[PlayN] How much is PlayN supported by Google?

Engines, Libraries and Tools
#1

When you access PlayN’s site you see that PlayN’s logo uses Google colors: http://code.google.com/p/playn/

Also, Lilli Thompson talked about PlayN at New Game Conference in 2011 as a Google game developer advocate. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=iK9Xl58IxKw&t=4 (I haven’t watched the video.)

But she’s not at Google anymore (http://plus.google.com/111647958621817995641/posts/EVptyYGHSfd and http://twitter.com/lillithompson/status/183299616647811072)

However, When you visit https://developers.google.com/games > Web games or > Mobile Games, there’s no reference to PlayN. You find Android development, which links to https://developer.android.com/sdk/index.html. There’s a Google Play Game Services (GPGS) too, that offers social features (achievements, multiplayer, leaderboard) for game development for Android, iOS and Web (https://developers.google.com/games/services). There are “Getting started” tutorials for GPGS for each platform (Android, iOS, Web). No PlayN, which compiles to these three platforms plus Java desktop.

So, is PlayN really supported by Google? Or was it once, and now the community is by itself?

(I’ve also asked it at StackOverflow, but I’ll update the response in both places… http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18258565/how-much-is-playn-supported-by-google)

#2

I’ve got an answer at Stack Overflow:

“Playn is a community supported project, and i suspect always will remain such. Google had a hand in making it, but their contribution recently has been waning. But it doesn’t mean the project is dying or anything.”

User: http://stackoverflow.com/users/17335/chii

#3

I use PlayN for HTML5 and Flash support for my AllBinary Platform. It is a great project.

#4

I’m sure it’s a great project. I’m comparing PlayN with LibGDX, because we used to code with Pulpcore in the project where I work at. Once Pulpcore is dead and it compiles to the hard-to-handle-with Java Applet, we’ve started comparing these two Java libraries, which seems to have the most active communities. Understanding how Google supports PlayN is part of this comparison. I’ll publish this comparison soon and I’ll link it here too.

So far, we conclude that LibGDX has a more active community and we’re testing it now by porting one of our games from Pulpcore to LibGDX.