I’ve spent the last few weeks developing extensions for GDevelop that were missing for my needs. To do this, I created my own Cordova plugins. This is essentially a preview announcement: soon, it will be very easy to use the following features in GDevelop for Android:
- Flashlight
- Battery status
- Notifications (even when the app is closed, without Firebase)
- Device info (manufacturer, brand, Android version)
- And finally, the camera function
The extension will only work in the build, not in the preview.
I’m in the final stages of working on it.
Stay tuned.
I’ll be in touch soon, I promise.
P.S. Everything has worked perfectly so far. I’m working on the camera right now.
Talk soon.
Best regards, Markus.
That actually sounds/is marvelous. Can’t wait to try dem all!
hmm…worried to see how notifications will be used, but all that sounds great
Notifications are very important if you want to keep player retention
…No! no, no, no!
who taught you this??? they are NOT very important, and that is a tactic used by evil “game” companies, which push out slop and use notifications to get you to open the app and probably spend more money on it giving you an addiction, and gdevelop is an engine that already has a problem with this and facilitates with templates, and i dont stand for it.
You know what keeps player retention?
MAKE! A GOOD! GAME!
No crates, no lootboxes, no purchasable (as in real money) in-game currencies, no deception, no gambling, no roulettes pretending to be something else, no dark patterns, no child gambling.
im sorry if im saying too much for the few words you said, but i dont want that thought in your mind or anyone else’s mind that that is normal. This forum is not just for GDevelop, but for helping people make good games, and give actual advice. It says so you know.
In place, use ADs for in-game currency, maybe use ADs for an unlock, and make the reward worth it so it feels like actually a good idea to watch an AD, not like a restriction.
Ehhh… of course making a good game MUST always be your priority if you want to have sales and everything.
But check out the top games on Google’s Play Store. I guarantee you that all of them use notifications. As much as I dislike such tactics, in this age where players’ attention spans are getting shorter and shorter due to the enormous amount of content that exist out there, notifications are a necessary evil. Maybe the lesser one as well, since you can turn them off any time you want. Personally I leave only the notifications of games that I really like.
And they’re not always that bad. Sometimes your players just need a friendly reminder so that they don’t miss their daily login or an event. Now, if your game abuses notifications and sends 5–10 of them a day, like some games do, then yes, that’s morally wrong. Or when they force you to keep them open.
The mobile market is very different from the PC market, so we can’t simply paint notifications as inherently bad. Notifications can serve many purposes beyond simply reminding players to play the game.
Youre the one who instantly jumped to the point of using it for retention, and these same things i spoke of are what shaped the mobile market. People will swim to an honest game in the play store rather than thousands of terrible ones. think about it, why are they the top games if they did not use the predatory tactics i mentioned to the upmost degree? open those games and im sure youll see.
A daily logon for a reward is literally a tactic itself, and you say you dont wanna miss it as if youre blind to the point of a daily logon?
games arent supposed to be like this, theyre not games.
It’s crazy how “daily log in” has been normalized in gaming that 99.9999% of the times that “reward” ain’t even worth it.
i would like your reply but we tend to glaze each other during arguments and i rather this remains down to earth rather than sided
@DesmonDev @Da-Just
Guys, I won’t try to change your opinion because this isn’t the place to do so (this thread is about the extension, so having this discussion here would be unfair to the OP). And I don’t necessarily completely disagree with you.
I try to find a balance between my games. Of course, I want my games to be great first and not have to rely on tactics such as ads, notifications, etc. But I also want to make money. If you don’t have money, you can’t keep creating games.
I have my own big dealbreakers, such as the use of AI, expensive games, or aggressive in-game purchases that I will never agree with. But moderated ads and some notifications are not as evil as you might think they are. Free to play games have to make money somehow
Again, the mobile market is very different from the desktop one, with different marketing tactics and games. We could discuss this all day, and it still wouldn’t be enough.
heres what you should do: add a popup that asks if you want notifications, and explain exactly what youll get notifications about. Dont enable it by default, dont disable it by default. Tell them
This is the right approach, and many proper games are already asking for this nowadays. There’s probably an EU law about it as well. 
But before we do this, we first need the ability to add notifications to our GDevelop games 
We all have our own thing and no need to change your own perspective for some other reason 
After all, notifications aren’t the work of the devil. You could even build an appointment reminder app with GDevelop. Besides, the user holds all the cards; after all, they don’t have to grant permission. Extensions are simply tools. What would a stonemason be without a hammer? GDevelop is essentially a collection of extensions. Anyone who doesn’t like extensions is welcome to learn C++ or Assembly—I have a basic knowledge of C++ myself.
And anyone who doesn’t like computer games or mobile games simply plays board games. To each their own.
I’d like to develop extensions to help create better games in the future and to easily accomplish tasks that would otherwise be too complicated. GDevelop already offers many great features that simplify the process for developers—anyone who has worked with a full-fledged programming language would surely agree.
But I have a question for you all: what kind of extension would most people like to see (whether general or platform-specific, like for Android)?
I’m considering a file picker (for Android).
Best regards, Markus
You gotten most folk intrigued with the notifications even if app is closed and without firebase. How about show casing that 1st?
