Passcode Scene for Private GameSalad Arcade Projects

KevinCrossKevinCross London, UKMember Posts: 1,894
edited February 2016 in Working with GS (Mac)

GameSalad Basic account users really only have one way to show a friend, family member or client the progress with their GameSalad project, and that's by uploading it to GameSalad Arcade. The problem with this is that you can't stop anyone else from stumbling across your project and having a butchers, even if you set it so that only people with the URL can see it. This is because the project ID on the GameSalad Arcade is only 6 digits long and each time someone uploads a project that ID increments by 1. With that information you can take a URL and manually change the project id by increasing or decreasing the number by 1 each time to see all of the latest projects (including those less public ones)

I noticed this problem the other day when I uploaded a project to the GameSalad Arcade to show a family member my progress on something I'm working on. By decreasing the number one by one I was able to see a number of projects which may or may not have been restricted/private'ish.

I quickly took down my project and created a simple scene to the beginning of my project which asks for a 6 digit passcode before it would allow you to see it and thought I'd share it. I know it's a bit rough around the edges (most of my work is!) but if you wanted to keep your work restricted to only the people you gave the URL too then you might want to do the same or something similar. Unless GameSalad could change the way they give ID's to each project (i.e. longer and random ID's)

I went with a 6 digit password and set it up similar to a combination lock where you click each digit to increase it by 1 and at the end of the 6 digits is a button to check whether or not the password is correct.

I know a textbox asking for a string password would have been a lot simpler, but where I've not used the keyboard input in GameSalad for a couple of years I'd totally forgotten how to implement it and how to set up the behavior correctly. I couldn't get it to work at all.

The length of the pass code can be increased or decreased, you just need to have the same number of actors on the scene for the number of digits in your chosen pass code and amend the table where the required pass code is kept.

I've placed a working example on the GameSalad Arcade here: http://arcade.gamesalad.com/games/135865

The password to move onto the next scene is: 210216

I've attached the project file but it can also be found here: http://www.kevincross.co.uk/?attachment_id=196

I created a post for this a little earlier and asked for it to be deleted as I found a problem with it, but that problem has now been fixed.

I'm not saying this is foolproof but I think it would keep most people from stumbling across your project and having a look if you like to keep these things private/restricted to certain people.

If you create something similar and simpler than this and use it on your own projects you would need to move the scene to the end when you're testing your game in GameSalad Creator otherwise you'd be prompted to do the password each time. You would only need to put the scene at the beginning when you're ready to upload to the Arcade.

Comments

Sign In or Register to comment.