Checklist for Supporting Achievements

To add achievements to your game, you need to take the following steps:

1. Before you add achievements, add code to authenticate the local player. See Working with Players in Game Center.

2. Design your game’s achievements. See Designing an Achievement.

3. Go to iTunes Connect and configure the achievements for your game. You provide all of the data needed to display achievements to the player. See Configuring Achievements in iTunes Connect.

4. Add code to report the local player’s progress to Game Center. By storing the progress on Game Center, you also make the player’s progress visible in the Game Center app. See Reporting Achievement Progress to Game Center.

5. Add code to load the local player’s previous progress on achievements from Game Center. The local player’s progress should be loaded shortly after the player is successfully authenticated. See Loading Achievement Progress.

Designing an Achievement

The design of an achievement starts with a simple statement of the achievement’s goal. Here are some example goals that can define a game:

• Capture 10 pirates.

• Defeat 1 boss.

• Find 1000 gold coins.

• Earn first place in 5 races.

• Earn first place on 5 different race tracks.

A goal statement describes a triggering condition (“Earn first place on a different race track”) and a quantity (5). The triggering condition is essential as it defines something your game logic needs to track. In the racing example, your game must check the victory conditions at the end of each race, but it also needs to record which tracks a player has defeated.

The quantity usually defines how granular the task is for the player. With some achievements, quantity is irrelevant; the achievement is either earned or not. For example, “Defeat the end-game boss” is not a goal that the player generally earns partial credit towards completing. In contrast, a goal of “Capture 10 pirates” is a more granular task. Your game needs to track the number of pirates captured and use this count to report progress to Game Center.

When you design an achievement, consider a few other characteristics: value, visibility, and repeatability. These characteristics affect more than the design of your game; later, when you define your achievement in iTunes Connect, you’ll set attributes based on these characteristics:

• The value of an achievement is a measure of how difficult you believe it will be for a player to earn the achievement. Some achievements are easily earned in a few minutes of play. Difficult achievements might require hours of focused gameplay or require the player to develop advanced playing skills or strategies to earn the achievement.

• The visibility of an achievement determines whether a player can see the achievement at the start of play or whether the achievement must be discovered during play. By default, achievements are visible to the player. This is helpful, because a player can scan the list of available achievements and see what actions earn rewards. However, some achievements can be more useful if hidden. For example, if your game includes a story or plot, listing all of the achievements at the start of play may reveal too much of the story to the player. Achievements critical to the story can be marked as hidden so that you can choose when the player sees them.

• An achievement is normally not repeatable. After the achievement is earned, the player sees no further messages about that achievement. If an achievement is marked as repeatable, then each time your game reports that the player has completed the achievement, the player sees the appropriate reward banner.

You have a lot of room to be creative with the kinds of achievements you create. Here are some common strategies for designing achievements that can guide you through the process.

Configuring Achievements in iTunes Connect

When you are ready to add achievements, you define them first in iTunes Connect. For each achievement, you provide values for all of the properties listed in Table 4-1. Further, for each language you plan to localize the achievement into, you provide data for all of the properties listed in Table 4-2.

For more information on setting up your leaderboards in iTunes Connect, see Achievements.

Adding Achievement Support to Your Game

When you are ready to implement achievements in your game, you do so using the classes listed in Table 4-3.

Checklist for Supporting Leaderboards

To add leaderboards to your game, you need to take the following steps:

1. Before you add leaderboards, add code to authenticate the local player. See Working with Players in Game Center.

2. Decide how you want to use leaderboards in your game. You choose how many leaderboards to use and how each leaderboard interprets its score data. You are free to design a different scoring mechanism for each leaderboard. See Leaderboards Require a Scoring Mechanism.

3. Go to iTunes Connect and configure the leaderboards for your game. For each leaderboard, you configure the kind of score recorded and how the score is formatted for display. Leaderboard formatting can be localized for different languages and regions. See Working with Leaderboards in iTunes Connect.

4. Add code to report scores to Game Center. See Reporting Scores to Game Center.

5. Add code to display a leaderboard to the local player. See Working with the Default Leaderboard.

   Optionally, you can retrieve score data from Game Center and use it to create your own custom leaderboard user interface. See Retrieving Score Data.

