Feedback request: new PhoneGap features

Over the last few betas we've added some interesting new PhoneGap features, including:

• IAP object support on iOS and Android (for Android, it should also work with Crosswalk if you add the com.mcm.plugins.androidinappbilling plugin)
• Game Center for iOS
• iAd for iOS

These can be tricky for us to test, since to make 100% sure they work basically involves publishing to the app store, and we don't have any publishable apps ourselves.

Bug reports are useful to report negatives ("it doesn't work"), but in this case I'm also looking for positives ("I tried it and it did work"). Has anyone tried any of these features on PhoneGap? How have they been working out? Are they working OK? We're due a stable update soon, so it would be good to have some positive feedback that they are working before we ship stable.

Thanks!

Hey Ashley,

Do you mean by "PhoneGab" -> "Crosswalk" as well? I am interested in using/testing Game Center for iOS and iAds, but I need the Google Play Games Service plugin as well for that. Are you working on that? Any plans?

Would be nice to just have one leaderboard/achievement plugin like the CCJS Plugin had (for both iOS and Android).

I gave it a quick try and here is some feedback:

• I really like the option to be able to load the player's image. That is something I am going to test soon.
• I like the triggers (fail/error/success).

Questions:

1. Do I need to run "authenticate user" on any start of the game?

2. I am missing the "request score" action to be able to sync with an already submitted higher score.

Yes, the IAP on Android should work in Crosswalk too actually, edited the OP to indicate that. I'm mostly interested in whether or not it works, I'm just looking for "yeah it works" to give us some confidence going in to a stable release.

You always need to authenticate the user on start of any game for Game Center to work.

Some unrelated question...

Isn't PhoneGap better than Crosswalk?

According to reports, HTML5 game performance in phonegap isn't exceptional

Joannesalfa - https://www.scirra.com/blog/150/html5-game-performance-on-ios-8

Some unrelated question...

Isn't PhoneGap better than Crosswalk?

According to reports, HTML5 game performance in phonegap isn't exceptional

Phonegap has no engine shipped with it, it uses the webview, which is not great except on iOS8 and I think android L (on android L it should be like crosswalk I think, without the 20mb overhead), which can explain the low performances reports across multiple OS versions.

"PhoneGap 3.5, which makes use of the in-app web view, but as of PhoneGap 3.5 does not use the new faster web view control. A future version of PhoneGap should be faster and match the performance of Safari. More on this later."

Ashley How do you know there a new version of PhoneGap will have same Safari performance? Is guaranteed?

Aphrodite I hope Android L and iOS 8 could be standard for HTML5 gaming.

Ashley Oh nice, I missed that article. Really great. Thanks for writing it down. Pritty clear

Ok, I integrated both now(iAds and Game Center), but can't test it. I left my mac at work Maybe I will go and get it later.

Another missing thing: "Show/open achievements", I don't want to build a view myselft from recieved data. Would be nice to just open the iOS achievements to show it.

lol

I would suggest that people who aren't answering Ashley's direct request refrain from posting and start their own topic.

Ashley I would test it for you but I am out of the office for a few days without my apple products.

I am back on Thursday, so if nobody has confirmed those plugins are working by then I will do it...

Ok I tested it with my game.

I exported it with C2 182 to PhoneGap and wrapped it with PhoneGap Build to iOS. I signed it witch distribution/local certificates/provisioning.

iAd seems to work. The triggers/commands work and I am able to get test banner from the iAd network. Show top/bottom, overlap and so on all works fine, but I only see test ads. I can't see if there is something to truly activate it. I read online that it takes 1-4 days to show real ads. I also thought maybe this is bounded to the distribution certificate but I tried that as well. I haven't used iAd before so maybe someone can confirm that (I will keep checking it).

GameCenter: doesn't show any interaction. I tested authenticate user and show leaderboard. Everything is set um correctly in GameCenter (works fine with CCJS), but not with this plugin.

Ashley:

My PhoneGap export works well enough to replace it on the real app store (production), but I would need those things working to do it:

Must have:

• iAd Plugin: show fullscreen ad
• GameCenter: needs to work in general
• GameCenter: show achievements (given layout)

Nice to Have:

• Fixed "Hide Status Bar" Bug
• Browser plugin - open URL should open outside of phonegap if possible
• Options to configure the splash screen for the phonegap export in c2

Let me know if you need any more information about the plugins. I don't know how the debugger works so I can't tell what the GameCenter Plugin is doing in background.

Hi Ashley,

I just tried a quick test with Beta r183 and I couldn't get background audio working (Phonegap CLI / Xcode 5.1 and also tried with Ejecta).

I also could not get Open URL or Open URL in New Window working with Phonegap CLI.

Not sure if I'm doing something wrong my end, I will keep testing.

Thanks

Alan

aquinn - we only officially support PhoneGap Build. I don't think the CLI consumes the same format config.xml so things like the required plugins won't be included and will need to be configured separately.

Ah ok... I will try on phonegap build. Many thanks.