We need GC Achievements, but let's make it right
I was attending the monetization event and at the end in the Q&A session I asked what happens to the Kiip achievements when the user has no internet connection. The reply was that the achievement would be lost forever because there is no way to cache it somewhere.
If this is how GS thinks of implementing GC Achievements then maybe it's better to not have them at all. Apparently there are more and more users that want GC Achievements in the games they downloads and I don't want them to be pissed because they reached the 99th level jumping on one feet while playing a mozart's sonata and they can't see it on GC because they had no connection.
I have yet to see a game (the serious ones at least) that don't address this. Apparently what they do is that when the Achievement occur they check if the internet connection is active and if it isn't they cache the request until the connection returns again. They do it also if the connection is active to avoid the 1% chance that the posting fails.
This is useful also when posting multiple Achievements at once or multiple scores. GS tells us to put at least a couple of seconds between each posting and I suspect they will do it also with achievements. This needs to change In the example above I would need to send 3 achievements and probably one score. It would be hard to predict how and when a user got more than one achievements at once and rule them accordingly.
So please GS for once hear us and make the achievements right.
________________________________
Mark On The Iron - 【ツ】iPhone Icon Pack【ツ】 - 【ツ】Graphic Pack【ツ】
Free GS demos: High score simple and advanced; Game Center; App Rating System; Custom Font Score and Countdown; Advanced Snap to Grid
If this is how GS thinks of implementing GC Achievements then maybe it's better to not have them at all. Apparently there are more and more users that want GC Achievements in the games they downloads and I don't want them to be pissed because they reached the 99th level jumping on one feet while playing a mozart's sonata and they can't see it on GC because they had no connection.
I have yet to see a game (the serious ones at least) that don't address this. Apparently what they do is that when the Achievement occur they check if the internet connection is active and if it isn't they cache the request until the connection returns again. They do it also if the connection is active to avoid the 1% chance that the posting fails.
This is useful also when posting multiple Achievements at once or multiple scores. GS tells us to put at least a couple of seconds between each posting and I suspect they will do it also with achievements. This needs to change In the example above I would need to send 3 achievements and probably one score. It would be hard to predict how and when a user got more than one achievements at once and rule them accordingly.
So please GS for once hear us and make the achievements right.
________________________________
Mark On The Iron - 【ツ】iPhone Icon Pack【ツ】 - 【ツ】Graphic Pack【ツ】
Free GS demos: High score simple and advanced; Game Center; App Rating System; Custom Font Score and Countdown; Advanced Snap to Grid
Comments
i never thought of those things, but cached achievements or something along those lines would be outstanding. less worry of what the player does, less preventing the player from 'doing' anything until all of your posting is completed.
If game.points is bigger than 1000
Change attribute achievement1 to true.
If so, you can make each game attribute for each GC achievement, and change those:
If game.points is bigger than 1000
Change attribute game.1 to true.
Save attribute game.1.
And have in each scene an actor:
Load attribute game.1
If game.1 is true
Change attribute achievement1 to true.
Hope that you understand me. I think that would work.
That's what GS needs to fix before implementing GC Achievements.
But I want GC achievements no matter what :P
Since comment in that thread are not allowed maybe we can comment here.
@SaladStraightShooter the fact that Achievements are coming is an incredible news. That was the feature that I was expecting the most (along with the fix to the display text behavior that I hope is included in the second part of your post
However I hope you implemented GC Achievements correctly. In my first post on this thread I addressed my concerns on that matter and I really hope you have taken it into consideration. Probably the easiest thing for you to implement is to allow us to see if the device is connected to the internet. That would be a great thing and will surely help gain more favors from the users.
P.S. Any rough date? ^:)^
@Mark there are lots of improvements that could be made to display text - which are you hoping for ?
As for the rough date I think that I started crying knowing it's so close. Thanks again. :-S
@Rob2 The only important fix that I want on the display text behavior is for the texts to look good. At the moment they looks bad even on non retina displays.
Ace