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Bcadren
Lucien Fatima @Bcadren

Age 32, Male

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Joined on 12/19/13

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Returning to uGrounds...

Posted by Bcadren - June 30th, 2014


Alright I'm just itching to finish uGrounds and Tom never got back to me as to if it would ever be possible to make it an official package, so I'm going to assume it's not and finish it anyways. My goals with uGrounds were always:

1.) To make something I'd use myself in my own games. API integration can keep people that enjoy the game coming back to compete over scores at the very least.

2.) To make something a lot of people would use so I could be all 'my code was used in all of these projects!' for resume later.

3.) Attract more Unity Developers here.

Any direct profit takes a backseat to that; but that said. To the point it's at took about a week and will likely take at least that to finish; so I would appreciate such. So I guess I'm posting to ask; what features would y'all like to see in the final version (1) and (2) what sort of contract are y'all comfortable with.

I want to say the minimum I ask is 'due credit'; which can be either showing a watermark screen after the sponsor screen. (akin to the one that plays on Nitrome Jam games; for example).

A credit listing wherever you do credits are shown in your game or (as @Igmon did for GitGirl); a sidebar listing for 'additional programming'. Any rev share or donation is appreciated, but not required. Just credit me SOMEWHERE and PM me to tell me you used my code so I can list it on Resumes and stuff.

As for features; already working in the version from February:

1.) Posting Medals
2.) Registering Session (important for Ad Revenue)
3.) Posting High Scores
[Basic bare bones stuff.]

Planned:

1.) Referrals (opening Newgrounds and other pages via button press). 
Note: Unity can't do this internally so it will have to call out to a javascript shell to instantiate a CSS popup; which will be treated...as a popup (blocked by popup blockers, etc.)

2.) High Score Query (get a list of High Scores down from the Server).
3.) Default internal High Score Screen.
4.) Medal Popups.
5.) Default Medal Screen. 
Note: Will additionally save where medals are unlocked locally and resend request to unlock on button push of any medal unlocked locally. [To allow keeping up with medal earned while internet is intermittent.])

6.) Save file management. (Save Game; Load Game; List Save Files; Rate Save Files (for level editors and the like)).

Possible Features: 
[Things I may or may not (be able to) do.]

1.) Click SaveFile loading. (Where you click on a save file outside the game and the game restarts having loaded the file; I'm fairly sure this is handled with FlashVars and there may or may not be support for me putting in on the Unity side.)

2.) Advanced Save File Lookup. (being able to use the search function to look through all save files (for level editors and the like). I want to use this myself; but the documentation is on the incomplete side). http://www.newgrounds.com/wiki/creator-resources/newgrounds-apis/developer-gateway#wiki_toc_17 I might be able to figure it out with the help of someone posting the same command from ActionScript so I can decode what the ActionScript sends (or one of the staff, like @PsychoGoldfish to just tell me what's there).

3.) Intermittent Loading. This is a Unity Feature; not a Newgrounds one, but I thought it could be worth including. Would be included in two parts: An editor function that bundles everything needed for each scene into separate 'AssetBundles' so that you may only load what's needed for the first scene immediately and download the rest of the scenes in the background at run time. And a runtime script that loads each in order. (As this is a Pro-Only feature; I can't use it myself or debug it that well without Pro, not could anyone else without Pro use it; so...it's on the backburner if created at all.)

4.) Save Local. Function to use Unity's PlayerPrefs hashtable to store larger files, by encoding to a string and converting back. Would mostly be used for larger saveFiles to be saved locally instead of to the server. This is a real hijacking though; Prefs is intended for Ints, Booleans and short strings (like Player Name); it's also limited to 500 kb total.

5.) Friend List. [There's a command for this; but I'm not sure people really make social games here; doesn't seem like the market for it. I may just not going to implement it; unless someone specifically asks...I might get a handler to handle downloading and saving a copy of the list; but not actually going to use it for anything.]


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