Let's say, Tiny Tower. On this iPhone game, you can have shops in your tower. You can suspend or turn off the iPhone, but when you return to the game, you will be reported about the shop winnings during your time away.
There are also push notifications when a building is complete etc.
I fear I do not understand how that works, exactly. I'm not asking for the exact solution, I just need to know where to begin researching. One idea I had some time ago was like calculate the amount of seconds the user was away (current time minus the time when you left) and then calculate shop processing for every one of these seconds. But I'm not sure of that.
A better way would be to calculate before you close the app.
Figure out what time it is, then calculate when in the future certain tasks will be completed. This way, you can schedule push notifications to the server ahead of time.
If you calculate after you have re-opened the app, and you can't run processes with the app closed, how will it know when to push?
Take a look at this article about push notifications to understand a little bit better how they work.
http://blog.boxedice.com/2009/07/10/how-to-build-an-apple-push-notification-provider-server-tutorial/
For offline games you add temporal logic to your items and recalculate when game is launched. For online games you retrieve game state from the server, which is constantly recalculating for all users, even disconnected ones.
Game most probably does not actually process in the background (most apps are not allowed to do anything while in background). When you relaunch the game, it calculates how much time has passed, and then processes all the events that would have happened in the meantime.
Additionally, as Paul.s mentioned in comments below, as well as other people in other answers have suggested, on iOS4 you can use local push notifications scheduled before close.
It is either server side execution of the game or if it is a game of chance or something like Farmville where it's determined by time duration.
If you were to make a server and/or game like this then you would need to decide which route to take.
If it will be something where the user has good days and sometimes bad days then you'll need a lot more server power. however, if it's something like time based then you would be able to tell the last time they were logged in and the next time that they should be awarded. you can also take this idea and for each variable that you store, you store how long it takes to be complete and the start time. Then you would do a simple If then o see if the item is ready. The same thing can work for a number of visitors. Where you have 10 visitors per item per hour. If you have two items then each hour you will receive 20 visitors.
Related
I made an attendance app in Flutter in which I want to restrict employees to use only network provided time so that employees won't be able to temper the date and time.
Is there any option or solution to implement this in android and iOS as well?
Using this package datetime_settings we will get the settings of Automatic date & time of mobile so when automatic date & time is on mobile will give us an accurate network time otherwise we will show an error to turn on the automatic date & time in settings. That's how I used to restrict users to use only network-provided time.
I'll tell you what worked for me. Hope this can help you. I don't know if it's the most optimized way to do it, but it worked very well for me:
You need to create an internal clock for your app, and from this, use it instead of the DateTime.now() function. For this, you must take the server time when opening the app, and keep it updated with a timer that runs every 1 second.
Please note that the app goes to sleep (or closes) when the device is locked or the app is minimized for a certain amount of time (this depends on the operating system and battery saver settings), thereby stopping the internal clock, and consequently, it is delayed when the app is activated again. In my case, I got around this problem by using a foreground service that I designated to perform this task (I used flutter_foreground_task). Another advantage of using a foreground service, is that the user can close the app and the clock keeps running (and in my case, I also perform other simple tasks periodically).
If the user does not manipulate the system time, the difference should never reach 1 second.
Optionally, you could check when retrieving the server time, the difference with the device time, and if it is greater than a certain gap that you determine, warn the user, so that he can correct it if he prefers, so that he does not see a discrepancy with the time recorded and displayed by the application.
Regards.
In my app(unity5, il2cpp build), There is a function like
"GetScore()"
Unfortunately, i found the hacked version of my app in the black market. that hacked version's "GetScore()" function always returns 100. The original return value has to be under 10.
I guess this hacked App is repackaged by using like 'il2cppDumper' and changing my return value to 100;
Is there any way to prevent this problem?
Security is always a matter of making it harder for hackers - you can never make it impossible for them to tamper.
So here are some thoughts:
Obfuscation: GetScore() gets BananaJungle() - hackers cannot find the correct function without stepping through the source code for hours (hopefully)
Validate the score on multiple spots: the function calling GetScore() should do a sanity check: "is it below 10?"
In Addition to this: You may want to ignore scores above 10 to fool the hacker he succeeded. You may lock the app after 2 hours or so.
Add a ScoreLogger somewhere that logs the history of the score, so getScore() may return values <10 but someone might just overwrite the score in code to 999999. ScoreLogger will check the score history for jumps etc.
Validate Score with total playtime (approximately)
You won't ever keep hackers from hacking your games, even if it does indeed have a backing server. Just look at all the unofficial world of warcraft servers. You can keep things relatively safe if you have a server, you keep its source code secure, and your game is meaningless without its server (think Dota 2 with no multiplayer capabilities...). Even then, you can't actually validate the player's every move, unless it's a turn based game and you actually send every move the server to be processed (this works in Hearthstone, for example, but not in WoW, hence all the anti-cheating tools). EA couldn't do it, Rockstar couldn't do it, Activision couldn't do it, even the mighty Denuvo couldn't do it, you certainly can't do it.
However, you should stop and ask yourself why you want your game to be that secure. Out of every 1000 cheaters you stop, maybe one or two would actually pay. You should put in a moderate amount of effort on security (take KYL3R's advice), simply to keep honest people honest. Dishonest people will always find a way, so don't worry about them so much that you end up wasting time on (useless) security; time you could spend on making your game better.
