Free Messaging, Offline Timers, Triggers - (setup in just 6 minutes) - Just in time for GS v1

Hopscotch

Hi everyone,

APPFormative has reached Version 2, bigger and better. Come try it out!

Our aim is to make these powerful and fun back-end services available to everyone, for free!

Developing is easy thanks to GameSalad, self-publishing is easy thanks to the app stores.
Offline timers, sending in-app Messages to your users or controlling live changes to your app should be so too.

No need to host and maintain your own expensive server or learning new tricks.

Of course, Analytics and custom events are included.

Here some teasers (link is in the signature):

What is In-App Messaging?

What are Trggers?

MentalDonkeyGames

Very cool! Will definitely use this in my next game.

Keep up the good work!

gingagaming

Very nice work @Hopscotch

JSproject

Very well done @Hopscotch !!!

Socks

Cool stuff !

Dues

Awesome!

Moik

Well colour me signed up. There's a lot of high value functions being offered free. The anti-hacking is a must-implement for my current project.

How are data points defined? Like, each time a device sends game.Coins's current value, that's a data point? If it sends game.Coins and game.Gems that's two? If it sends both twice that's four?

What's the currency of the price quotes? I assume USD, but the commas and German HQ are making me think euros.

Hopscotch

@Moik, if you implement the anti-hacking/offline timer according to the instructions on the website, then it costs you NO datapoints. It is FREE.

The server sends you the total minutes elapsed since the user started it the first time on his/her device. The rest you manage in the app with tables according to the formula:

StartingCoins + LifetimeCoinsGainedoverTime + CoinsBoughtOrCollected - CoinsSpent

Obviously you can manage multiple different collectables at once in this way, each with their own starting amount and accumulation rate (n coins/n minutes).

Data points are only counted thus:
1 for one startup event
1 for each event you want to track.

neoman

Very cool! Nice one @Hopscotch .. Must try it at some stage ...

The_Gamesalad_Guru

Nice!

CodeMonster

Awesome!!

BigDave

Good Job Roland

StormyStudio

Very nice work indeed..

Armelline

Great service!

Hopscotch

Thank you for the comments everyone!

As some may imagine this to be complicated to implement in your project and require a lot of code, I have put together an overview of all that would be needed code wise.

As you can see, a short set of behaviours to give you Messaging, Triggers, Offline Timers, A/B Testing and Event Tracking.

Publish as usual.

This is another testament to the ease and speed of development in GameSalad. Implementing any of the above, on their own, in any of the competitor tools, would take a minimum of an hour to realize, just the app code alone.

MentalDonkeyGames

@Hopscotch i have a few questions about the cross-platform leaderboards.

-It says on the appformative website that it shows the top 10 names. Assuming a player is not in the top 10, is it possible to display how high the player is on the leaderboard?

-The T_Leaders table should have 6 columns. First is the player name, second is the score. What are the other 4 columns for?

-What happens if more than one player uses the same nickname on the leaderboards? I know there´s the player_ID so the scores won´t overwrite each other, but is there something to prevent the use of an already existing nickname?

PS. One thing confused me in the setup instructions... In STEP 2, the "change table value" behavior shows that the score is stored in column 1, and the player name in column 2. In the end of the setup it says that names are in column 1 and scores in column 2. Is there an error on the instructions?

Hopscotch

@NipaDidIt , to address your questions:

-It says on the appformative website that it shows the top 10 names. Assuming a player is not in the top 10, is it possible to display how high the player is on the leaderboard?

Currently if the player is not in the top 10 he/she would not be shown. It is a sensible request to want to be able to show the player where they rank and I will look into adding it.

-The T_Leaders table should have 6 columns. First is the player name, second is the score. What are the other 4 columns for?

It is mainly to make the copy table behavior from T_Analytics to T_Leaders work reliably, since T_Analytics is 6 columns. Added to this, the remaining fields are also padding for some custom fields for some further features.

-What happens if more than one player uses the same nickname on the leaderboards? I know there´s the player_ID so the scores won´t overwrite each other, but is there something to prevent the use of an already existing nickname?

The standard Leaderboards are intended to be very simple to implement and follow an arcade machine style nickname entry. Two users can choose the same nickname.

There are more involved features which allow for user registration, either through the app or by website, which would cater for unique nicknames. Needles to say, this also makes the implementation more involved.

PS. One thing confused me in the setup instructions... In STEP 2, the "change table value" behavior shows that the score is stored in column 1, and the player name in column 2. In the end of the setup it says that names are in column 1 and scores in column 2. Is there an error on the instructions?

It is correct however, it may be counterintuitive, but is necessary for some backwards compatibility.

I hope these answer your questions.

Lovejoy

This is great stuff, very useful!

MentalDonkeyGames

@Hopscotch Thanks for the quick reply.

EDIT:

One more question...

Would it be possible to show more than the top 10?