I'm working on a game that allows users to create and share levels. From what I can see from the API, the title-based storage is set as read-only for clients. Is there something I'm missing that is available to accommodate user created content, or does PlayFab just not support user access to a database?
Correct - what you're looking for is a User Generated Content system. That's something we plan to add to the service in the future, but it's not really supported right now. If it's the primary focus of your game, we can work with you on making this available, but one thing to be aware of is that the Content service is a Content Delivery Network (CDN), and it is billed at the actual cost plus 10% to cover our costs, as custom game servers are. You can calculate your costs using the CloudFront pricing page (https://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/pricing/).
Again though, if this is key to your title, let us know. During my Xbox years, I helped to establish the policies and technical guidelines concerning UGC for Xbox Live, and delivered talks at the Gamefest conferences globally to help developers understand how to work with it, so we can definitely help to advise you on this topic. :)
Brendan
PlayFab offers different types and levels of "data groups", Title Data is just one of them.
Here is a list of available general purpose "data containers" (key/value "logical storage partitions"):
TitleData,
TitleInternalData
UserData
UserPublisherData
UserPublisherReadOnlyData
UserPublisherInternalData
UserReadOnlyData
UserInternalData
PublisherData
PublisherReadOnlyData
and
SharedGroups (my favourite ones!)
There is also UserStatistics for numeric values only.
PlayFab also offers data management systems for specific purposes like AccounInfo, Character, Inventory, Catalog, VirtualCurrency, etc.
Yes, but from what I can find, the TitleData is only writable from a server. Is there the ability for a user to add something to a title-level database, or can they only change their own user data?
Ah, ok, thank you. If this is definitely the direction we decide to go, I will be sure to contact you about it!
We also have "public" player data properties. So you can store arbitrary data per player, and then access that data from other players. For example, if you have a city-builder game, you could absolutely store the design of your city as player data, and then other players can look up and view your city. However I wouldn't want to use this mechanism for letting players upload potentially thousands of photographs say.
However if what you have is, say, 20-30 objects per player, and they're mostly JSON (versus lots of binary blobs) this is totally doable.
