Game Progress Update #35

Hello world and welcome to the thirty fifth Dev with Dave game progress update!

In this update, I have managed to get a tiny bit more done to the unread notifications.

I’ve also made some more headway into getting the compiled Flappy-vaders build ready to be uploaded to the Google Play Developer console.

Unread notifications

In the Last Game Progress Update I had more or less got the unread notification system working, all that was left was to create a list of which events would cause a notification to appear on the menu.

After some thought I came up with the following list

• When a boost is unlocked
• When there is a new daily challenge
• When there is a new daily prize
• When a new trophy is awarded

However, since I haven’t written any code for awarding trophies, and I’ve not even created UI pages for the daily challenges or prizes, the only one I can actually write is when a boost is unlocked.

I would still like to add a load/save function for the showNotify properties, so that the data can persist from one session to another.

I will try and create the two pages above ready for the next update, so I can at lease set the notifications even if the missions and prizes don’t work as yet.

Compiling the Game

Compiling the game ready for upload to the Google Play store is surprisingly easy with AGK Studio. There is an option to Export to Android from the menu, which then presents you with the following dialogue box.

The first thing I did was find a suitable image to use as an icon for the compiled game. I just used a screen capture of the Flappy-vaders ship against the gradient sky.

Next I went to the Firebase Console and created an entry for it. I use Firebase to monitor analytics data from the game. Doing this gave me a config file to include in the build to set up the analytics.

And lastly I headed over to Google AdMob to create an Interstitial advert to show between games, and a rewarded advert which the player can watch to earn free coins. Setting these up gave me the AdMob App ID which is also needed in the compilation process.

Once all the data had been filled in it was time to press the Export button.

The actual compilation process only took a few seconds (I used the main PC for the build, but I’ll do the next one on the tablet to compare the time taken), and I now have a compiled .aab (Android App Bundle) file sat waiting to be uploaded.

I have once again however ran out of time for this week! So I won’t upload it till next week.

Once again, If you want to be involved in the first round of testing then please get in touch either by email or social media. There is still time to get added to the list of testers.

Website Security Issues

I was completely wrong about having sorted out the website. I am still getting a steady stream of suspicious signups despite the registration form being protected by a reCaptcha. 🤔

I have a few other ideas to protect the website, but my concern is that securing the website will take time away from actually writing the game. I feel short of time enough for this project as it is.

That’s all folks

And that’s all the news I have for this update. I’m off out tonight to the MK Game Developers Meet-up, but I will be back with another Game Progress Update in two weeks.

Until then.

Dave