gameNetwork and "social notifications"

Solar2D General Questions/Discussion
#1

All of the top selling apps in the Apple store that use openfeint take advantage of the “social notification” via Facebook and Twitter. This is build into openfeint, but we cannot use this because it appears that Corona does not have a “request” type to pass in data to this feature of openfeint.

  • Has anyone been able to figure out how to get a Corona app to take advantage of the openfeint social notifications?
  • If this isn’t currently possible, are social notifications on the list of features that Ansca plans on adding? And if so, when?

Basically without this feature I only have leaderboard and achievement support, but no way for people to share that with their friends. Yes, I know I can use the system.url() function and send pull up a web page, facebook or twitter, but that seems like work that we wouldn’t have to do if we could just use the social notifications built-into openfeint. [import]uid: 16734 topic_id: 19922 reply_id: 319922[/import]

#2

A lot of people simply use buttons to share these things themselves as you said - but I appreciate your suggestion that it would be preferable to have an easier method for social sharing and will pass this on to the team.

Peach :slight_smile: [import]uid: 52491 topic_id: 19922 reply_id: 77497[/import]

#3

@Peach, Thank you for passing that request on to the team.

I have everything ready for gameNetwork (leaderboards, achievements) except for Game Center integration and social notifications. I should have Game Center ready tonight.

I have been adding all of this to Arrow Antics so that when I submit the game to reviewers it will have features comparable to other top apps.

I’d rather not release an update without social notifications so I’ll probably do what others have done and use icons that launch either FB or Twitter.

Are there any links that show how to launch FB/Twitter with appropriate parameters to pass data? I know there is a blog article regarding sending a photo to FB, but I don’t know if there is an easy way to send the user to twitter with some text that says something like:

I just solved level ‘n’ in #mygamename with ‘m’ stars. Can you do better?

If you know of a link showing how to do this I’d appreciate it.
[import]uid: 16734 topic_id: 19922 reply_id: 77508[/import]

#4

For Facebook the sample app in Applications > CoronaSDK > SampleCode > Networking > Facebook works fine and is better than any tutorial I’m aware of at present. (I have one on Techority that I believe still works fine but I should still update it and wouldn’t recommend it.)

Twitter, I grabbed this off another post and am told it works great, although I haven’t yet tested it myself;
[lua]-- Function for URLencoding of message content
local function escape (s)
s = string.gsub(s, “([&=+%c])”, function ©
return string.format("%%%02X", string.byte©)
end)
s = string.gsub(s, " ", “+”)
return s
end

local tweetText = “This is the tweet message.”

local postBody = escape( tweetText )
local theNetwork = theNetwork or “twitter” – twitter is default

–local theString = string.gsub(message, “( )”, “%%20”)
if theNetwork == theNetwork or “twitter” then
native.showWebPopup(20, 20, display.contentWidth - 40, display.contentHeight - 90, “http://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=”…postBody)
end[/lua]

Hope this helps!

Peach :slight_smile: [import]uid: 52491 topic_id: 19922 reply_id: 77519[/import]

#5

Thanks Peach! [import]uid: 16734 topic_id: 19922 reply_id: 77521[/import]

#6

ken, take a look at this thread
https://developer.anscamobile.com/forum/2011/12/30/alternate-way-use-facebook-and-twitter-app

the webPopup-method works well enough for us to integrate it to our games.

-finefin
[import]uid: 70635 topic_id: 19922 reply_id: 77546[/import]

#7

No worries Ken - I hope it works well until we have a better option for you.

Firefin, nice link - I haven’t seen that thread.

Peach :slight_smile: [import]uid: 52491 topic_id: 19922 reply_id: 77694[/import]