Support for Playtomic analytics in Corona SDK

Games
#21

@Screaming Leaf what’s your SWFID? I"ll take a look [import]uid: 97745 topic_id: 20295 reply_id: 82466[/import]

#22

6172 [import]uid: 94868 topic_id: 20295 reply_id: 82469[/import]

#23

ok i reproduced the bug ( made myself a new game, tried loading GameVars, didn’t work )

we’ll fix this and get back to you! [import]uid: 97745 topic_id: 20295 reply_id: 82477[/import]

#24

Awesome! Thanks for working on it! [import]uid: 94868 topic_id: 20295 reply_id: 82486[/import]

#25

ok fixed it, service should be up and running again! [import]uid: 97745 topic_id: 20295 reply_id: 82736[/import]

#26

It is now working great! Thanks again! [import]uid: 94868 topic_id: 20295 reply_id: 82853[/import]

#27

anyone else I can help? I’ll help you guys implement analytics! [import]uid: 97745 topic_id: 20295 reply_id: 83826[/import]

#28

Hi Ben, Angelo
At first thanks for a great solution (Ben) and a generous Lua port (Angelo) ! Playtomic works great, and the example is very helpful. I do have a few questions thought, to make sure I understand well some details as well as some “good practices”.

  1. Event batch sending - Every time we log an event, it goes into the queue, and then the entire batch of queued events is sent after a timer expire, is this correct ? Can we affect the time interval that the timer is running with ?

  2. forceSend - in relation to the above, forceSend will send entire queue on demand, regardless of the timer ? Is that correct ?

  3. event queue - are the values that are being queued cumulative, or overriding ? if between the two submissions to server I update certain values several times, will they override previous one, add to them, or just send them all to server as if I was submitting them one by one ?

  4. average play time - how is it determined ? I assume it might be the average interval between the two Log.Play( ) submissions, but is it possible to log a game over too ? I am using custom metrics to measure the actual gameplay time, but it would be great if I can do the same by leveraging existing API.

  5. unique users / player source - I am getting “locahost” for all inputs ( although analytics correctly recognizes the player’s country ). What would be the best way to track the unique users/device, I assume it is related to “sources” data field in Playtomic.

  6. unique metrics - what is the default value, true or false ( I assume false ) ?

Thanks a bunch for all the help and hard work ! [import]uid: 80100 topic_id: 20295 reply_id: 85778[/import]

#29

Playtomic Servers Not Working Today ( Feb 09 ) ?

Are Playtomic servers undergoing some maintenance today, because I can’t submit anything ? None of my apps including the Angelo’s sample as-is couldn’t submit absolutely no data the whole day. Needless to say, it’s the very same code that worked flawlessly yesterday…
I have two Playtomic accounts, none of them is registering any events.
By the way I don’t get any error message, here’s one of the typical submissions that are not being registered:

Send: http://g53d4e7a384004f2d.api.playtomic.com/tracker/q.aspx?swfid=6411&q=c/refrigerator/KilledBy&url=ansca.corona.playtomic&0.9309430601685z
[import]uid: 80100 topic_id: 20295 reply_id: 85809[/import]

#30

@nosheet

Playtomic’s API servers are being overwhelmed a bit now

if you look at http://api.playtomic.com/load.html

you can see most of the lines have tanked to zero.

but don’t worry, we’re fixing this!

i’m preparing a reply to your first question. [import]uid: 97745 topic_id: 20295 reply_id: 85824[/import]

#31

@nosheet , here are the answers…

  1. Event batch sending - Every time we log an event, it goes into the queue, and then the entire batch of queued events is sent after a timer expire, is this correct ? Can we affect the time interval that the timer is running with ?

bazookaBen: If you look at playtomic.lua, we send stuff to the servers every 60 seconds. You can change it, but please don’t send too many requests in a short interval. Because they will get rejected

  1. forceSend - in relation to the above, forceSend will send entire queue on demand, regardless of the timer ? Is that correct ?

bazookaBen: Yes. The entire queue.

