Have you ever thought that it would be cool if you could build a cross-platform or multi-platform game and connect from one platform to another without having to do all the heavy lifting with respect to matchmaking, communications, and related tasks yourself? Well now you can, thanks to Matchbook.
Matchbook Example "Game", 2x iOS and 2x Android clients
Matchbook is a lightweight and platform-agnostic matchmaking solution, intended for use in mobile applications (think games that require near-real-time, relatively-low-latency, persistent communications between two or more client devices).
At its core is a server component, which provides a JSON-based webservice allowing clients to find, create, and join matches. The server also acts as a proxy/relay when necessary, allowing client devices to tunnel through any firewalls that might exist between them.
In addition to the server component, Matchbook includes prebuilt SDK’s for both Java and Objective-C. These SDK’s are intended to support the development of native applications that make use of the Matchbook webservice on Android and iOS devices, respectively.
I could go on at length, but it’s simpler to just link to the project on Github (Matchbook is open-source, and permissively licensed, naturally):
https://github.com/adam-roth/matchbook
Note that Google is currently building comparable functionality into Google Play, although their realtime communications API is currently only available on Android (iOS support is under development).
And although Apple already has realtime and turn-based gaming API’s for iOS, they natually have no intention of inviting Android devices to the party. Ever.
So let the record show that Matchbook got there first.