Sync game user progress across devices - unity - unity3d

I have a really simple game on both iOS and Android written in Unity and I would like to save user progress across devices/OSes.
I already have Facebook analytics in it and so i was thinking i can implement Facebook Login and just save a couple of numbers on the Facebook server.
Upon some research it seems (?) that Facebook doesn't offer anything like that. You have to set up your own server and then just identify the player with Facebook login. A server like that is really an overkill for the game as i just want to save a simple Level Passed number.
Is there any other way? Can i use Facebook like that to save ONE custom user property? Perhaps i can use Google Play Services (both iOS and Android (?) ) to achieve what i want?
Any other free way of saving user progress across devices?

First thing Google play service stopped support for IOS
https://developers.google.com/games/services/ios/quickstart
Other suggestion for Cross platform services like firebase cloud, photon, Gamesprak etc.
https://firebase.google.com/products/firestore/
https://www.photonengine.com/
https://www.gamesparks.com/
Please not most of them giving free service for development only. Before use please check its price details

Related

Display Gamecenter leaderboard on website

Is there currently a way to read GameCenter leaderboard data from the Web?
I'm looking for a read only way to display a leaderboard on a companion website. I do not need to post scores or otherwise manipulate the leaderboard off the device.
I have a feeling the answer is going to be no and I'll need to use OpenFeint's because they have a JSON API available.
I have been trying to find an answer to this as well.
I came across an interesting article Game Center via Openfeint
that discusses using Openfeint and Gamecenter together by using the new Openfeint SDK
Then using their JSON API publish results to the supporting website. I cant see any other way around it and feel this is what we need to do. Not the nicest, but you do end up with a game that sits in both communities.
Hope it helps.
If you are the author of the app and your web host provides PHP and MySQL you could roll your own server-side script to process score submissions and another script to generate a dynamic HTML page to display the scores in any way you like. Many web hosts offer PHP and MySQL for free.
There is no ready made solution that I am aware of.
To be honest I don't think there is much to gain from doing this, since players already have access to the leaderboard from within the game, and visitors to a website might not care about high-scores of a game they haven't played. Thats just my opinion.

How would I add code that would update an online "counter" so I know how many times an iPhone app is being opened?

So I have searched for this but not finding anything about it and if I missed it sorry about that. What I am trying to do is see how to go about adding some code to my iphone app that will connect to a php script (if connection available) and update a counter so that I can let my clients know that their app is constantly being used? Also, would apple allow that? Or would my app be denied for doing such a thing? Any help would be great! Thanks in advance.
There's a bit of network plumbing to implement this. It's not hard, but a much easier route would be to integrate something like Flurry analytics into your app. They you can make one function call, and have it track and upload the information to Flurry's servers. You can view those stats and get an idea of how people are using your app.
Note: I don't work for Flurry, but I use (and like) their service.

mobile application analytics

HI all,
so we all know "pinch media" - the "spyware" software ;)
i'm searching for some really cool analytics softwares for my iphone application.
pinch media, is the one i know, it looks really great, but we all know, the reputation of this piece of software is very bad.
i'd like to know if i can use it, or if my app then is one of this spyware apps, for users (it isnt really, i know, but users might think it is, when i use this).
are there some alternatives? other programms, with the same good analysis?
I found admob and motally.com, but pinch media/Flurry is the best one atm.
Here is a good pdf that compares some of the main iPhone/iPod touch analytics providers
Try Google Analytics
Any analytics package which reports usage statistics back to a central server (Flurry, Google Analytics, etc.) will be considered "spyware" by some users, not just Pinch Media's offering. The really paranoid users will sniff data traffic out of your application and detect traffic from any service, no matter who provides it.
If you really care about those users who will be upset by this, give them the option to opt-out of data collection in your application's settings or when the application first starts.
If you are looking for more inside on your app, you should try heatma.ps. They let you view heatmaps for your app, and other interaction data.
Example heatmap:
I suggest you to take a look at Appsee
Appsee provides visual in-app analytics, including heatmaps, real user recording and user bahavior reprots. And you can create a free account there.
Flurry, Google Analytics, etc are central server to store the user's data.
If you want to build your private data center. you can visit this url
http://www.github.com/cobub
And the web site is: http://dev.cobub.com
to get the open source system (both server and client sides)
There are two kinds of analytics: business analytics and app performance analytics. Google Analtyics, Flurry etc are good for business analytics but app developers are mostly interested in knowing when app crashes, being able to capture app logs, impact of network speeds and carriers on performance of their apps. For app performance analytics, take a look at http://apigee.com/about/mobile-analytics . You not only get real time performance anlaytics but also ability to do some configuration changes in real time.