  1. event queue - are the values that are being queued cumulative, or overriding ? if between the two submissions to server I update certain values several times, will they override previous one, add to them, or just send them all to server as if I was submitting them one by one ?

bazookaBen: Cumulative. It’s an array, and we add the events to the back of it.

  1. average play time - how is it determined ? I assume it might be the average interval between the two Log.Play( ) submissions, but is it possible to log a game over too ? I am using custom metrics to measure the actual gameplay time, but it would be great if I can do the same by leveraging existing API.

bazookaBen + javier the tech guy: After the first event (View) the API starts a timer which ticks the first time at 60 seconds and after that ticks every 30 seconds. This tick sends a ping to the server which is used to get the duration or play time. The server divides the amount of pings by the amount of views and multiplies the result by 30 (because every ping is after 30 seconds) to get the average time your game is played every day.

  1. unique users / player source - I am getting “locahost” for all inputs ( although analytics correctly recognizes the player’s country ). What would be the best way to track the unique users/device, I assume it is related to “sources” data field in Playtomic.

bazookaBen: Playtomic doesn’t gather UDIDs. We only gather game data that you, the game developer wants to track. From a privacy point, it’s just shady to collect UDIDs. There’s a bunch of other companies who did that in the past and they got burned.

  1. unique metrics - what is the default value, true or false ( I assume false ) ?

bazookaBen + javier the tech guy: default value is false
PS: keep 'em questions coming! [import]uid: 97745 topic_id: 20295 reply_id: 85837[/import]

#32

servers working fine now! [import]uid: 97745 topic_id: 20295 reply_id: 85848[/import]

#33

I made some small changes and committed them. I had forgotten to make a couple of the variables local.

-Angelo [import]uid: 12822 topic_id: 20295 reply_id: 86259[/import]

#34

@bazookaBen I’m checked out the code from github, and tried unfreezing and got an error.

playtomic.lua:208: attempt to get length of local ‘frozenqueue’ (a nil value)

Am I doing something wrong? I called freeze before hand. Seems like unfreeze expects data to have been batch logged or something. [import]uid: 27183 topic_id: 20295 reply_id: 96872[/import]

#35

Something odd is going on, I’m passing a table for the eventData to logEvent, but I’m reusing that table for subsequent calls. For instance when I log a custom event I have a table.

logData = {  
 custom = { type = 'custom' }  
 -- ... other types  
}  
  
function logCustom(\_eventGroup, \_eventName, \_unique)  
 logData['custom'].eventGroup = \_eventGroup  
 logData['custom'].unique = \_unique  
 analytics.logEvent(\_eventName, logData['custom']  
end

But when the data appears in the dashboard the event is ungrouped. If I create an anonymous table and pass it into the logEvent function, the data appears grouped.

I’m looking at the playatomic code and I don’t understand why that’s the case. Any ideas?
[import]uid: 27183 topic_id: 20295 reply_id: 96875[/import]

#36

With regards to the frozenqueue bug, looks like the MassQueue call is being passed nothing.

function Log.UnFreeze()  
 Frozen = false;  
 if(#FrozenQueue \> 0)then  
 Request.MassQueue();  
 end  
end

[import]uid: 27183 topic_id: 20295 reply_id: 96880[/import]

#37

I guess I need to pass FrozenQueue, I can update that, thanks.

Not sure why the table thing is not working. It seems like it would be the same either way since analytics.logEvent just grabs stuff from the table.

-Angelo [import]uid: 12822 topic_id: 20295 reply_id: 97013[/import]

#38

Yeah that table issue is weird. I tested it in the app and just used the anonymous tables. I also just passed FrozenQueue, and that solved the issue. [import]uid: 27183 topic_id: 20295 reply_id: 97025[/import]

#39

How can we get leaderboards to work? [import]uid: 82699 topic_id: 20295 reply_id: 101045[/import]

#40

hey bazookaBen, hope you’re still around!

Just made added a new gameId the other day and I don’t seem to be seeing any updates.

the swfid is 428399.

I was experimenting with charles proxy and it seems that I am always getting an unknownHost failure.
It tries connecting to g98e2631350074ccc.api.playtomic.com [import]uid: 94868 topic_id: 20295 reply_id: 112090[/import]