Leaderboards Require a Scoring Mechanism

To include leaderboards into your game, you must have a gameplay mechanism that allows your game to calculate a score. You are free to design your gameplay and scoring mechanism however you want. The only restriction is that your scoring mechanism must return a 64-bit integer value. When you report a score, you report this integer value to Game Center so it can be stored.

How can you make the integer into something more interesting? As part of the development process, you configure a leaderboard description in iTunes Connect so that Game Center understands what scores mean in your leaderboard. You describe to Game Center what type of score is stored in the leaderboard and how to convert your score into a string for display. An advantage of this mechanism is that the same description is used by the Game Center app to show your game’s scores.

The most critical decision to make is what kind of score is stored in the leaderboard. Game Center provides three basic formatting types:

• An abstract number, such as an integer or a fixed point number.

• A time value, such as minutes or seconds.

• A monetary value, such as dollars or euros.

You also decide the order in which scores are ranked. When scores are ranked low-to-high, a lower score is considered a better score—for example, a racing game that records the time it took to complete the race. In this circumstance, a faster time—that is, a lower score—is better, so a sorting order of low-to-high is appropriate. In contrast, a game that adds points to the player’s total for each successful action taken in the game expects that a higher score is better, so a high-to-low sorting order would be more appropriate.

Once you have the formatting type and sorting order chosen, you also customize the final results with a localized formatting string. For example, if you chose to represent the score as an integer, you might choose “ point” and “ points” as the English localization for singular and plural values of scores stored in that leaderboard. Other games might use the same score type, but use different localized strings (“ laps”, “ cars”).

When you design a scoring mechanism, make sure that you consider the range of possible (legal) score values. When you create the leaderboard description, you can also provide minimum and maximum values for scores reported to it. Providing a score range adds a layer of security onto your leaderboard, as it reduces the likelihood that a player can cheat if they discover a way to report an absurdly high score.

A Game Can Have Multiple Leaderboards

You can define up to 100 different leaderboards for a game (or game group) if your game does not support leaderboard sets. The number of different leaderboards allowed increases to 500 leaderboards per game when leaderboard sets have been enabled. See Leaderboard Sets for more information. Each leaderboard has its own score type, sorting order, and formatting information. When you implement multiple leaderboards, you choose what sort of score data to record in each leaderboard, which essentially means that each leaderboard may have its own scoring mechanism, if desired.

Here are a few possibilities on how you can use different leaderboards in your game:

• A game with multiple levels of difficulty can have a different leaderboard for each level of difficulty.

• A game with different maps (levels, tracks) can have a different leaderboard for each map.

• A game with different play modes (rule sets) can have a different leaderboard for each play mode.

• You might create multiple scoring mechanisms that evaluate the player’s skill in different ways, and create a different leaderboard for each. For example, a racing game might evaluate the player’s best track time, best lap time, as well as a score based how well the player drifts while driving around the track. Evaluating players in different ways allows players to find multiple ways to improve their skills.

To allow leaderboards to be differentiated from each other in your game, you assign each leaderboard a leaderboard ID. Your game uses a leaderboard ID to report the score to the appropriate leaderboard. For example, if your game included three leaderboards for different levels of difficulty, you might use myGame.easy, myGame.normal and myGame.hard as the leaderboard IDs.

One Leaderboard Is the Default Leaderboard

When you define your leaderboards in iTunes Connect, one leaderboard is designated as the default leaderboard. When your game performs a leaderboard task without specifying a leaderboard, the default leaderboard is automatically chosen.

The initial value for the default leaderboard is the value you assign in iTunes Connect. However, as a player plays your game, you can set a different default leaderboard for that player. You can change the default leaderboard automatically when reporting a new score or you can change the default leaderboard independent of score reporting. For example, if your game has multiple sequential levels and a leaderboard for each level, you can change the default leaderboard each time the local player advances to a higher level. That way, future scores (or displayed leaderboards) automatically show the best level the player has played.

