Live Ops

What I added to the unity project

Setting up the live service elements into a unity prototype game, on the main focus of Live Ops. In this game I set up the account login (including via Steam), data and progress, the store, designed the economy loop, added daily quests to the multiplayer, and working on the UI. Apart from that I learned to programming the server and communicate correctly to the players.

This task took two to three weeks to finish, a lot of that time was spent on learning and testing my way around servers, economy loops and online features in a unity project.

The tasks in detail

- Economy loop of the game: To start, I first designed a structure for the in-game economy based on certain given requirements.

- Live Ops Economy: With the economy loop finished, I set up some logic in Live ops for the testing of purchases.

- Logging in: the log in is not the most difficult part, but a lot goes on and that means a lot can go wrong. Therefore, I focused on visual feedback so that you can easily see and understand what is going on and see if something goes wrong when logging in.

- Creating time based quests with rewards: With the use of Live Ops on the server and in the project I managed to add a time based quests with rewards that refresh after a given time. When refreshed, different quests are shown to the players.

- Programming on the servers (cloud code): This part was new to me, it was one of the first times learning Javascript and using the cloud code libraries. I programmed what to keep in check, like time, quests and what to save and load in the player data.

What i learned

- I learned about all the structures in the Unity project and from the server side such as: account progress, account data, server time, the online store and how all of it fits well together.

- The good practices on how to use live ops so it is easier to find bugs, maintain your code and your economy from the server side.

- Programming multiplayer: I learned how to program multiplayer in the game that connects to the quests which then communicates to the server.

Struggles and how I overcame them

Working with a massive project and setting up live ops, quests and an economy loop in it without creating a lot of trouble for other people. This was a big struggle, because I was scared to screw up for a lot of other people if I were to just bulldoze my way through.

Therefore, I spent a lot of time reading documentation, testing out Live Ops on a blank project and writing down the structures on what I need to add and need to do. This helped with creating a structure that only intervenes in the project when absolutely necessary.

What I will do better next time

I struggled a lot with testing cloud code, debugging it. It was a big struggle and next time I will find a better tool to work with rather than the default, so I can debug and test the code easier.