Is it wrong to cheat on word games with your friends and strangers?

At ZuluOneZero we love games and puzzles. Any sort of game. Any sort of puzzle. But there is a special reserved bike parking spot for the word games winner of the week.

It started with the Target puzzle in The Age.  This is a nine letter word puzzle where they give you nine letters with one in the middle and you need to find as many words as possible.  I wouldn’t mind saying that it gets a bit competitive as we all think with the same brain and don’t like to lose.

This is what a Target puzzle looks like…

But is it OK to cheat?  What is the etiquette and morality of using word helpers?

For example an excellent resource for all word related games and a must for people who want to improve their skills and vocab is http://word-grabber.com/.  I highly recommend it for working on your own.  But please don’t use it to cheat on social games.  That’s just not fair.

We got some feedback from the Endless Elevator Mechanics demo that we did a few days ago that compared it to the old Taito game Elevator Action (See some classic 1983 Game Play footage here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=durTn-5IAms).

I did love that game. Especially the music which I still find running around in my brain box decades later. So in homage to my favourite part of that game – crushing the bad guys with the elevator – I added it into the game play of Endless Elevator today.

OK self indulgent … I know.  Enjoy!

Don’t forget we are still Beta Testing The Dog Run game.

If you want to help with you can sign up here: https://play.google.com/apps/testing/com.ZuluOneZero.TheDogRun

This month we integrated our newest game The Dog Run with the Google Play Store Leaderboard service.  It looks, and possibly even should have been, really easy but in this reality it wasn’t.  One big problem that  was really time consuming was that we used the Google key signing service and then had an issue with our key.  Bit I think I’ll describe that in a separate post as it probably deserves more info that we got space for here and wasn’t really what this post is all about.

This post is a about how we integrated our game with the Google Play Store Leaderboard!

(The game has gone into Beta Testing if you would like a preview click the link here!)

First of all – do the research! Read the documentation and look at some tutorials. I found the documentation for the Plugin to be useful and this tutorial to be of the most help (thanks AppGuruz):

http://www.theappguruz.com/blog/leaderboard-setup-for-android-in-unity

But this is how we did it…

1.  To start with you have to be logged in to your Unity account when you open up your project in the Unity Editor.  You will need it to authorise stuff.

2.  Next you will need to import a copy of the Google Play Games plugin for Unity. This is an open-source project which integrates the Google Play Games API with Unity. (Disclaimer: it’s not endorsed or supervised by Unity Technologies).

This is the latest version I used and if you click on the image it will take you there.

The README.md in the repository has a pretty good summary of how to set it up and configure it and examples of how to call features and functions.

The plugin supports a heap of things:

Achievements
Leaderboards
Turn-based Multiplayer
Real-time Multiplayer
Events and Quests
Saved Games and
Nearby Connections

All we wanted was the Leaderboard so let’s start there.

3.  Import the package in the Unity Editor

Assets > Import Package > Custom Package

4.  Then open the Google Play Games Window in the Editor that will appear after you import the package.

Window > Google Play Games > Setup (Android Setup on my machine)

In the Android Setup you will put your Resource Definitions (we only had one for the leaderboard).

I’ll get to how we set up the Resources in the Google Play Console further down but this is what it looks like completed:

(The info in this screenshot is a dummy record so I didn’t have to redact anything for security)

5. Click On “Open Play Games Console” – it’s the blue highlighted link in the Android Configuration page above.

6. Go to the Development tools section and find the Google Play game services section.

7.  Click on the Game services section link

Right down the bottom will be this section confirming your API service:

8.  Find the Service in the list of Services and click on Manage this API (if you need to set up more services):

9.  Right there after drilling down through all those pages you will find your resources:

See that blue link there that says “Get Resources” – that’s your baby.  Once you click on that there are four tabs with a variety of formats.  You want the one that’s there by default for Android.  Take a copy of that xml and paste it into your Androind Setup/Configuration page in your project and your halfway there.    🙂

Now for the fun bit of configuring and scripting it for the game.