Oh and by the way, that's also one way to keep hackers out: frequent updates to the game. They have no life, but they don't have enough time to keep making a hacked version of every game on the market every week.
I'm new to iOS (although I do have a lot of C++ experience) and I am working on a turn-based card game using gamecenter. Here's the catch - The player who's turn it is is the judge and waits for all OTHER players to play a card before the turn is over. Is there a way to do this in Game Center, so all players chose what to do simultaneously and once all have done so, the judge is notified, makes a decision, and then passes priority to the next player? For example, say we start turn 1. I ask the question, #"What is your favorite color?" to all players passing them a gamestate which has that as the question and them not having answered it. Then you respond, #"Green", and our friend Steve responds #"Blue". I then decide which is better, give one of you a point, and then whoever I gave the point becomes the new judge. My question is, how do I allow all players to respond simultaneously, rather than sequentially. I know that, worst case, I could sequentially loop around through players until it comes back to me, then judge it, but this would slow down my game and make it less fun. Is there a way to do this simultaneously?
I agree with NSSplendid about the API for turnbased games requiring sequential turns. The only truly simultaneous method would be using the real-time matches from GKMatch, and that isn't really an option for games with more than a few players.
However, the sequential version could be improved slightly by using a programmatic approach to game center instead of the default view controller.
Ending a turn fires off a push notification through Game Center, and by using GKTurnBasedEventHandler's method handleTurnEventForMatch:didBecomeActive:, you can receive that in your app. When the judge asks the question, have the users display that as part of the game, and have their responses stored locally until their turn. Once it becomes a given player's turn, they receive the notification, even with the app in the background.
In the method, it can check the locally stored answer and end the turn immediately, if they've answered. If they haven't, send the turn once the answer is complete. It's not truly simultaneous, but the judge gets the answers as soon as everyone has responded, without the players having to wait for one player to finish before they can enter their own answers.
The players won't get the notification that the judge has ended their turn until they open the app, but they can't see the question anyways without doing that. Another approach to this, though slightly wasteful, is after the judge ends their turn with their question, is to do a runthrough of all the players ending their turn as soon as they get the "Your turn" notification, so everyone knows a question has been asked, then doing the steps from the previous two paragraphs.
The iOS API is built around the model of sequential turns. While the workaround you mentioned will work, there is no way to get GC to do real concurrent turns. Sorry ):
I'm currently working on a new game for iOS using Cocos2D. The game needs to advance states after x amount of time since the first launch. So for example:
State - Time
initial launch
24hrs
48hrs
My first idea was to just get the data and time on first launch and save it to a file. Then I could check it ever now and again to see how much time has passed. The problem with this is I need it to be in realtime so that the changes will take effect immediately once the state is reached. It also needs to continue when the user is not using the app. The functionality I'm looking for is kind of similar to how the iOS strategy games work where you build structures that take x amount of time.
Anyway my question(s) is; is there some sort of library that can accomplish this and how can I get it to continue after the user exits the app?
It can't. There is - apart from kind of misusing video/music playing etc. no way for your app to do work while it is not running.
You have two things you can do to simulate that behavior (and I suppose the strategy games do this, too):
You can calculate at any time while a user is still running your app the points in the future when something should happen (eg a housing structure is finished). When the user leave your app, store these future times as local events - then the user will get notified that something has happened in your game (eg message "The church has been built. Do you want to go to church now?)". Pressing yes will open your app, and you can do whatever is necessary to indeed build the church. So in fact you don't do it at the time when it occurred, but when the user opens your app the next time.
Like 1, but without notification. Just remember when the user leaves the app (eg in your settings, I would use a property list; set it when the app delegate gets the appWillResignActive event), and the next time he starts do whatever would have been done in the meantime - he won't be able to tell the difference :-).
It's all about make believe here :-).
I'm looking for a bit of guidance from anyone who has worked with Core Location on the iPhone. My app is almost complete, I'm just trying to finish off one last thing for my client.
My app is to assist users with their workouts. Similar functionality to MapMyRun. It has a timer screen with a Start/Stop button and a Reset button. When the start button is tapped, the timer starts counting and Core Location starts tracking the users progress, calculating speed and distance. The issue I'm having is with core location trying to find the users current location. Scenario below:
Day 1
User has gone out for a jog and uses the app to track their progress, user has jogged for an hour, workout is saved. Everything works as it should.
Day 2
User decides to go jogging again, this time in a different area than yesterdays jog. Lets say 10 miles away. So they start the timer, but core location takes some time to initialise to the users current position. This causes the distance field to jump irrationally as core location tries to determine the current location.
I've explained why this happens but my client is not very happy, they don't want to see the distance field jump, which is fair enough.
So I'm wondering if anybody has a nice solution to initialising core location to the users current location. I could perhaps break the link between core location and the distance field for a certain period of time which will give core location a chance to get an accurate reading.
Any help greatly appreciated.
Regards,
Stephen
Stabilise the readings by reporting "calibrating..." until the position readings roughly match the speed readings, which are generally more accurate than position.
Yeah, CoreLocation and the GPS-tracking really can annoy one.
some time ago someone had a quite similar problem and got posted some ideas and code:
CoreLocation
Pherhaps this helps. But still I would show an activityIndicator untill you got your exact location. And it's not like GPS-tracking is a matter of tenth of seconds... Just explain your client by referencing to navigation systems in cars. Pherhaps he will understand then....
Try to find the user current location before going in to the App. So that you can directly show the users current location with out taking much time.