Combined Leaderboards Gather Scores from Multiple Single Leaderboards

A combined leaderboard is a special type of leaderboard that combines scores reported to multiple leaderboards into one leaderboard. The individual leaderboards continue to exist and are where you report scores to. You don’t report scores to combined leaderboards. For example, if your game offers multiple race tracks, you can create a single leaderboard for each race track and a combined leaderboard that shows the best time earned on any track.

When deciding whether to set up one or more combined leaderboards for your game, keep the following guidelines in mind:

• Only non–combined leaderboards can be included in a combined leaderboard. That is, you cannot combine other combined leaderboards into a combined leaderboard.

• A non–combined leaderboard can only be attached to one combined leaderboard.

• The non–combined leaderboards that are attached to a combined leaderboard must have the same score format type and sort order. And, in practice, they should share the same scoring mechanism in your game.

Working with Leaderboards in iTunes Connect

After you’ve considered the design of your scoring mechanism, you go to iTunes Connect to precisely define each leaderboard. Defining a leaderboard is a critical step; once your game ships to customers, many pieces of the leaderboard cannot be changed. It’s important to note that the information you enter into iTunes Connect must match your game’s implementation. As such, you should exercise caution when creating your leaderboards and test your game thoroughly before releasing it.

For complete details on managing your game’s leaderboards and leaderboard sets see Game Center Configuration Guide for iTunes Connect. However, for your convenience, Table 4-4 describes the properties you use to define a single leaderboard. Table 4-5 lists the properties you set for each language you plan to localize your game into.

For more information on setting up your leaderboards in iTunes Connect, see Leaderboards and Leaderboard Sets.

Reporting Scores to Game Center

Your game transmits scores to Game Center by creating an array of GKScore objects, whether you are reporting a single score or multiple scores. A score object has properties for the player that earned the score, the date and time the score was earned, the identifier for the leaderboard the score should be reported to, and the actual score that was earned. You allocate and initialize a new score object for each score, configure their properties, and then call the reportScores:withCompletionHandler: method to send the data to Game Center.

The score object is initialized with the leaderboard ID for the leaderboard it reports its score to and then your score reporting method sets the value property to the score the player earned. The leaderboard ID must be the identifier for a leaderboard you configured in iTunes Connect. The player who earned the score and the time the score was earned are set automatically when the score object was created. Scores are always reported for the local player.

Your game should create the score object and report the score to Game Center immediately after the score is earned. This sets the date and time accurately and ensures that the score is reported correctly. If for some reason the score could not be reported because of a network error, Game Kit automatically resends the data when the network becomes available.

Working with the Default Leaderboard

The default leaderboard is set when you create your leaderboards in iTunes Connect. However, the default leaderboard is a per-player setting also; as a player plays your game you can update the default leaderboard shown to that player.

The most common time to update the default leaderboard is when you report a score, and Game Kit provides a convenient way to set the default leaderboard as you report the score. Create the score object, and then set its shouldSetDefaultLeaderboard property to YES. When the score is reported, the value in the score object’s leaderboardIdentifier property becomes the new default leaderboard ID.

However, you can also use the GKLocalPlayer object to update the default leaderboard directly by calling the setDefaultLeaderboardIdentifier:completionHandler: method.

Displaying the Standard Leaderboard

In addition to sending scores to Game Center, you should also allow players to view scores within your game. The simplest way to do this is with a GKGameCenterViewController object. You can adjust the behavior of a Game Center view controller so the initial content it displays is the leaderboard page. Configure the other properties to show the leaderboard page, displaying only scores earned in the last day. You then present the view controller. In OS X, you use the GKDialogController class to display the view controller, as described in Displaying Game Center User Interface Elements.

When the player finishes looking at the leaderboard, the delegate is called. Override the gameCenterViewControllerDidFinish: method and dismiss the presented view controller.

Retrieving Score Data

There are times when you want to retrieve score data from Game Center. The most common reason to download the score data is when you want to create a custom leaderboard user interface. Your game uses a GKLeaderboard object to retrieve score data. In this case, the leaderboard object represents a query on the data stored on Game Center. You set properties on the GKLeaderboard object to filter which scores are returned to your game, then tell the object to load the scores.