There is a bit of trial and error and unless you can connect up an Android device and actively debug through the console using that device there is a long iteration cycle for testing.  From within the editor you cannot test any of the functionality such as logging in as the Google Play Games user and opening the Leaderboard. You have to have the APK loaded up to the Google Play Store and in an Alpha Release Track to start testing.  The package has to be signed using a full key (ie. not the default debug one) and you need to install the package on to your test Android device from the Play Store so that it has the correct keys to work. You cannot build it locally and run it straight from your workstation.  The other thing is that in the Alpha Track the Leaderboard functionality can sometimes be really slow and sometimes just doesn’t load so because of that you need to be patient when testing.

To get this working in my game I created an empty game object and attached this script to it:

using UnityEngine;
using GooglePlayGames;

public class GPG : MonoBehaviour
{
    #region PUBLIC_VAR
    public string leaderboard;  // This is where to pass the resource string in!
    #endregion
    #region DEFAULT_UNITY_CALLBACKS
    public long my_score;  // This is where I passed in the users score
    public bool success;
    public bool GPGLoginReturned;

void Start()
    {
        PlayGamesPlatform.Activate();
        LogIn();
    }
    #endregion
    #region BUTTON_CALLBACKS

// Login to Google Account
public bool LogIn()
    {
        Social.localUser.Authenticate((success) =>
        {
            if (success)
            {
                string userInfo = "Username: " + Social.localUser.userName +
                    "\nUser ID: " + Social.localUser.id +
                    "\nIsUnderage: " + Social.localUser.underage;
            }
            else
            {
                Debug.Log("Login failed");
            }
        });
        return GPGLoginReturned = true;
    }


// Show All Leaderboards
public void OnShowLeaderBoard()
    {
        Social.ShowLeaderboardUI();
    }
	
// Adds a Score to the Leaderboard	
public void AddScoreToLeaderBoard(long my_score)
    {
        if (Social.localUser.authenticated)
        {
            Social.ReportScore(my_score, leaderboard, (bool success) =>
            {
                if (success)
                {
                    Debug.Log("Update Score Success");
                }
                else
                {
                    Debug.Log("Update Score Fail");
                }
            });
        }
    }

// Logout the Google+ Account
public void OnLogOut()
    {
        ((PlayGamesPlatform)Social.Active).SignOut();
    }
    #endregion
}

That basically handles all the interaction with the Google Play Services like user logon and off, showing the leaderboard, and updating the leaderboard. It’s about as simple as you can get.

To update an actual score during gameplay I added this code to the relevant section of the game:

if (!score_uploaded)
{
//AddScoreToLeaderBoard()
var gpg_Script = GPGObject.GetComponent();
long longScore = System.Convert.ToInt64(score_timenow);
gpg_Script.AddScoreToLeaderBoard(longScore);
score_uploaded = true;
}

And to show the Leaderboard I attached and exposed this method to a button call.

OnShowLeaderBoard()

That’s pretty much it. But factor in more time that you think.
It took me ten package builds and releases to get it right – hopefully you won’t have that much trouble.

Brian Here…

Every time I write that I misspell it as brain here and that’s probably appropriate as this post is all about using your brain to make money from your game. That’s at least part of the whole point right?

You can read the experts blogging about this all over the internet and it boils down to a few basic facts – and when I says facts it’s only true because everyone says it and repeats it:

1. The free to play games with multiple virtual and real “currencies” in the game economy do best.
2. Rewarded ads monetise players who do not spend. Apparently that’s most of them.
3. You need to get players hooked on the game first and then introduce rewards slowly.
4. You need to build networks with partners who can help promote and support your game and economy.

It’s all about volume and scale. You’re not making a huge amount of cash from every player. It’s small change dollars and cents. So to make any money you have to have heaps and heaps of people who not only download your game but play it regularly. So the game better be good and popular.

The rewards are going to start slowly. So there is no big bang money injection when you release your game. It’s a real slow burn and you need to pick your engagement points so that the game stays enjoyable through all that time.

