocates, engineers, and product managers of the Google products that drive users, engagement and retention for your games. If you’re remote, we invite you to sit-in on the sessions by joining the livestream below or on Google Developers channel on YouTube.

The Developer Day sessions (and livestream) kick off at 10:00AM PDT (5:00PM UTC). A complete agenda is available on the GDC Developer Day page.



LiquidFun 1.0

Last December we announced the initial release of LiquidFun, a C++ library that adds particle physics, including realistic fluid dynamics, to the open-source Box2D.

To get Google Developer Day started, we’re releasing LiquidFun 1.0, an update that adds multiple particle systems, new particle behaviors, and other new features.

Check out the video below to see what Liquid Fun 1.0 can do, visit the LiquidFun home page, or join today's LiquidFun session at Google Developer Day to learn how LiquidFun works and how to use particle physics in your games. The session starts at 4:35PM PDT (11:35PM UTC).



Unlocking the Power of Google for Your Games, at GDC

By Greg Hartrell, Google Play Games team

Today, everyone is a gamer. In fact, 3 in every 4 Android users are playing games, allowing developers to reach an unprecedented audience of players in an Android ecosystem that’s activated over one billion devices. This has helped Google Play Games — Google’s cross-platform game service and SDK for Android, iOS and the web (which lets you easily integrate features like achievements, leaderboards, multiplayer and cloud save into your games) — grow at tremendous speed. The momentum continues on Google Play, where four times more money was paid out to developers in 2013 than in 2012.

With the Game Developers Conference (GDC) this week, we'll be launching a number of new features for Google Play Games and other Google products. As they launch over the coming weeks, these new services and tools will help you unlock the power of Google to take your games to the next level.

Power your game and get discovered

With game gifts, players in your games can send virtual in-game objects to anyone in their circles or through multiplayer search.

To help players get the most out of your games, Play Games will be expanding engagement and discovery options.

We'll be introducing game gifts, a new service that lets players send virtual in-game objects to anyone in their circles or through player search. The Play Games app now supports multiplayer invites directly, further helping players discover your game and keep them playing. And the Google Play Store will also feature 18 new game categories, making it easier for players to find games they'll love.

Tools to take your game to the next level

Further enhancing Google Play Game services, we're expanding multiplayer to support iOS, bringing turn-based and real-time multiplayer capabilities to both Android and iOS.

To further help with cross platform game development, we're updating our Play Games Unity Plug-in to support cross-platform multiplayer services, and introducing an early Play Games C++ SDK to support achievements and leaderboards.

In addition, we're launching enhanced Play Games statistics on the Google Play Developer Console, providing easy game analytics for Play Games adopters. Developers will gain a daily dashboard that visualizes player and engagement statistics for signed in users, including daily active users, retention analysis and achievement, and leaderboard performance.

Ad features to better optimize your business

Of course, once you build a great gaming experience, it's important to get rewarded for your work, which is why we'll also be introducing new features to the AdMob platform. We're making Google Analytics available directly in the AdMob interface, so you can gain deeper insights into how users are interacting with your app. Turning those insights into effective action is vital, so we're excited by the opportunities that in-app purchase ads will offer — enabling you to target users with specific promotions to buy items in your game. Advertising continues to be a core vehicle driving many game developers' success, so we're also bringing you new ways to optimize your ads to earn the most revenue.

Where to find us at GDC

That's just a taste of some of the things we'll be talking about this week at GDC. On Tuesday, March 18, when most of these features will become available, we'll be hosting a Developer Day to dive into these topics in more detail. We'll be talking with you about how to reach and engage with hundreds of millions of users on Google Play, build Games that scale in the cloud, grow in-game advertising businesses with AdMob, track revenue with Google Analytics, as well as explore new gaming frontiers, like Glass.

If you can't make any of the Google Developer Day sessions, don't worry; all the talks will be livestreamed on YouTube, starting at 10:00AM PDT (5:00PM UTC). You can also meet the Play, AdMob, Analytics, and Cloud teams at the Google Education Center in the Moscone Center's South Hall (booth 218) from March 19-21.

Join us at Game Developers Conference 2014!

By Greg Hartrell, Google Play Games team

When we’re not guiding a tiny bird across a landscape of pipes on our phones, we’re getting ready for our biggest-ever Developer Day at this year’s Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.

On Tuesday 18 March, all the teams at Google dedicated to gaming will share their insights on the best ways to build games, grow audiences, engage players and make money.

Some of the session highlights include:

  • Growth Hacking with Play Games
  • Making Money on Google Play: Best Practices in Monetization
  • Grow Your Game Revenue with AdMob
  • From Players to Customers: Tracking Revenue with Google Analytics
  • Build Games that Scale in the Cloud
  • From Box2D to Liquid Fun: Just Add Water-like Particles!

And there’s a lot more, so check out the full Google Developer Day schedule on the GDC website, where you can also buy tickets. We hope to see you there, but if you can’t make the trip, don’t worry; all the talks will be livestreamed on YouTube, starting at 10:00AM PDT (5:00PM UTC).

Then from 19-21 March, meet the Google teams in person from AdMob, Analytics, and Cloud at the Google Education Center in the Moscone Center’s South Hall (booth 218), and you could win a Nexus 7.

New Tools to Take Your Games to the Next Level

In this mobile world, games aren't just for the hardcore MMOG fan anymore, they're for everyone; in fact, three out of four people with an Android phone or tablet play games. If you're a game developer, Google has a host of tools available for you to help take your game to the next level, including Google Play game services, which let's you leverage Google's strength in mobile and cloud services so you can focus on building compelling game experiences for your users. Today, we're adding more tools to your gaming toolbox, like the open sourcing of a 2D physics library, as well as new features to the Google Play game services offering, like a plug-in for Unity.

LiquidFun, a rigid-body physics library with fluid simulation

First, we are announcing the open-source release of LiquidFun, a new C++ 2D physics library that makes it easier for developers to add realistic physics to their games.

Based on Box2D, LiquidFun features particle-based fluid simulation. Game developers can use it for new game mechanics and add realistic physics to game play. Designers can use the library to create beautiful fluid interactive experiences.

The video clip below shows a circular body falling into a viscous fluid using LiquidFun.

The LiquidFun library is written in C++, so any platform that has a C++ compiler can benefit from it. To help with this, we have provided a method to build the LiquidFun library, example applications, and unit tests for Android, Linux, OSX and Windows.

We’re looking forward to seeing what you’ll do with LiquidFun and we want to hear from you about how we can make this even better! Download the latest release from our LiquidFun project page on GitHub and join our discussion list!

Google Play Games plug-in for Unity

If you are a game developer using Unity, the cross-platform game engine from Unity Technologies, you can now more easily integrate game services using a new Google Play Games plug-in for Unity. This initial version of the plug-in supports sign-in, achievements, leaderboards and cloud save on Android and iOS. You can download the plug-in from the Play Games project page on GitHub, along with documentation and sample code.

New categories for games in Google Play

New game categories are coming to the Play Store in February 2014, such as Simulation, Role Playing, and Educational! Developers can now use the Google Play Developer Console to choose a new category for their apps if the Application Type is “Games”. The New Category field in the Store Listing will set the future category for your game. This will not change the category of your game on Google Play until the new categories go live in February 2014.