Challenges
Challenges allow you to set up multiplayer game mechanics to encourage players to get their friends to play with each other. Challenges can be configured with a wide variety of options. They can be between one or more players and they can have start and end dates associated with them. You can also limit the number of game plays that can be posted against each Challenge. The platform manages all of this for you and issues appropriate messages which are triggered by Challenge Events.
You can exploit the wide configurability available to Challenges to fulfil a diverse range of game-play scenarios, such as:
- A turn-based Challenge that is joinable only by the friends of the player who issues the Challenge.
- A multiplayer Challenge that is public and open to any of your players and where the winner of the Challenge is the first player to gain an Achievement.
- For score-based Challenges, link a Leaderboard to the Challenge and use the Leaderboard's Running Total configuration to define the winner - for example, the player who has attained the highest score on the Leaderboard when the Challenge reaches its end time.
- Set up a turn-based asynchronous Challenge that is private, which allows any of your players to issue a targeted "beat my score" or "beat my level" Challenge to a single other player.
- Link your Challenge to the Matchmaking feature to set up a private Challenge game-play, where only those players who have been matched up will be invited to join the Challenge.
- Allow your players to place in-game Currency wagers when issuing or joining a Challenge.
Tutorials? You can find tutorials on how to set up and work with Challenges here.
FAQs? You can review Frequently Asked Questions about Challenges.
Managing Challenge Configurations
The Configurator > Challenges page displays the list of Challenges and allows you to create new Challenges and edit or delete existing ones.
You can use the following options (highlighted above):
- Add - Add a new Challenge.
- Edit Challenge.
- Delete Challenge.
Creating a New Challenge Configuration
1. Click to Add a new Challenge. The page adjusts:
2. Enter the details for the new Challenge:
- Short Code - The Short Code is a mandatory field used to give the Challenge a unique identifier for use elsewhere in the Portal and in Cloud Code.
- Name - The Name field is a mandatory field used as an identifier to help the user find the Challenge in the Portal.
- Description - The Description is a mandatory field which should be used to describe the Challenge.
- Tags - Tags associated with the Challenge.
- Turn Based - Use this switch to enable turn based games, Tic-Tac-Toe for example.
- Turn/Attempt Consumers - If you have set the Turn Based switch to on (or when you create the Challenge through the API you set a maximum attempt), you can have turns/attempts consumed by any Event selected in this list.
- Leaderboard - The outcome of a Challenge can be determined by a specially configured Leaderboard or a custom Cloud Code Script. Use this drop-down to pick the appropriate option.
- Global - If this is off, only LogChallengeEventRequests will affect this Challenge.
- First To Achievement - If this field is set, the winner of the Challenge will be the first to reach the selected Achievement:
- Note that the Achievements available for selection are those that are configured to be triggered by the Leaderboard you have selected for the Challenge.
3. Click to Save and Close the new Challenge.
More on Challenges? For more details on understanding all aspects of Challenges and how to test them, see this tutorial.