Retrieving a subset of leaderboard data stored on Game Center has the following steps:

1. Start with the set of all scores stored in the leaderboard.

2. Discard any scores that do not match the playerScope, timeScope and identifier properties.

3. Keep only the best remaining score for each player.

4. Sort the list of scores from best to worst.

5. Return the subset of scores requested by the range property.

Figure 4-1 shows an example of one possible search. In this example, scores more than a day old are ignored. Then, from the remaining set of scores, we see that Mary has two scores, so only her best score is kept. Finally, the scores are sorted and ranked. The selected range is then returned to the game.

If you provide a leaderboard identifier that matches a combined leaderboard, all of the scores in the single leaderboards are pooled together before filtering and sorting occurs. Figure 4-2 shows the same scores as in the earlier example, but now you can see that the scores are actually stored in two different leaderboards that make up a combined leaderboard.

It is important to note that combined leaderboards are set up in iTunes Connect and are considered a unique leaderboard. You can not determine where the scores from a combine leaderboard come from inside of your app. You need to query each leaderboard individually through their leaderboard ID and manually determine what scores were used to create the combined leaderboard if you want to display that information.

Extending Leaderboards Using Score Contexts

Although the score and formatting system allows you to create interesting leaderboards, you may want to extend the leaderboard system to include other information specific to your game. You do this using score contexts. A GKScore object has a context property that holds a 64-bit integer. The value stored in this property is stored along with the score. Game Center doesn’t use this value at all, nor does it affect score formatting. Your game is free to use this integer to store whatever information you want.

Here are a few possibilities:

• You can use the context property to store flags that provide additional content. For example, in a racing game, use the flags to store what kind of car the person completed the racetrack with. Then, in your own custom leaderboard user interface, you could display the appropriate car image next to each score.

• Record the user’s actions and other data in to a file. You then design your game engine to be able to replay the contents of that file. You store the file on your own server and use the context field as an index to reference the file. Your custom leaderboard user interface can then offer the ability to see exactly how someone earned the score.

• You can implement the replay directly into your gameplay. For example, in the hypothetical racing game, you could use a player’s replay file to display a phantom car for the current player to race against.

Checklist for Supporting Leaderboard Sets

To add leaderboard sets to your game, you need to take the following steps:

1. Before you add achievements, add code to authenticate the local player. See Working with Players in Game Center.

2. Ensure that your game contains at least one leaderboard. See Leaderboards for information on creating leaderboards.

3. Go to iTunes Connect and configure leaderboard sets for your game. For each leaderboard set, add the desired leaderboards to the leaderboard set. See Working with Leaderboard Sets in iTunes Connect.

4. Add code to load the leaderboard sets associated with the current game. See Adding Leaderboard Set Support to Your Game.

A Game Can Have Multiple Leaderboard Sets

You can define up to 100 different leaderboard sets for your game. Each leaderboard set can contain up to 100 leaderboards with a maximum of 500 leaderboards for your game. You choose which leaderboards are placed inside of each leaderboard set. Games that don’t use leaderboard sets are limited to 100 leaderboards.

Here are a few possible ways to use different leaderboard sets in your game:

• A game with multiple scoring mechanisms for each world (score, enemies captured, coins collected) can combine the leaderboards for each world into a leaderboard set.

• A game with multiple scoring mechanisms for each world (score, enemies captured, coins collected) can combine all of the leaderboards for a single scoring mechanism into a leaderboard set.

• A game with multiple playable characters (warrior, archer) can combine all of the leaderboards for a particular character into a single leaderboard set.

You can combine the number of leaderboards and leaderboard sets in any format as long as the individual maximums are not exceeded. The following are all allowable combinations:

• 5 leaderboard sets, each containing 100 leaderboards

• 100 leaderboard sets, each containing 5 leaderboards

• 3 leaderboards sets, each containing 50 leaderboards; 2 leaderboard sets, each containing 100 leaderboards; 1 leaderboard set containing 1 leaderboard

Game Group Leaderboard and Leaderboard Set Limits

The number of leaderboards and leaderboard sets within a group is limited only by the number of apps within the group. Each game within a group can have a number of leaderboard sets and leaderboards, as stated in A Game Can Have Multiple Leaderboard Sets. For example, if a group has three apps inside of it, then the group can have a total of 300 leaderboard sets and 1500 leaderboards. However, an individual app is still limited to 100 leaderboard sets and 500 leaderboards.

