Hey Nikolay.. didn't realize you were the author of Bebbled. Great game. I play that one a lot too. I need your source tho.. I am stuck on a level and I want to modify it so I can beat it. :D
As for sending game moves..that's interesting, but I agree with Justin that it seems quite overly complex/clunky for most games, to handle a high score. With encryption and SSL, why not just go that route? I don't know if you are selling Bebbled..I have a free version, but it's such a good game I can't imagine you're not making decent money from it. Is it the cost of the certificate and such that you decided to avoid using SSL, for example? I am not trying to be nosy.. I am trying to understand what/why you did what you did. I've not heard of anyone sending game moves and storing all of that to avoid a cheating high score. I would have thought with sha-1 salted hash or something, or SSL, you could avoid any cheating going on. As someone else posted, the chances of someone really trying to cheat are probably so limited.. I mean you're not giving out money for high scores or any sort of reward. As for social aspects, I've not looked, but I thought Facebook, twitter, and such had REST based APIs, where you basically get some developer key, and then can call the APIs to connect to them. Maybe I am wrong on this.. but I've seen a few posts about this fb-connect library, and wondering why, if there is a REST-like interface, you need a kit for it? Maybe there isn't a rest-like interface. I thought there was tho. Justin, the web view you mention, why not just make a call to the server to pull the high score data down, and format it directly into the game with a view? I am curious why you went that route? I think you said you have a website where players can check high scores, so you're reusing it.. but even so, I mean.. in my mind, if you're good enough with Android to make a game, making a server call to get some high scores and display it in a view would be easy to do. Just curious why you chose this method instead of what I am asking? OAuth.. it's quite interesting.. I've found it a bit difficult to figure out how to use it tho. I want to use it for services on the server side.. it seems I have to provide several keys or something to the client using the service with oauth. While it seems to be the new industry heavyweight for authentication and everyone is adopting it, I get confused with the two-legged and three-legged methods for service calls. I know the three-legged is great if I want my friend to access my stuff that otherwise they could not. But when I put up a web service and want to allow a client to access it, seems the two-legged approach is fine..yet I forget now but read that three-legged is better for this.. but it seems more complex to explain to clients on how to use it as well. Ugh! On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 10:55 AM, Nikolay Ananiev <devuni...@gmail.com>wrote: > Well, it's more expensive to use the web view, because all the html that > you transmit over the network is redundant and the server traffic cost goes > up. > What I don't want to do is to pay to support a free game. That's why I made > my own binary protocol, which is very efficient - loads the data very fast > and the bandwidth cost is very low. > For example, last month I had only 4GB of traffic, which costs me $0.61 > with amazon aws. > > Implementing the social features in Bebbled was not hard. The hard part was > to make the current facebook-connect library ( > http://code.google.com/p/fbconnect-android/) work. It's not an official > one and it's a direct port of the iPhone version. It has many bugs and > issues with threading, but I managed somehow to make it work for me. I even > returned some patches to the maintainer, but he hasn't responded yet. > > As for twitter, I didn't find a "Sign in with Twitter" library for android. > There's even no such library for iPhone. I created this from scratch using a > great OAuth client implementation ( > http://code.google.com/p/oauth-signpost/). I'm thinking to release this > code as an opensource project as soon as I have the time. > > > On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 3:01 PM, Justin Giles <jtgi...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> Nikolay, >> >> First of all, kudos to a great game! It's one of the few that I go back >> to over and over again. >> >> Back to your post: >> Great ideas here! Your online scores idea is great for decreasing the >> amount of cheating to almost 0. However it seems like it has a lot of >> overhead to recreate someones game. Maybe not. I guess it just depends on >> how much logic you have to go through to recreate the game. And, in a lot >> of games, this approach wouldn't work very well, or could become clunky. >> But, for you game it seems to be working great. >> >> In regards to not showing the online scores in game, why not use a webview >> on your activity to pull in a "mobile" formatted webpage with the scores? >> That's how I pull in the online scores for my app and, sure, it takes a few >> seconds to load the webview into an activity, but it's something like 1 >> second for an activity to load versus 3-5 seconds for the activity with a >> webview to load. You also bypass having to dump out to the browser to do >> this. >> >> In regards to the social aspects you recently implemented (facebook, >> etc.)