Pooka SDK® - Pure Native Cross-platform App Engine

Pooka SDK is a cross-platform application software development kit (SDK), an app and game engine that can significantly reduce the cost of cross-platform app / game development and deployment.

Pooka SDK helps developers design their apps or games with a single shared code base to target all major desktop and mobile platforms. The apps or games generated by Pooka SDK is pure native application without resort to Web container, web-to-platform bridge, virtual machine or any extra runtime. Watch Presentation ▸

Platform Coverage Windows Desktop macOS iOS Android Universal Windows Platform

Main Features Pure native (C/C++) programming API with direct access to native platform API Covers major desktop / mobile platforms (Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, Windows UWP) Universal API in standard C/C++ makes cross-platform app / game development efficient Intuitive and easy-learning framework suitable for developers of all skill levels Virtualized presentation model makes fighting platform fragmentation easy and effective 2D and 3D graphics directly powered by Hardware accelerated API like Vulkan, OpenGL or DirectX 2D and 3D scene-graph rendering engine optimized for game development Theme-able lightweight component helps building consistent GUI and branding contents.

Pooka SDK® - Technical Architecture Overview

Pure Native Programming Guarantees the Best App Performance

A comparison of technical approach for cross-platform application development

There are numbers of options for developers when choosing cross-platform application tools. These development tools can be categorized into few technical approaches. Choosing development tools without truly understanding the difference between each approach may result in going into a wrong direction or completing the application with tremendous over-budget.
The following chart shows overall pros and cons of each approach.

	Native App	Hybrid App	Web App
App Definition	App is implemented by the development tools and language that the respective platform support. In most cases, App is developed by a native SDK provided by each platform.	App is powered by certain types of content layout language such as HTML5/CSS and scripting language such as JavaScript but embedded inside a thin native container and packaged as a regular native app.	App is powered by standard Web technologies including HTML5, JavaScript and CSS, usually runs directly inside a Web browser.
Packaging	App Package File	App Package File	Web pages
Distribution	App Store	App Store	Web / Browser
Programming Language	Native programming language specified by platform, such as C/C++, Java1	Scripting language specified by hybrid framework, such as JavaScript, Lua Script	Java Script
Content Layout Language	Proprietary layout language specified by platform, such as XML, XAML, or proprietary template	HTML5/CSS or proprietary template	HTML5/CSS
Learning Curve	Difficult	Moderate	Easy
Development / Maintenance Cost	High	Moderate	Low
Graphical Performance2	High	Moderate	Moderate
Overall Performance2	High	Moderate	Moderate
Access to Platform Features Example:camera, microphone, geolocation, sensors, bluetooth, NFC, address book, OS storage directory (document, photo, music, etc.), push notification, lock screen notification.	Full Access	Full or Limited access. Depends on how many system functions are exposed by the hybrid app framework	Very limited access
Best Used For	Games, multimedia, real-time communication, or consumer-focused apps where performance, graphics, hardware access and overall user experience are critical	Apps that do not have high performance requirements, but need to access certain device features and platform functions.	Apps that do not have high performance requirements, and do not need any functions beyond web browser.

How Does Pooka SDK® Help Native App Development

When developing native application with Pooka SDK® instead of building them directly on platform API, Pooka SDK® helps in the following parts:

• Reduce development cost
  • Universal API helps avoid learn each platform API
  • Intuitive API eases off the learning curve
  • Using single language C/C++ instead of each language required by platform API, such as C++, C#, Objective-C and Java1
• Reduce maintenance cost
  • Single set of source code for all platforms
  • The bug-fix is usually effective to all platforms
  • Single set of application assets (image, sound, music, 3D model, etc.)
• Accessing platform features and hardware functions remain possible
• Overall application performance is not compromised

 Note 
1 Strictly, Java is an interpreted language rather than a native language. However, some modern mobile platforms like Android pre-compile the Java byte-code binary into native machine code, which makes Android application's performance close to a native Android application developed by NDK.
2 The performance difference can be significant if the application is graphics intensive or relies on heavy computing, such as game, video player or image editor. Otherwise, performance difference might not be noticeable, such as stock tracker app or weather forecast app.

Quick comparison of Pooka SDK and Other Cross-platform App / Game Development Tool

When choosing a cross-platform application or game development tool, there are lots of considerations for developers to take, such as:

• Your existing programming skills
• The purpose and end customers of your app or game
• The project's target platforms
• The project's time line and total budget
• The project's upgrade and maintenance budget

While there numbers of cross-platform application and game development tools available on the market, there is no "best one" suitable for all kinds of development scenarios. Developers need to carefully find the one best suits their application or game project. The following chart is a quick comparison of some cross-platform application / game development tools (sometimes also called app builder or game engine)3:

 Note 
3 The comparison is based on information collected from each development tools' website or other related websites, there is no guarantee that the information listed here is updated and is 100% precise. For the latest details, visit their official website.

4 Hybrid Web apps are applications programmed by Web technologies (HTML5/CSS/JavaScript) and packaged as native application but the actual application content is contained inside a WebKit enabled WebView component. Hybrid Web apps are simply native applications with an embedded web browser to host the application content.

Pooka SDK is Engineered for Game Development

Besides being an app engine for developing cross-platform business applications, Pooka SDK is engineered with first-class support for game development, this can be proven by numbers of award-winning mobile games powered by Pooka SDK, such as OmniGSoft's City Stage (3D car racing) and Super-G Stunt (flight simulation).

To be a game engine, an application framework must have numbers of features needed for game development situation to make the production cycle efficient. All of these necessary functions are supported by Pooka SDK, include:

• Uncompromised application run-time performance
  Pooka SDK and games it powers are programmed by C/C++ and therefore the games are first-class native apps running on the target platforms. The native machine code is executed directly on target devices and there is no virtual machine and language interpreter needed.
• Built-in animation with precise timing control
  OGCanvas class and Timer class provide built-in animation support and timing control.
• Multi-channel sound and music playback capability
  The Sound module enables playing sound effect and music
• Sprite based graphical element for 2D game
  The Sprite class is dedicated to generate sprite based graphical element
• A descriptive content layout template
  OmniG Template is Pooka SDK's proprietary layout format for efficient content layout
• Drawable bitmap for generating 2D and 3D texture at play-time
  Bitmap class exposes its pixel data for modification so that its content can be dynamically generated on the fly.
• Sprite based graphical user interface for 2D and 3D game
  The Sprite class and OmniG Template work together helps generate game UI efficiently.
• Scene graph based content management and rendering pipeline
  The Scene class and Group class and their sub-classes work together help generate game content with hierarchical structure that makes game content manipulation efficient.
• The capability of direct drawing in game canvas
  The GraphicsEngine class provides the capability of drawing 2D graphics directly in game canvas.
• Game local high score management
  The ScoreBoard class provides local high score management.
• TCP/IP communication and Http client for making online multi-player games
  The Socket class, HttpURLConnection class, HttpsURLConnection class and related classes provide real-time communication capability for making online multi-player games or play-head-to-head games.

2D game content by Scene Graph

3D game content by Scene Graph

3D game content by Scene Graph