Working with Leaderboard Sets in iTunes Connect

After you have decided to use leaderboard sets in your game, you must configure the leaderboard sets in iTunes Connect. In iTunes Connect you can create new leaderboard sets and move your leaderboards into them. For complete details on managing your game’s leaderboards and leaderboard sets see Leaderboards and Leaderboard Sets.

Adding Leaderboard Set Support to Your Game

To implement leaderboard set support in your game, you use the classes listed in Table 4-6.

Before you can load the leaderboards contained within a set, you must load the set itself. Retrieve the list of leaderboard sets for your game from Game Center and display their titles. Use the loadLeaderboardSetsWithCompletionHandler: method to retrieve the leaderboard sets for your app. You can then load the leaderboards for a specific leaderboard set using the loadLeaderboardsWithCompletionHandler: method.

Checklist for Supporting Challenges

To add challenges to your game, you need to take the following steps:

• First, add support for leaderboards or achievements to your game. See Leaderboards and Achievements.

• Optionally, add code to allow a player to send challenges within your game. See Issuing Challenges from Your Game

• Optionally, add code to receive and act on challenge notifications. See Issuing Challenges from Your Game.

Each type of challenge is defined by a distinct subclass of GKChallenge. Table 4-7 lists the subclasses and how to retrieve the remaining information needed to display the challenge to the player.

Issuing Challenges from Your Game

You issue a challenge from within your game using either a GKScore object or a GKAchievement object. Both classes implement an issueChallengeToPlayers:message: method with a similar signature. Issuing a challenge does not display a user interface to the player issuing the challenge; this is code you need to implement yourself. The following section shows a series of methods you can use to issue an achievement challenge.

The design for score-based challenges is similar. Create a score object, submit the score, then use it to generate a challenge request.

- (void) bossMonsterDefeated

{

    GKAchievement *achievement = [[GKAchievement alloc] initWithIdentifier:@"MyGame.bossDefeated"];

    achievement.percentComplete = 100.0;

    achievement.showsCompletionBanner = NO;

    [achievement reportAchievements: [NSArray arrayWithObjects:achievement, nil] WithCompletionHandler:NULL];

    [self performSegueWithIdentifier:@"achievementChallenge" sender:achievement];

}

- (void )prepareForSegue:(UIStoryboardSegue *)segue sender:(id)sender

{

    if ([segue.identifier isEqualToString:@"achievementChallenge"])

    {

        MyAchievementChallengeViewController* challengeVC = (MyAchievementChallengeViewController*) segue.destinationViewController;

        challengeVC.delegate = self;

        challengeVC.achievement = (GKAchievement*) sender;

    }

}

- (void) challengeViewController:(MyAchievementChallengeViewController*)controller wasDismissedWithChallenge:(BOOL)issued

{

    [self dismissViewControllerAnimated:YES completion:NULL];

    if (issued)

    {

        [controller.achievement issueChallengeToPlayers:controller.players message:controller.message];

    }

}

- (void) challengeLesserMortalsForScore: (int64_t) playerScore inLeaderboard: (NSString*) leaderboard

{

    GKLeaderboard *query = [[GKLeaderboard alloc] init];

    query.leaderboardIdentifier = leaderboard;

    query.playerScope = GKLeaderboardPlayerScopeFriendsOnly;

    query.range = NSMakeRange(1,100);

    [query loadScoresWithCompletionHandler:^(NSArray *scores, NSError *error) {

        NSPredicate *filter = [NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:@"value < %qi",playerScore];

        NSArray *lesserScores = [scores filteredArrayUsingPredicate:filter];

        [self presentChallengeWithPreselectedScores: lesserScores];

    }];

}

- (void) challengePlayersToCompleteAchievement: (GKAchievement*) achievement

{

    [achievement selectChallengeablePlayers:[GKLocalPlayer localPlayer].friends withCompletionHandler:^(NSArray *challengeablePlayerI, NSError *error) {

        if (challengeablePlayers)

        {

            [self presentChallengeWithPreselectedPlayers: challengeablePlayers];

        }

    }];

}