Leaderboards and mutiple platforms - Best approach ?

[plicatibu]

Currently the common practice is to use one leaderboard API for platform (for instace, Mochi API for Flash, Google API for Android, Apple API for iOs, and so on).

 

There is one provider that has an agnostic API (it's rest service API) that allow us to use just one leaderboard no matter for which platform the game was made.

 

I'm talking about scoreoid .net.

 

The problem is that it's expensive if your game has many users / if you have more than a game.

 

How do you guys handle this?

 

Do you use a similiar service to scoreoid? Which one?

 

Do you developed your own server to handle the leaderboard?

 

Do you use one API for each platform?

 

Do you use only local leaderboard?

[Rune]

I would look into Clay.io.  I use it for all my games.  The leaderboards are very easy to implement, and work well on mobile and desktop.

[plicatibu]

But does clay.io allow us to use its infrastructure for games of any platform?

I am though it was just for HTML games.

And it seems that its API is released only in JavaScript. It turns it hard to use it in Flash, Android, and so on.

[RazorSharpFang]

The raw javascript API they ( clay.io ) give you will only work for html5, as it's javascript to be run in the browser, but I'm sure you can just fudge the calls anyhow. That said, they never really expose the inner api to you, they just say "call Clay.leaderboard.post();" but that code in loaded externally through a <script> tag that's minified and obfuscated. : /

 

I guess you could just drop them a line and ask them, but it may be more trouble than it is worth, if all you're looking for is a leaderboard.

 

I do know that gamejolt has a platform-agnostic api for leaderboard handling, it'll work on any machine that can do http calls. But you're going to have to implement the http side of things yourself. 

 

It works like this. Want to submit a score?

 

run a http call to : http://gamejolt.com/api/game/v1/scores/add/ adding parameters using the http '?' character. ?game=awesome&post=cool

 

You'll have to make an account, and add a game, but once you've done that, it'll work perfectly. You'll be given a game id, which you'll use to identify your game, and a secret game key, to make sure it's really YOU posting it. (your game, I mean).

 

So, you could host the html5 edition there, and have all leaderboards synced on their system. It's pretty good, I recon.

You can read their full documentation here : http://gamejolt.com/api/doc/game/ - scores and stuff will be on the navigation, over to the right.

 

Happy devving!

[plicatibu]

I will take a look into their docs.

Thank you so much for letting me know.

[austin]

If your game has native exports to iOS and Android (eg if you're using GameMaker) then we (Clay.io) don't really have a good way to support that since the API is all JavaScript based. Technically you can run our API on a node.js backend, but not for the user accounts side of things.

 

A REST API theoretically wouldn't be too difficult for us to do for things like leaderboards and achievements, but if we're going to go that route, we're going to want to support everything (including user accounts) which would require us to implement some sort of OAuth solution. We just haven't had enough requests for a REST API to make time for it (yet).

[plicatibu]

@austing Let me say I developed the game in HTML 5 and generated binaries for Android, iOS, BlackBerry, and so on using PhoneGap.

 

All calls to Clay.io where originaly made using javascript in the HTML5 version. I believe the it will still be called the original javascript on any platform generated using PhoneGap, right?

 

So theorically I can use Clay.io leaderobards. Am I right?

 

In affirmative case, I'll use Clay.io API for all my games.

 

Regards.

[austin]

If you're using PhoneGap it should work fine. The only thing you'd need to do in phonegap is add *.clay.io to the list of external sites the app can access (I don't remember how exactly that's done in the config file off the top of my head)

[Rune]

I can't speak to regular Phonegap, but I've gotten Clay.io working Phonegap Build with little effort.

[aladine]

Clai.io has a good service for leaderboard but i would rather go with scoreoid.net/ (tried it twice and it works perfectly) 

[plicatibu]

Clai.io has a good service for leaderboard but i would rather go with scoreoid.net/ (tried it twice and it works perfectly) 

 

The problem with scoreoid is that it costs a lot of money.

[Samita]

You can consider looking into ShepHertz App42 Cloud API (http://api.shephertz.com) which comes with vast range of technical and business services and are available in 18+ target SDks including iOS/Android/J2ME/JAVA/C#/PHP/RUBY/WP7/Corona/Cocos 2dx.  APP42 Leader board APIs make this task by providing SDKs to access and save your game scores on our readymade backend. Through simple API calls from the SDK, App42 backend will fetch the data requested from the backend.  App42 leader board APIs also provide global leader boards and leader boards based on time such as daily, weekly top scorers etc. ShepHertz provides complete Backened As A Service for your app and gives a better insight of your app data through management console.

 

Thanks

Samita Mahajan

[benconnito]

https://www.leaderboards.io - is a great leaderboards service. you can create as many boards as you want and you get top 100 scores for several timeframes (today, yesterday, this week, etc) and social leaderboards. Its easy to integrate with; uses a cross platform JSON REST api.

[shohan4556]

On 6/4/2015 at 11:57 PM, benconnito said:

https://www.leaderboards.io - is a great leaderboards service. you can create as many boards as you want and you get top 100 scores for several timeframes (today, yesterday, this week, etc) and social leaderboards. Its easy to integrate with; uses a cross platform JSON REST api.

would you pleas tell me how it works ? 

[benconnito]

@shohan4556 leaderboards.io is a simple HTTPS REST api. You make https requests to the documented endpoints via GET, POST, PUT, DELETE and receive JSON data back for your leaderboard. It uses an api key and secret for authentication. You can get these values either by API calls or by viewing the board settings on the site. If you're still interested and want more info or have suggestions for our documentation please feel free to email [email protected]

[ivanix]

Looks like most of these sites have folded or changed focus.  

I just found http://playtomic.org/  which is open source and can be self hosted, but I'll probably go with gamespark for this.

Anyone have experience with either or can recommend others that will be stable for the foreseeable future?

[GTDev]

For mobile applications that offer leaderboards, you can also have a look at V-Play Engine. 
You can develop mobile apps with Javascript / QML and take advantage of many ready-to-use services. These few code lines allow to integrate a full leaderboard:

 // service configuration
 VPlayGameNetwork {
   id: gameNetwork
   gameId: 285
   secret: "AmazinglySecureGameSecret"

   // increase leaderboard score by 1 for each app start
   Component.onCompleted: gameNetwork.reportRelativeScore(1)
 }

 // social view setup
 SocialView {
   id: socialView
   gameNetworkItem: gameNetwork
   initialPage: leaderboardPage
 }
}

For more information, you can have a look here: https://v-play.net/cross-platform-app-development/how-to-add-chat-service-and-cross-platform-leaderboard-with-user-profiles-to-your-ios-or-android-app