Here at Agora Games, we’ve been working on an online service platform called Hydra. This platform is used to power in-game and web-based features, such as player stats, leaderboards achievements for lots of popular titles (Guitar Hero series, Saints Row 3, Mortal Kombat, etc). We have developed a mobile-focused version of our platform so that you can take advantage of all of these great features in your Android and iOS Unity3d games!
Currently Supported Features:
Profile - Show your players their personal gameplay stats and match history.
Login/Authorization - Users are automatically logged in upon opening the game…no need for additional usernames and passwords (or optional facebook/twitter/etc authentication).
Friends - Enable your users to build a friends list to set up matches and coordinate.
Leaderboards - Rank your users globally and among friends.
Match-Making - Simple match creation and match finding tools (supporting realtime games and async games)
Realtime Messages - Send fast realtime game messages to everyone in a match
Achievements - Reward your players with awards based on game progress, and notify your users in-game notifications.
Message of the Day - Tool to schedule the delivery of global messages or “Message of the Day”
Cross-Platform - Works on both Android and iPhone!
Developer Dashboards - All developers have access to our dashboard with tools for viewing data, setting up features and download docs and SDKs
We are in the final stages of our closed beta, and are preparing for our public beta! If you want to participate in the final stages of the closed beta, or would like to be notified when we go to our public open beta, follow the link below and sign up!
Great question! Currently, our system works 100% for the Windows and OSX platforms on Unity3d. However, we’ve put a heavier focus on mobile for the time being based on requests from our beta users.
We’d love for you to sign up so that we can give you early access to the developer tools. You have a very interesting use-case that we think would be a killer use of our system.
Thanks for the interest ASchumacher. If you want to head over to hydra.agoragames.com, you can sign up for the beta there, or just drop me an email at mjodon@agoragames.com, and I’ll add you to the list.
What will be the cost of the service once it’s out of beta? (i presume the beta is free).
Also from the site, i can guess there’s a PRO service, so what other types of service do you have?
Other than features, the site isn’t very informative (i almost never use the “contact us for more information”, or “Contact sales” buttons :P, the information -maybe except prices- should be upfront, right?)
Thanks for the info.
@Battleb - These are all great questions. I’ll answer each of them separately:
1. What will be the cost of the service once it’s out of beta:
We have not yet locked down the final costs of the service, but we plan to have a level that is accessible to all developers (quite possibly a free version with some limitations). We’ll know more once we come out of our beta.
2. Also from the site, i can guess there’s a PRO service, so what other types of service do you have?
Yes, there is a PRO service. This services has additional features such as tournaments, challenges and clans. Most importantly, we offer SDKs for XBOX360, PS3, Wii, Steam GFWL. This service has been in use by AAA developers for the past 5 years. You can even see it in action in Guitar Hero Games, Saints Row 3, Mortal Kombat. Hydra Mobile is building off of this service to eventually provide the same offering to all developers.
3. Other than features, the site isn’t very informative
A totally fair critique! We’re working on a new site now. When we launched this site originally in stealth-mode as just a place to direct users to sign up for the beta. Now that we have our product completely up and running, we want to start talking more depth about the features that evolved out of the beta, and will represent this on the new info site.
I have a question. I was referred to this thread from my “Why I think OUYA will succeed” thread.
I would love to use this system for an OUYA game, but one thing I would like to know is if it’s possible to have multiple user profiles on one machine Xbox-style (player 1 can sign in with one profile, player 2 presses a button and signs in with a different profile, and then they can play a Splitscreen match or whatever and have individual save data / achievements / etc).
Do either Hydra Pro or Mobile support this at the moment? Thanks.
With Hydra Mobile, no, this is not currently a supported feature. This is also no support with Hydra Pro, but we are also open to doing custom development to our platform to meet a games specific needs. If this is something you’re looking for, please feel free to reach out to us! We’d be happy to discuss professional services related to a feature like this.
That’s OK - I was already thinking of dropping splitscreen support anyway (it complicates quite a few things in the overall game design)
I do think I’m going to go with Hydra Mobile for my game (my other option was GameSpy, but I have no idea if that works on OUYA and I can’t test it since I don’t have a device myself)
I would love to have one thing to fit all so we dont have to change between IOS,droid mac and PC. Its a pain in the ass especially ifyou have multiple leaderboards. I would liketo see an easy way of setting up 30 leadeders because doing that manually in itunes connect is a pain in the ass and very clunky you have to do it painfully 1 at a time (and you cant even set up more then 25).
@PhobicGunner - Sign up if you haven’t already! We’ll be happy to get you into our beta testing phase.
@Aiursrage2k - Yes, cross-platform is going to be the key to this being successful for us! We believe in making this easy on the developers so you that you can spend most of your time making great games. Additionally, I think that you’ll like our LB interface within our dashboard. It’s pretty straight-forward, but allows you to configure your leaderboards quickly based on stats you’re already tracking for your users. If you look at the picture below, I just set the LB name, description, profile stat that we’re ranking and how often is expires.
Hm… just got an email in my inbox about Hydra.
I was sort of under the impression that after signing up I would be automatically included in the closed beta when the time came, although the email is informing me that I have to set up a conference call between my team and Agora.
Any info about this? Is this only for Hydra Pro, or Mobile as well?
