Online High Score System.

Monkey Archive Forums/Monkey Discussion/Online High Score System.

Paul - Taiphoz(Posted 2012) [#1]
What would or do you guys think of a community Monkey High Score system, a database driven system for tracking high scores for monkey made games.

if BRL or a member of the community were to create a simple system to allow you all to implement online highscore's into your apps, would it be something you would use.

I know mobile offers this from things like Open Faint and other services depending on the platform, but unlike monkey, they are all platform specific, would a High Score system designed for monkey even be viable ?


c.k.(Posted 2012) [#2]
These "backends as a service" are not platform specific:

http://fatfractal.com/
https://cloudmine.me/
http://www.kinvey.com/
http://www.roarengine.com
http://www.applicasa.com
http://www.clay.io
http://www.scoreoid.net
http://www.playtomic.com
http://www.playphone.com
http://www.apiomat.com/
http://www.kumulos.com/
http://www.ftw.co/
https://simperium.com/
http://buddy.com/
https://www.stackmob.com/
https://www.parse.com/
https://www.mobdb.net/home
http://playerio.com/features/

We just need to decide which one we want to support, then we need to create a cross-platform library for monkey to use it.

Who's with me?!


Paul - Taiphoz(Posted 2012) [#3]
BRL did a server thing a while back for blitz it would be cool if they did a score database service for us to use , would make score tables visible on this site as well..

however if they dont go for it, then yeah I am defiantly up for sorting some sort of scoring system out.

I am sitting looking at my bit-invader code and about to do online score's for it, while I am more than happy to just code my own php backend and set up a database for myself I was thinking that the community as a whole would probably benefit from having something like this sorted out and working.


c.k.(Posted 2012) [#4]
I don't know about you, but it would take me a while to code up a PHP backend for my game with all the necessary security so it couldn't be hacked or allow cheating. It would include user management, verification, and security, as well as an admin interface. Code in analytics, in-game messaging, in-app purchases, etc., and you've got a long time of development ahead of you.

While I could do all this, I don't want to. So, my only option is to go with a backend-as-a-service provider (either from the list above or somebody else).

I've been looking for comparative reviews but haven't found any!

Are there any monkey coders who have used a backend service, or rolled your own? Anecdotes welcome... :-)


Xaron(Posted 2012) [#5]
I once did one but actually your question goes in another direction?

http://www.monkeycoder.co.nz/Community/posts.php?topic=812


Paul - Taiphoz(Posted 2012) [#6]
Nah c.k that sounds a lot more than the simple score tracking I am talking about.

What I am talking about are a few tables like this.

Dev
id,name,url,username,password,avatar......

Game
id,game_name,icon,screen_shot,.....

Table
id,dev_id,game_id,game_diff_level,position,name,score,time,order

Developers could sign up, add their own games, once they have a game added, they can configure a table for it, and then add a score, or a time etc.

With a simple API to handle adding a score or a time, I wont really go into security clearly its something that needs to be thought about longer but for the moment the above is the extent of my idea.

Something any MONKEY ONLY developer can sign upto, and use for their games, something thats simple for them to use, that wont get in the way of their development and wont slow them down, but that will allow them to add a cool feature to their game.


c.k.(Posted 2012) [#7]
IMHO, the man hours required for development would be a drain on the resources of this community. Who will host the server? Who's going to pay for it? Who will administer it? Who's going to respond to feature requests? etc...

Go with something pre-rolled, like Scoreoid. It's simple and meets most of your needs... http://www.monkeycoder.co.nz/Community/posts.php?topic=3386


Paul - Taiphoz(Posted 2012) [#8]
I could knock the above system out in a day, and probably eventually will do for my own personal use if something more community based cant be worked out.

the code itself is not that complex its only when the system is opend up to others that some complexity will creep in.

I think a simple system like this could easily be done by BRL/Mark/Simon and have it linked to each users, user account in some way, granted this is a more complex system than the server tracker they did in the past but its still worth mentioning.

As for rolling with one that's done by some one else I do not really have any major objections to that at all, but it kinda defeats the purpose of having a system for monkey only, something that could potentially be used on this site.