question

Talha avatar image
Talha asked

[Help Required] Regarding Game Design.

Hi, Could you please help me out with this. I am stuck as to which flow to use.. which is the best/ optimized way of going about designing something like this...

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In my game there are several Characters (Cars) Each car has its specific engine, Speed, acceleration, Grip, Allweather tyres etc..

My game does not require me to have seperate leaderboards for these cars.

User can buy these charactes using real currency through IAP or using gems accumulated in game/bought through IAP.

For upgrades we have another currency (VC) gold coins, So.. Gems to buy characters and Gold coins to upgrade.

How do I go about designing these characters, What I need is to have several Objects each having an indvidual set of properties (some properties are upgradeable and some are not ( like engine is upgradeable and all weather tyres are not) and store this information somewhere.

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Seth Du avatar image
Seth Du answered

The Character in PlayFab is the substitute of a player. I am not sure of the cars in your game, but you may consider PlayFab Character feature like the characters in MMO games like World of Warcraft. As long as they are not as many as Gacha games, and the fixed number limit is predefined, it should work fine.

The upgradable values can be stored in Character Read-Only data, and you may implement Cloud Script/Azure Function to maintain those data. Some other equipment can be maintained as items, but the equipment state should also store in Read-Only Data, which shouldn’t be changed easily especially during the game.

Read money purchase is not convenient for characters, you may need MoveItemToCharacterFromUser API. Otherwise, it is also recommended to only set up IAP for VC, a specific VC can be used for the character for the purchase.

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Talha avatar image Talha commented ·

Hi,

Sorry I should have been more clear. Our game is a Single player car racing game (offline). We are finalizing the design of the game. For that we need your guidance as to which model to use to store our game data.

The game is inspired by "Traffic Racer", In the store of our game there are several cars, User can unlock these cars and play using these cars. Each car has a separate set of properties. Some properties are upgradeable and some are not.

For Example:

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Car A ---> unlocked

1. Engine power : 379 (// Upgradeable)

2. Top Speed : 191 (// Upgradeable)

3. Acceleration : 3.3 (// Upgradeable)

4. All weather Tyres : No

Car B ----> Unlocked

1. Engine power : 379 (// Upgradeable)

2. Top Speed : 260 (// Upgradeable)

3. Acceleration : 2.6 (// Upgradeable)

4. All weather Tyres : Yes

Car C ---> Locked

Car D ---> Locked

.

.

.

.

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What is the best way to handle game data in a game like this?

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Talha avatar image Talha commented ·

@SethDu Could you please take a look at the updated reply?

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Seth Du avatar image Seth Du ♦ Talha commented ·

Sorry for the late response. May I know the estimated car numbers that a player can get? However, based on the context above, normally you may store the cars as items in the player's inventory and store upgrade information in inventory item custom data. It should work fine because the data can only be updated via Server API UpdateUserInventoryItemCustomData. You may implement several upgrade processes in Cloud Script/Azure Function.

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Talha avatar image Talha Seth Du ♦ commented ·

Hi,

we are planning on adding atleast 15 different cars in our game. Along with the cars there are several drivers aswell. For drivers we are following the model of crossy road.

are drivers also inventory items?

could you please also specify what are the steps I need to take the implement this design flow.

Should I put all of these things ( cars and drivers) in the inventory then? How can I award players bundles? e.g I want to award player ( 10 gems, 150 gold and one Driver)

Plus I feel silly asking this, Apologies since I am new to inventory stuff. I could not find the UserInventoryItemCustomData in the dashboard.
what I mean is that I can see the custom data option Catalogue->items tab.

but after awarding the player that item I could not find the custom data.
This confused me how can i see where I updated the item's custom data specific to that player?

what i want is that after Car A is unlocked by the Player::

Car A ---> unlocked

1. Engine power : 379 (// Upgradeable to 400, 450, 480)

2. Top Speed : 191 (// Upgradeable to 200, 205, 212, 220)

3. Acceleration : 3.3 (// Upgradeable to 3..2, 3.1 ,3.0)

4. All weather Tyres : No

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Seth Du avatar image
Seth Du answered

Catalog items with Inventory items will be like C# Class with its instance. The Custom Data from Catalog items won't be shared with inventory items. Newly granted item will not have any custom data. The design of this feature is on purpose, and it is actually convenient to handle your scenario.

Let's say Car A with several original attributes, for example, engine power 379, which stays unchanged during the game because you have defined it in the Catalog as a fixed number. However, Players are able to upgrade this attribute, and now the value of engine power is a player-specific data, which should be stored in the Inventory custom data.

The client will cache a local copy of Catalog items for reference via GetCatalogItems API calls and should sync it from time to time.

Meanwhile, the Drivers, Cars should be simply managed like items. (So that they can be filled in a bundle as rewards)

>>where is this UserInventoryItemCustomData In the Dashboard

Simply navigate to the inventory page of a player and click one to enter the item page. It is located at the bottom right of the page like Catalog item page. Unless updated manually, it should stay blank.

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