Leaderboards and networking

Getting Started Newbie Questions
#1

Hi all,

I have previously used “Construct 2” game engine to produce a couple of games on Android and iOS. Construct 2 is drag and drop event based engine. It is very easy to use for rapid prototyping. The reasons I moved on:

1- Not free.

2- Produced HTML5 and relied on external tools to convert to iOS/Android (most of those tools don’t exist anymore).

3- Excellent for a small app but as complexity increases, events code become unmanageable.

4- Support for monitisation is not very good.

5- Tool support is dropped to force people to move on to Construct 3 (subscription based).

Finding Corona was great.

I have just finished and published my first (simple) app and I am feeling confident to move on to more complex things :slight_smile:

But before I go ahead I wanted to check that what I wanted to do is doable in Corona.

I would like to do a word puzzle where:

1- A new puzzle is sent every day.

2- I would like to time the sending of the puzzle based on the country (say 10:00 am in the country where the player is).

3- The player tries to finish it as soon as possible and the time is sent to a leaderboard where the results are divided by country (so you compete against a smaller group giving better chances of making it to the top 10).

4- By the end of the day, the world wide winners (top 10) are sent to everyone.

5- The player can boast about his/her position by posting it to Facebook/twitter.

Is the above achievable with Corona on iOS and Android?

I already found the “Apple Game Centre” and “gpgs” plugins in the Docs but they don’t seem to have the facility to divide by country.

What plugin would I use to send the daily puzzle?

The “Social popup” plugin seems like the thing I need but do I need to generate a “PNG” file to use it? If so, is there a plugin to generate a PNG file by combining an existing PNG with text?

It would be great if there was a plugin that would allow me to send/receive data directly to a web location. Then I could implement my own leaderboards and I could send the daily puzzle from there too, but does the iOS and Android security allow that?

Many thanks.

#2

You can sort of easily implement all the mentioned items with GameSparks ( but GameSparks is not free anymore) and you can probably do it with PlayFab (free to a point).

But yes you can implement your own sever somewhere and send network request via Corona in both iOS and Android.

Also I just looked at Construct pricing scheme and basically if you have lifetime revenue of more than 50K then you need to get the Business License at $400.00 / seat. At one point they were basically free.

#3

What you’ve mentioned is doable.

You don’t need any plugin to send and receive data. You can just use HTTP POST/GET, etc.

Regarding your “puzzle of the day”, I’d go about it another way. I would create a database (e.g. MySQL) and set up a minimalist PHP script on the server that you’d use in order to deliver the “puzzle(s) of the day” to the users. Now, instead of doing the delivery every day, I’d just download them in bulk beforehand. This way, you could use local notifications and reveal the puzzles to each player based on their device’s clock. If you want to ensure that players can’t change the dates on their devices, you could use the server to check the time as well.

You could setup the geo-locked leaderboards using PHP and MySQL as well. 

#4

@agramonte and @XeduR @Spyric

Thanks for the replies. I didn’t want to start until I got confirmation that it can be done.

#5

You can sort of easily implement all the mentioned items with GameSparks ( but GameSparks is not free anymore) and you can probably do it with PlayFab (free to a point).

But yes you can implement your own sever somewhere and send network request via Corona in both iOS and Android.

Also I just looked at Construct pricing scheme and basically if you have lifetime revenue of more than 50K then you need to get the Business License at $400.00 / seat. At one point they were basically free.

#6

What you’ve mentioned is doable.

You don’t need any plugin to send and receive data. You can just use HTTP POST/GET, etc.

Regarding your “puzzle of the day”, I’d go about it another way. I would create a database (e.g. MySQL) and set up a minimalist PHP script on the server that you’d use in order to deliver the “puzzle(s) of the day” to the users. Now, instead of doing the delivery every day, I’d just download them in bulk beforehand. This way, you could use local notifications and reveal the puzzles to each player based on their device’s clock. If you want to ensure that players can’t change the dates on their devices, you could use the server to check the time as well.

You could setup the geo-locked leaderboards using PHP and MySQL as well. 

#7

@agramonte and @XeduR @Spyric

Thanks for the replies. I didn’t want to start until I got confirmation that it can be done.