When comparing B4X vs Felgo (formerly V-Play), the Slant community recommends B4X for most people. In the question“What are the best Android app development frameworks?” B4X is ranked 1st while Felgo (formerly V-Play) is ranked 6th. The most important reason people chose B4X is:
B4XUI custom views are designed, by Erel and other forum members, exactly with this in mind; custom views that act and feel exactly the same no matter what platform you target.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Create easy, fast cross-platform views with less code
B4XUI custom views are designed, by Erel and other forum members, exactly with this in mind; custom views that act and feel exactly the same no matter what platform you target.
Pro Powerful general purpose programming tool
As mentioned in its website, "With B4X, anyone who wants to, can develop real-world solutions."
Pro A very active forum where you can find any issue you have, and quick answers to new ones
Pro A highly motivated program author who is very active in the forums
Erel Uziel is simply the most pro-active Soft-Creator/Forum Manager you will ever come across. If it has not yet been asked & answered, just ask and you will be answered withing minutes, and thanks to it being a trully international forum, this is achieved 24h/7d.
Pro Very easy to use and powerful for IoT
Support for Bluetooth/BLE, MQTT, TCP/UDP, Serial, NFC, Websockets, HTTP/2 across platforms makes it the ideal tool for IoT projects.
Pro Live code swapping
A huge productivity boost when you can run your apps on the devices and make code changes real time without needing to recompile.
Pro No complexities compared with other tools
No need to learn JAVA, C+, PHP, or any other complementary languages in order to achieve exactly what you need.
Pro The best all round
Produces highly optimised end results. Easy to use and quick to learn. When you know how to produce an Android app you near enough know how to produce an IOS app.
The fact that there are subtle differences between writing for different platforms is a huge plus - those differences help optimise your code and they're really not difficult to wrap your head round.
Pro Erel has much passion for his tool
The speed of answer topics is amazing.
Pro Many informative video tutorials
The tutorials help beginners as well as more experienced programmers grasping important concepts.
Pro Many code examples of fully working apps for free
The Forum is filled with many code examples of fully working apps for free. Code snippets, animation, different type of views etc. can be easily downloaded and used in your own app.
Pro Large user community
Over the years it has built up a very active user community that is very involved in the evolution of B4X. In their forums you can find any answer to your questions, and if it is not there, they will answer you.
Pro RAD
VERY Rapid Application Development, with tons of pro features.
Pro Tightly integrated framework
Pro Almost everything is free and complete
Except the IDE for iOS. Even so it's very cheap.
Pro Mature cross platform IDE
Qt-Creator IDE with Code Completion, Debugging and Profiling, integrated Quick Help, Version Control and more.
Pro Easy to learn
Felgo is among the easiest cross-platform tools to use according to a survey done by research2guidance.
Pro In-game level editor
With the Level Editor components, you can let your players share their levels with the whole game community which is cool because you don't need to create new levels on your own, but the community helps you with it. There are other community features like rewards for good level creators that helps getting more downloads.
Pro Felgo game network
Leaderboards, Achievements, Challenges are available across platform, even on Desktop. You can also use Cloud Syncinc of your game data that makes it easy to start a game for example on iPhone and then continue on a Nexus Tablet or the other way around.
It is also convenient because sharing to all kind of game services & networks like Facebook & Game Center is possible with a single API call. Custom hosting of Game Network servers is also possible if you want to keep the player data.
Pro Native performance
Although game logic is provided in JavaScript by you, performance-critical parts of the engine like OpenGL ES rendering or particle effects are implemented in rock-solid C++, providing the ultimate performance your game deserves.
Pro Advanced gaming components
Advanced Gaming Components for handling multiple display resolutions & aspect ratios, animations, particles, physics, multi-touch, gestures, path finding and more.
Pro Felgo build server
No need for native SDKs, Build in and Install from Cloud with the Felgo Build Server.
Pro Rapid development
Cut your development time in half. Using the QML language allows for some powerful features that cut code lines and time. Another helpful feature that can help in this area is that there are more than 50 game demos of all genres that come with full source code, meaning one can easily check to see how something was done.
Pro Support can be found in forums and via e-mail
Felgo has friendly forums where core developers participate as well as fast & helpful email support.
Pro Based on Qt framework
The Qt framework is a great and mature framework on its own. Using Qt as a game engine base is a smart idea.
Pro Runtime-balancing
You can use ready-made components to balance any of your game properties at runtime, so also on mobile devices which is great for adjusting forces or input parameters.
Pro Lots of learning resources
Helps get started and improve with lots of tutorials, demo games, examples.
Pro Social services and monetization
In-app purchases, game and social network integration (such as Game Center and Facebook), ads (with Chartboost and AdMob) and analytics (such as Flurry) are all available across platforms.
Pro Frequent updates
Every 2-4 weeks new updates provide additional features and fixes based on what users wanted the most.
Pro Level store
You can even monetize these user-generated levels with in-app purchases with the Felgo Level Store component if you like.
Cons
Con Java-dependent Desktop Development
Con Only for Windows
The IDE, while very handy, only runs on Windows. If you want to code on Mac or Linux, you have to install it on a virtual machine. But you can debug your app by running it on the target OS.
Con The documentation and examples and tutorials are not up to date
The documentation and examples and tutorials are not up to date.
Con For BASIC language lovers
Lots of people are not fans of BASIC-like languages. Enjoyment of B4X, may depend on having a background or affinity for BASIC.
Con Can still need deep knowledge of Java
Attempts to provide BASIC-like language that is more comfortable for a certain demographic of users, but various circumstances will still require knowledge of Java. "No free lunch".
Con Lack of B4W real Web app
Erel needs to make a real Web app designer.
Con No 3rd party tutorials
There are little to none amount of tutorials for Felgo other than what was made by the engine developers themselves.