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jay avatar image
jay asked

Any tools to help with user created levels?

I'm working on a game with features similar to Super Mario Maker, where players can create their own levels and upload them for anyone to play. The data for each level will be small, but there will be a lot of them, and I want players to be able to filter the levels and easily find ones they like, as well as recommending levels based on things like popularity or difficulty.

Does playfab have anything specifically to help with this process? It seems like I'd have to use a separate database since Playfab's data is not queryable. I'm not a database expert or anything, but I saw you have MongoDB coming soon and figured that is the best way. Would you agree?

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brendan answered

We do not currently provide a user generated content service, so you'll want to build out an external data table containing the information on the user-created levels, including the votes and creation date, so that you can use it for the "discovery" portion of the experience - listing the most recent, most popular, etc.

You can used MongoDB via mLab - or any other database with a Web API - via Cloud Script, using the http.request functionality - have a look at the revision 1 Cloud Script in your title to see an example of a query being made to an external endpoint.

Finally, since you're talking about UGC, it's important to call out that you need to be very cautious with this. If it's at all possible to create offensive or IP-infringing content, you can be guaranteed that for any non-trivial player base, you'll have people making that. It's not a matter of "if", but "when" and "how often". The more people you have, the more you'll see it. So having a good review, mitigation, and take-down strategy will be important.

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jay avatar image jay commented ·

I appreciate the info, especially the last paragraph. It's definitely worth thinking about that early on in the project.

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