...was that much work to do? I've been thinking about adding these >> types of features into my app as well. I'm only at the exploratory phase >> currently though. I'm not entirely sure what all I'll be getting into >> there. >> >> Justin >> >> On Tue, Mar 23, 2010 at 2:39 AM, Nikolay Ananiev <devuni...@gmail.com>wrote: >> >>> On Wed, Mar 17, 2010 at 2:08 AM, Kevin Duffey <andjar...@gmail.com>wrote: >>> >>>> Hey all, >>>> >>>> I am curious how the various groups of game developers, primarily mobile >>>> (android in this case) and cross-platform (android/iPhone/facebook) handle >>>> storing high scores, achievements, and such as well as how multi player is >>>> done. >>>> >>> >>> How does your game(s) access high scores, update the list, remove them if >>>> need be? The same would apply for achievements, and to a lesser degree, >>>> leader boards. >>>> >>> >>> Are you using a service out there that you pay for... if so how much does >>>> it cost.. and do they provide some sort of java/objective-c SDK that you >>>> can >>>> just plug in to your code? >>>> >>>> How do you dispaly high scores, leader boards, achievements, etc in your >>>> game? Do you provide your own web site with the same info, perhaps jazzed >>>> up >>>> a bit more or with more detail than your mobile game (due to limited screen >>>> realestate for mobile devices)? Do you provide a link to a web site in your >>>> game if they want to see things like high scores, achievements and leader >>>> boards? >>>> >>>> >>> >>> >>> My game has a custom view to show the high scores in the game. I didn't >>> like the web browser approach, because it gets the player out of the game, >>> completely changes the UI he is used to and the loading time is terrible. >>> The user experience is really bad this way. I have two high scores in the >>> game - local and online. The local high scores are stored in a SQLite >>> database and the remote are in PostgresSQL. I also show the high scores on >>> the website and on a Facebook application. The difference between the 3 >>> types: The in-game high scores do not support searching (I just don't have >>> the visual space to put a search input field, which I want). The website >>> ranking supports searching, but otherwise is the same like the in-game one. >>> The Facebook one is interesting. If you log-in the game using facebook >>> connect, your facebook id is saved and this allows me to show a specific >>> ranking based on you and your facebook friends, show their pictures, link to >>> their profiles and so on. >>> >>> >>> How do I send the scores to the server? I don't. That's how I prevent >>> cheating. What I do is to send the player moves to the server and the server >>> replays the game using the player moves. Checks if every move is according >>> to the game rules and validates the game. If the game is valid, the server >>> just extracts the scores out of its state and saves them. There are no high >>> scores send over the network. >>> >>> >>> >>> I would also like to know what sort of things are most important for your >>>> games. High scores are so yesterday, so to speak. The latest craze in most >>>> games seems to be achievements and the ability to obtain extra items for >>>> your games, either by buying them, or earning them through achievements, >>>> etc. So what are some things you game developers would want to make use of >>>> in your game to add more appeal to your game, to draw in players for >>>> longer, >>>> especially long enough to pass the 48 hour refund time so that you can >>>> actually earn some money from your hard work. I look at games on Facebook >>>> like Farmville that are doing so well they are hiring more developers at >>>> good pay to work on it. I also look at games like World of Warcraft, which >>>> I >>>> play and got sucked into for a while, due to getting to that next level or >>>> getting that next awesome epic gear piece... those sorts of things seem to >>>> be what draws in players to otherwise simple games. A number of mobile >>>> games >>>> that seem to do very well often seem to be fairly simple games but offer >>>> that right mix of "I just got to get to that next...". I am curious what >>>> some of you developers have found work for games either those that you >>>> played, or are working on (or have written) that draw in players. This >>>> leads >>>> to the next paragraph.. making a living on game development ultimately >>>> requires that your game does well and that people pay for it in some manner >>>> and not refund it. Hence why I am trying to understand what it is