What is good way to register users from phone app

We have a web application and we've built phone applications (iPhone, Android, BlackBerry) to be companions to the site. The usual workflow is that an existing user of the site gets a phone app and then plugs their existing credentials into the phone app and they are off and running, but more often now we are seeing folks who are downloading the app and then (and this should not surprise anyone) don't read the help screen that explains they need to go and get credentials at the web site and therefore cannot connect to the application which does require registration to manage their content. This is a giant usability fail condition.
So we know that we need to put user registration workflows on the phone app.
Other than the obvious solution of duplicating our registration page on the mobile, does anyone know of a better identity solution for the phone? For example, on the desktop we also use Facebook Connect as an identity server and the users love it. I'm looking for something that simple that we can implement across the major smartphone platforms.
Clarifying note:
I should add here that this registration mechanism is likely to; and it would be desirable if it did, go hand in hand with a general identity/authorization mechanism such as the Facebook mechanism mentioned below.
One other place I'm poking around is to see whether there's an openId solution that does not require a browser to pop up.
Restful service might be the e asiest way for you to achieve this, you can use it on any device that can make http requests, so you can make your own login screens and talk to the s ervice that way...
Facebook has a Connect API for the iPhone. Integrating it into your iPhone app is very smooth.
http://developers.facebook.com/connect_iphone.php
On the BlackBerry we were able to build a fairly robust REST pipeline between the client apps in the field and our servers. We primary use the framework for updates, but the device API is generic enough to be able to build almost anything you need via standard HTTP/HTTPS GET/POST calls.
On the RIM platform, look into the HttpConnection API as a starting point. There is also an example on the BlackBerry Developer's site which will help. Finally, I believe there are several examples inside the sample package that comes with every BlackBerry JDE (IDE + API download).

iPhone: Need suggestion for SYNC contact

i want to create a application which sync my iPhone contacts to my server and vice-versa.
i read a article on google Get Google Sync on your phone . i want to this type of feature which directly update the contact without user interaction (however one time setting is desired).
any body have idea how the google sync work .
Please advice me that how can i achieve this task. any suggestion and link is greatly appreciated
I think it's important to separate the two overlapping approaches in your question.
Firstly, Google Sync is essentially a way to use Microsoft Exchange protocols and to setup a Mail / Contact / Calendar profile on an iPhone. The iPhone OS supports this feature, not an iPhone App in the App Store. Google Sync leverages this fundamental capability of the phone by exposing the data (mail, contacts, calendars) via these known protocols. If you want to expose data in this way to your users, setup a Microsoft Exchange server and ask questions on serverfault.
Secondly, there are iPhone apps. iPhone apps sold in the app store are not currently allowed to run in the background. This means you can't emulate functionality like iTunes or Mail where your music plays while you are browsing the web, or mail checking is done while you are playing a game of Mini Squadron. If you want this backgrounding capability, file a bug/enhancement with Apple.. However, you can interact with iPhone contacts (Address Book) via the API.. You can also of course "re-invent the wheel" and expose the data however you like via the internet, and consume that data from a custom iPhone App with the one caveat that users would need to actively launch your application to get to this data and it would not be integrated with the built-in iPhone Calendar, Address Book or Mail applications. Some good examples of that are some of the music community apps that have messaging systems built into them. Presumably that is all being done with web services.
EDIT: It is also worth mentioning that should you go the "iPhone App" route, you should at least consider if push notifications are right for you, and if so how you will handle it.
Have you seen the API-Docs?
http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/ContactData/Conceptual/AddressBookProgrammingGuideforiPhone/100-Introduction/Introduction.html
Next there is an application I use called Funambol - it is a sync4j Server/Client. They have an open source application to sync contacts on the iPhone. Source is somewhere in their repository, informations here: http://forge.ow2.org/scm/?group_id=96
As slf told you your application must run in foreground. This may limit you.
Good luck & best regards,
Florian
The 3.0 SDK will allow your application to read contact data on the phone.
Web services will allow you to publish that data to your server, and receive updates.
You may also want to use coredata to store a hash of all contact data so you can tell what is new / updated and just send that data to your server.