I remember reading about a high scores framework for the iphone a while back. You could embed it into your app for easy high score management. Anyone know what I'm talking about?
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A:
I think your asking about Onyx Online. It's from the developer of the popular Trism game and aims to be something akin to Xbox Live for the iPhone.
More deets here: http://onyx.demiforce.com/
Lounges
2008-12-15 05:31:14
It looks like the plans for Onyx Online have actually been canceled according to this blog entry: http://demiforce.blogspot.com/2009/03/onyx-rip.html
Mun
2009-07-26 16:17:58
Downvoting because this service is not live. This is one of my big fears about using a third party server. The iPhone game industry is brand new, and these companies are appearing and disappearing. My worst nightmare is that I develop a top game, only to have the high score provider shut down one evening.
Chris Garrett
2009-09-11 11:16:07
As an update to this very old post. Onyx has been canned, but there are SEVERAL other's which are filling this role. Honestly i think the jury is still out on which service is going to end up being the winnar. Who knows maybe we'll have enough of a community to support a couple of them.
Lounges
2009-09-11 18:21:23
say this in a comment to the answer, not as an answer to your question.
Triptych
2008-12-23 06:05:18
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A:
Check out our hosted highscores service for iPhone Game Developers: http://highscores.marigoholdings.com/
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A:
There is a service http://www.openfeint.com/ that appears to be both open to the public and very feature rich.
I haven't used it yet, but apparently they have leaderboards as well as a number of other features, like chat, news feeds, messageboards, social network integration, etc.
qrunchmonkey
2009-03-24 00:54:55
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I just saw this system on http://www.iphonegamenetwork.com/social-gaming-platform-agon Looks realy cool.
I've posted the direct link here for a closer look http://developer.agon-online.com
This integrates social networking, persistant profiles across games and location based leaderboards.
A:
Also you might want to check our iGetScores system - it's free and open source:
Taras
2009-06-30 08:49:28
A:
There is also Scoreloop which can be found at http://www.scoreloop.com. It's free and in addition to high scores it also offers challenges and a web community.
NikWest
2009-07-26 15:56:38
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As you can see from the numerous answers here, there are a number of providers of high score servers. Here's my issue with them:
1) Many are brand new, fledgling companies. While I certainly hope they are successful, I'm not willing take the risk that my hard work will be ruined because a game server startup closes up shop just as my app hits the top 10.
2) Many of the larger providers require you to use their user interface unaltered. I have special requirements that I want to be able to embed the high score list directly into my game play.
3) Along the same lines as #1 and #2, the established players are not open source, so it's hard to know the quality of what they've built. If there's a bug, you're stuck with it until they release an update.
4) I haven't seen a good way to prevent cheating using the established solutions. (See other questions here on StackOverflow about high score lists and cheating). I'm not sure an out-of-the-box solution would be able to prevent cheating, because as far as I can tell, the only way to prevent it is by including some sort of server-side check to ensure that a human has created the high score. (e.g. a game replay checker). Digital signatures, encryption, etc. can prevent some cheating but at the end of the day someone can retrieve the encryption key from your device. My first thoughts on cheating were that I would just create my game, and worry about it if it became popular. However, the more I read it looks like there are just too many people who try to crack high score servers just for the fun of it.
Chris Garrett
2009-09-11 11:36:53
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A:
A very good answer by Chris Garrett by the way. Nailed down the problem in this area, something we are trying to address but still we could be considered as fledgling companies.
Just few words to support our service - it is running for half a year now and no downtimes whatsoever. We are developing it constantly and have moved to a better server and rewritten/optimized everything on RoR but that doesn't affect our users as we have both development and production servers and test everything properly before roll out.
Our iGetScores solution I have mentioned before has become a part of a bigger service which now also includes modules for Push Notifications and Google Maps.
The server runs thousands of push notifications per day and remains reliable, same with high scores.
And we have a solution for cheating problem Chris mentioned as well - we use OAuth and nonce encrypts each request with current time so you can never send the same request or use any other kinds of attacks.
Hope this helps.
P.S. our new URL is: http://www.mob1serv.com/high-scores/
Taras
2010-03-24 14:33:46