that >>>> those >>>> otherwise simple games seem to do that draw in the masses. >>>> >>>> >>> >>> I'm currently working on a real-time multiplayer. You will be able to >>> play against other players from around the world. I will add an option for >>> bluetooth challenges later. I'd like to add achievements, but that would be >>> after the multiplayer. >>> >>> >>> >>>> Which brings about another topic.. how do games like Farmville make so >>>> much money being free games, that they can have a company behind it? I >>>> can't >>>> believe ads on the stie alone make up for all their revenue. I've been >>>> considering looking at ads in the game as opposed to charging for it, and >>>> that seems like players might keep a game longer than if they pay for it >>>> and >>>> then refund it within 48 hours if they don't absolutely love the game... >>>> although I am not entirely sure how much it annoys players to have a small >>>> portion of the screen saved for ads as opposed to just buying it. >>>> >>>> >>> >>> Farmville makes little money from ads compared to the money they make >>> from selling virtual goods. Last thing I remember was that they released a >>> new flower and made $800,000 in a single day. And I personally hate ads. My >>> game doesn't have ads and it's free. >>> >>> >>> >>>> Lastly, multi-player. I am curious how games work multi-player. The only >>>> way I can think of is the client (game) has to update a server of some >>>> data, >>>> a move, location of a sprite, etc, and at the same time has to poll the >>>> server often enough to update the game screen to keep things working. The >>>> first part of this, the game side, seems easy enough.. at least to some >>>> degree.. when your player makes a move, you send a server request to some >>>> server with the data, be it their new location, a weapon they selected, >>>> etc. >>>> The second part of this is the client polling the server often enough, fast >>>> enough, to keep things smoothly on the screen of all players. So how have >>>> some of you handled this and yet keep the game playing smooth as well? >>>> Probably more important is, the server side. Not necessarily the code bit >>>> of >>>> it, but how do you handle if your game takes off and you get 10s of >>>> thousands of players playing it... what sort of server side technology is >>>> used to handle that many requests, that fast, fast enough to allow all >>>> those >>>> game clients to provide a smooth game experience while keeping the >>>> multi-player working solid as well? >>>> >>>> Thank you. I look forward to learning more about how these things are >>>> done in games. >>>> >>>> >>> >>> Server polling is always a BAD idea for games, especially for real-time >>> games. You have to go lower in the newtwork stack and directly use sockets. >>> If you use low-level sockets you can keep the connection to the server >>> opened all the time and this way you can push information and the server can >>> push information back to you and there is no need for polling. That's how >>> multiplayer gaming usually works. >>> >>> >>> >>> -- >>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >>> Groups "Android Developers" group. >>> To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com >>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >>> android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com<android-developers%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com> >>> For more options, visit this group at >>> http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en >>> >>> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+ >>> unsubscribegooglegroups.com or reply to this email with the words >>> "REMOVE ME" as the subject. >>> >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google >> Groups "Android Developers" group. >> To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to >> android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com<android-developers%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com> >> For more options, visit this group at >> http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en >> >> To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+ >> unsubscribegooglegroups.com or reply to this email with the words "REMOVE >> ME" as the subject. >> > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "Android Developers" group. > To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com<android-developers%2bunsubscr...@googlegroups.com> > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en > > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+ > unsubscribegooglegroups.com or reply to this email with the words "REMOVE > ME" as the subject. > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to android-developers@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en To unsubscribe from this group, send email to android-developers+unsubscribegooglegroups.com or reply to this email with the words "REMOVE ME" as the subject.
