Tom's Forum Posts

  • Once I've pushed out all these changes, we'll have implemented authentication + leaderboards. I'll then look to add cloud save (which allows you to store data blobs in a key value store with each player, as well as global data for games which players can all load from) which should cover what you're after WackyToaster

    After this I'll look to release publicly, and from there I'll look to add other services such as achievements, maybe some sort of analytics, error reporting etc

    I'm really enjoying working on this, but it's all quite tricky!

  • Ninjadoodle yes, no server required. This is all running off our own cloud.

    Today or early next week I'm releasing a big update that will break implementation of your own leader board (sorry for this, but it's not yet all released officially yet).

    These changes are required because we're introducing an authorisation service which allows players to sign into your game (EG with Apple, Google, Facebook, Discord etc). From this you are given a session key which you will need to post with leader board requests instead of just a player name.

    This allows us to easily add other services going forward such as cloud save. Bear with me - I'm nearly done with this and then I will update all docs and hopefully Ash will be able to get the updated plugin in the next beta.

    I'll try to remember to update this post.

  • We did have a huge amount of traffic from something that was significantly degrading services recently.

    Because of this I:

    • Implemented global rate limiters for web page requests
    • Integreated with AbuseDB - if a rate limiter is triggered we cross reference the IP here and auto ban the IP if it has a high confidence of abuse. Over 6,500 IP's have been banned to date, ranging from spammers, anonymous bots of security scanners. Just nasty traffic types you don't want to serve.
    • Spent time on bot identification, getting the DNS host addresses from the IP's - most bots we allow, others we don't if they are too aggressive and we don't want them crawling (for example some third party business intelligence bots).

    It's all settled down a lot now and we are not seeing much evidence at all of false positives. Some of the bots we banned were doing multiple page views per second - we log the blocked accesses now and some of the bots have over 3,000,000 blocked page view requests.

    Anyway, was a fun and interesting project to work on and I'm pleased everything is running a lot more smoothly now.

    RE ai bots specifically, we generally are OK with them. Interestingly we do get new customers who tell us they asked ChatGPT what a good game engine is and it recommends us - so we don't want to impact that negatively. The AI bots do consume a fair number of resources from our POV but for now it appears to be beneficial for us.

  • Sometimes yes, most of the time I think it's crawling to train it's models.

  • Yes, web is full of bots!

  • Thanks, this is fixed for next upload.

  • Ninjadoodle the leaderboards are now for sale:

    construct.net/en/game-services

    Had to go higher price on the business ones as we're anticipating these will consume a lot more resources, but 99% of people should be fine on the standard ones.

    The full fleshed out Construct 3 plugin is still in the works and will be released in a few more weeks - so unless you're looking to integrate with the API directly would be best to wait for this to come out.

    We won't be announcing leaderboards more visibly until the plugin is complete.

    • Post link icon

    We've discussed this via email - you were emailed ahead of time of the upcoming renewal and the renewal failed. When renewals fail, the plan is cancelled as per our automated process.

    We have no mechanism to re-enable old pricing for cancelled plans.

    If you wish to continue using Construct you will simply need to purchase a new plan. I understand the price has gone up since you originally purchased, but we still think it offers good value for money and we have offered to refund you the difference on the original payment as a one off in good faith.

    I'm locking this thread as any follow up discussing your plan should be done via email.

  • This is all subject to change, but for leaderboards there will not be any geo pricing (flat pricing worldwide).

    We're looking at something along the lines of:

    Pack of 10x standard leaderboards ~$10 USD p/m or $100 USD p/y

    Pack of 30x business leaderboards ~$30 USD p/m or $300 p/y

    Again, this is all subject to change but this is ballpark what we're thinking right now.

  • Apologies I didn't respond to you faster, glad all is resolved.

  • We're planing on selling extra leaderboards, the one you get with your plan is a bonus included with your plan but you'll be able to buy more if you need them in the nearish future.

  • You can use the leaderboard for different games, it's up to you how you use it. If you change the game it's for, you'll want to delete the current one and create a new one.

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  • This is now fixed.

  • Can confirm this is a bug, please bear with me.

  • This should now be fixed.