Forum QuickConnect Keeping a unified user database?(SimpleUsers, Facebook,Kong)

Discussion and help relating to PlayerIO's QuickConnect feature, including Facebook Connect and Kongregate Connect.

Keeping a unified user database?(SimpleUsers, Facebook,Kong)

Postby mrgreen » April 7th, 2011, 2:04 pm

Hi I am new to both PlayerIO and database managed games, and my question may be obvious so bear with me!


What I want is a game that could authenticate players via both its own SimpleUsers login system and Facebook, but keep a unified database of the two, with one account details kept for the player no matter where/how he logs on?

IE:
1) A player may visit, lets say NewGrounds, and log into the game via the games dedicated login system and access his saved details.
2) Then maybe this same player visits facebook, and plays the game as a Facebook app, where he is authenticated via Facebook's own system, and be able to access the same account, and continue the game where he left off on newgrounds?

Of course you also have the scenario, where the player plays the game first on Newgrounds, so he registers his account as a SimpleUsers account, but then later discovers the game as a facebook app, and may want to continue the game with the details/achievements he got back on newgrounds. So I suppose there would need to be a feature to "Link" or "Merge" accounts ?


I hope this makes sense?! Is this feature possible/supported?


Martin
mrgreen
 
Posts: 52
Joined: February 12th, 2011, 7:27 pm

Re: Keeping a unified user database?(SimpleUsers, Facebook,Kong)

Postby Henrik » April 8th, 2011, 1:42 am

No, there's no feature like this.

What you could do is have your game make two connections, one through each authentication method, and then copy the data from one to the other, but they wouldn't stay linked. You could even make a special roomtype for it, and have both connections join the same room, and then you could copy data server-side.
Henrik
.IO
 
Posts: 1880
Joined: January 4th, 2010, 1:53 pm

Re: Keeping a unified user database?(SimpleUsers, Facebook,Kong)

Postby Benjaminsen » April 8th, 2011, 9:52 am

Using QuickConnect you can easily have players from multiple sources playing the game together. As Henrik notes there is however no easy way to link up several login credentials to the same account. You can naturally hack around this, but personally I just prefer to allow users to authenticate with all methods everywhere.

IE in Everybody Edits you can login with Facebook on Newgrounds.
Benjaminsen
.IO
 
Posts: 1444
Joined: January 12th, 2010, 11:54 am
Location: Denmark

Re: Keeping a unified user database?(SimpleUsers, Facebook,Kong)

Postby mrgreen » April 8th, 2011, 12:34 pm

Can you give a little bit more detailed description about how would you manually link the accounts?

What I am imagining is, that you authenticate the user via one method, that is either Facebook or Kong. And then manually search for other users that have a matching ID/key, and then somehow copy over its purchased Items? Am I close?

Could be worthwile to implement this as an out of the box feature, i recall I've seen this on social games, that allow multiple accounts to be linked or merged. Perhaps it was Evony? not sure, but I think it would be a feature that could be useful for games that are deployed on multiple platforms.
mrgreen
 
Posts: 52
Joined: February 12th, 2011, 7:27 pm

Re: Keeping a unified user database?(SimpleUsers, Facebook,Kong)

Postby Benjaminsen » April 8th, 2011, 12:47 pm

I don't think it would ever be something we will support as a platform, it's basically so specific purpose that it's something we don't see as part of our feature set for QuickConnect. QuickConnect is meant as a quick way for simple games to handle users if you are looking for more advanced user integration I suggest you create your own using the Auth system provided with Connections: http://playerio.com/documentation/connections

Hacking together a solution that does what you want using QuickConnect is however trivial. You would simply have small proxy users with DatabaseObjects that contain the real credentials for a simpleUser.

IE for each real user we would store a random userid and password in for a simpleUser account. On connection we would first connect with the credentials the user typed in, then connect with to the simpleUser specified in the DatabaseObject.

Merging accounts is then a simple matter of setting the random username and password to the same for both real users.
Benjaminsen
.IO
 
Posts: 1444
Joined: January 12th, 2010, 11:54 am
Location: Denmark

Re: Keeping a unified user database?(SimpleUsers, Facebook,Kong)

Postby mrgreen » April 8th, 2011, 1:40 pm

Thanks! I will try that!
mrgreen
 
Posts: 52
Joined: February 12th, 2011, 7:27 pm


Return to QuickConnect