Game Center Integration Questions

moopf

I'm just about to start adding Game Center to an app I'm creating and I'm curious whether I need to do anything special in terms of the Lua code to ensure that on Android the app doesn't try to reference anything it shouldn't. Or will Gideros just ignore anything for Gamekit on Android?

There doesn't seem to be any documentation still for Gamekit in the reference manual so I guess I'm going to have to pick together how to use it from what's already on the forums

semp

Just filter iOS devices using:

Application:getDeviceInfo()

Watch the Gideros documentation for more informations.

moopf

Hi @semp - well aware of getDeviceInfo() just want to be sure that there's nothing else I need to do, that's all.

hgvyas123

no nothing else needed to do.

also here's the few thread for game center integration

www.giderosmobile.com/forum/discussion/1932/game-center-example-code-for-leaderboards

www.giderosmobile.com/forum/discussion/comment/1538

atilim

@moopf because GameKit is available only for iOS, you have two options:
1. Application:getDeviceInfo()
2. calling require "gamekit" with pcall:

local isGameKitAvailable = pcall(function() require "gamekit" end)

phongtt

Another option: use preprocessor macro

atilim

@phongtt once I've used gcc preprocessor to remove all print functions in a gideros project. is your solution similar to this?

phongtt

Yes, at Guava7 we don't write code on Gideros IDE. We only use it to load preprocessed code+data ready to transfer to the Player.

We use a Python script to prepare
Code (i.e. calling MCPP to preprocess source code; obfuscating code; etc.)
Data (i.e. parsing Excel file containing game texts and binarizing it; processing TMX [Tiled UI] data; etc.)
Project configuration (i.e. game name, xcode id, etc.)

atilim

@phongtt whoa! that's great! (and mcpp http://mcpp.sourceforge.net/ seems a great alternative to gcc -E)

moopf

Can't seem to find any reference to sending achievements on the forum for Gamekit. Does anybody have the call to hand?

atilim

you can use GameKit:reportAchievement(identifier, percentComplete)

moopf

Why thank you @atilim that's just what I was after Are there events that trigger when these are completed (same with reporting scores actually)?

atilim

yes, Event.REPORT_ACHIEVEMENT_COMPLETE event is dispatched. btw, if you look at gamekit.mm, you can understand all functions and events of GameKit.

moopf

Doh, of course. Forgot I could look in the .mm

moopf

Got another question about the Gamekit integration, specifically with achievements. I'm sure Game Center normally pops up at the top of your app confirming to the player when it registers an achievement as being obtained. At least I'm pretty sure that normally happens. However I don't appear to be seeing this in my Gideros app. Is there something special I have to do to get this to happen or is it not supported in the integration currently so would I have to do my own popup?

Nascode

@moopf
since IOS 5 the default is the completion banner wont appear http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/GameKit/Reference/GKAchievement_Ref/Reference/Reference.html#//apple_ref/occ/instp/GKAchievement/showsCompletionBanner

To make it appear, fix it from the gamekit plugin (Plugins/gamekit.mm) on line 202

achievement.percentComplete = percentComplete; achievement.showsCompletionBanner = YES;

moopf

@Nascode - yes, I played with doing this last night after discovering that it was no longer on by default. Thing is, now I have, I think I'm going to remove it and do my own popups that are more in-keeping with the style of my app anyway Thanks for posting this though, I'm sure it will be useful for others.

atilim

@Nascode I haven't known this also. I'll update gamekit.mm. Thanks.

moopf

@atilim If you're going to include it can you make it optional by default, so we can just turn it on if we want to? I quite like the idea of doing my own now

atilim

@moopf oh yes, you're right. then reportAchievement will take a 3rd parameter (showsCompletionBanner). thanks for the notice.

Nascode

@moopf @atilim you are welcome.

i alao have played on some ios plugins for now, hopefully i could release them soon enough on GitHub

alexzheng

Just to be curious, after read the apple document,it saids all these CompletionHandler maybe called on a different thread(may not the thread our normal lua code runs in),so should we ourself make the handler code in lua thread safe?
I wonder how is the dispatchEvent implemented in C++, will it always run code of these listeners on a specific thread(the one that add these listeners, also the same as normal lua code runs in) or just run them on the thread that call dispatchEvent(if that case is true, we must make sure the lua code in the listeners is thread safe).

atilim

@alexzheng yes, you're totally right. I'll read the documentation again and will add performSelectorOnMainThread to these events. thank you for the warning.

There is an internal thread-safe event queue. Currently the only plugin that uses this queue is GoogleBilling. Later I'm planning to modify GameKit plugin to utilize this queue.

Nascode

@atilim many things we know about plugins development comes from reading your plugin code, hopefully we can have updated plugins how-to for both ios and android like internal thread-safe event queue?

SinisterSoft

atilim, is the update with the 3rd parameter coming soon?

GameKit:reportAchievement(identifier, percentComplete,true)

I've just uploaded an update that adds GameCenter - but will cancel if it's not too far off...

atilim

@SinisterSoft - Most probably I'll release a new version in a couple of days. If you want you can cancel your binary.

@Nascode You're totally right. Give me a couple of days.