But how the hell do you do that? You have to test the game with heaps and heaps of people and different target audiences. This is not functional testing. I mean actual player response. You need to know when those frustration points are that mean a player may watch an ad or buy some power-ups to get through some level or reach some achievement. To do that you also need an in-app monitoring system that tracks players progress and provides up to date statistics on what’s happening out there in user land.

You need to be able to squeeze those moments and know which one’s are working and be able to replicate them in other situations in the game. You need to entice players not only with a great game but with achievements and rewards, and special power-ups, and gems and hearts and badges and leader boards and competitions and in game sales campaigns. It’s a huge task.

So these are the metrics and these are the logistics. It’s like organising an empire or a battlefield (hey that would make a good game!). It needs lots of planning and help from as many sides as you can muster.

Every time the player gets rewarded it only seems fair that we get rewarded as well for a job well done.

Xander here…

I’m really pushing to get the flip book style 2D endless runner game we started at the beginning of the year finished.  The game is called Dog Run and as the title suggests is about taking your fun lovin’ pooch for a run – but watch out! There is a bunch of obstacles in your path – it’s a good thing you are such a natural jumper and can run all day.

If you want to do some beta testing of the game subscribe to this blog using the form on the right!

So I wanted to do a nice simple bird flying in the background to add a bit on interest (and also as a distraction for the player).  How hard do you think that would be?  It’s just a little birdy flapping about.  Whole games have been made with less!  It actually too me three days to get this little bird looking right.

In the beginning I started with just a straight fly-by  – a simple transform move that crossed the screen.

Straight

transform.position -= new Vector3(0.1f, 0, 0);

Not that exiting right? But you know – it’s a start.

I thought a little more about it and decided it would look better if there was a bit more movement.  I originally envisioned a sort of swooping dive from the top of the screen.

This got me a little closer but it looks really nothing at all like a bird would or could fly. A mechanical bird maybe – but not your darling little currawong.

ZigZag

if (updown)
{
target.position = new Vector3(transform.position.x - 2, transform.position.y - 2, transform.position.z);
updown = false;
}
else
{
target.position = new Vector3(transform.position.x - 2, transform.position.y + 2, transform.position.z);
var desiredRot = new Vector3(0, 0, -30);
updown = true;
}

Not such an elegant piece of code but it did what I wanted it to without a huge fuss.

ZigZag with Rotation

I tried to fix it a bit by adding in some rotation towards the direction being flown:

from.rotation = transform.rotation;
to.rotation = Quaternion.Euler(new Vector3(0, 0, 30));
transform.rotation = Quaternion.Lerp(from.rotation, to.rotation, Time.time * lspeed);

I really wasn’t liking where this was going.

Follow the Sine

I had the brainwave to start using a centre point and looping the bird around it with transform.RotateAround();  Which started off looking really good. But all I could do was get the bird to fly in circles – which started to look a little mad!

Finally after many attempts I found a method for using a Sine function that looked like it would work really well.  It meant adding a rigidbody to my object and a bit more overhead than I really wanted for a background character but what the heck I’d spent this much time on it – might as well have it look the way I wanted.

public Rigidbody2D rb;

public Transform target;    // A point on the far side of the screen to fly towards
public float speed;             //  I ended up between 2 and 3 in the inspector for this one
public float amplitude;     //  How high (or low) each wave would be - around 8 worked best
public float frequency;     // How many waves would run in the given time (2 to 4 was used)

private float startTime;
private Vector3 direction;
private Vector3 orthogonal;

void Start()
{
startTime = Time.time;
direction = (target.position - transform.position).normalized;    // Which way to head
orthogonal = new Vector3(-direction.z, direction.x, 0);               //  Which wave to catch!
}

void FixedUpdate()
{
float t = Time.time - startTime;
rb.velocity = direction * speed + orthogonal * amplitude * Mathf.Sin(frequency * t);
// The Black Magic
}

This worked a treat and with a bit of tuning was dipping and diving all over the shop!

All I needed to do next was to get a little rotation into the picture and we were totally flying!

Sine with Rotation

transform.right = -rb.velocity;

Thanks to: http://blog.shamanland.com/2016/03/move-by-sinusoid.html

For helping me understand what I wanted and for not protecting me from the details.