[NG] Are you using achievements/statistics?

To avoid any confusion: The current version (v2) of the extension will still get bugfixes once the rewrite is released. Your games will continue to work, whether you update or not.

So I'll tag any future posts about the GameMaker Server rewrite with [NG] (next generation, v3). Just to confirm: the rewrite is happening. Right now I'm mostly working on reducing the scope of the project. In order to keep GameMaker Server maintainable and more reliable, I need to reduce the amount of code that I need to maintain. Just the GML part of this extension contains more than 11,000 lines. On top of that, there's the DLL (15,000 lines), the server side (40,000 lines), and the website (20,000 lines). I simply can't keep up with that, and I'm currently looking for ways to reduce the amount of code I need to write.

That leads to my question in the title: are you using the achievements/statistics (that would be everything under gms_achievement_* and gms_statistic_*) at all? (once again, I'm not removing them in the current version, this only applies to the rewrite)

If I were to remove the achievements / statistics, you could obviously still implement it using INIs.

Replies (13)

Last message on 28 Jan 2017

Forgeio on 4 Mar 2016, 00:56:58
Id actually like it if you took out all of the default messages like "[player] has logged into the game" and stats, achievements, etc... as they are a little bit annoying to remove. Also, it would be nice if you could take the white background out of the chat, as that is a bit annoying as well or at least have it optional.
Size43 (Administrator) on 4 Mar 2016, 13:50:50
This is already possible. You can use gms_message_reporting to disable the messages, and simply set the chat background alpha to 0 to hide it:

[gml]
gms_chat_set_colors(c_black, c_black, 0.0)
[/gml]
Forgeio on 5 Mar 2016, 08:16:30
Oh thanks I didn't see it in the documentation :p
Orbacal on 14 Mar 2016, 17:56:17
Yes, I indeed use achievements and planned to use statistics but managing INIs for me is not hard so a switch to inis wouldn't be difficult either.
Size43 (Administrator) on 20 Mar 2016, 19:20:29
Thanks for the feedback!
captain_davy on 5 Mar 2016, 09:25:15
In my opinion, functions like these seems an unnecessary part of the extension itself, as the INI functions allows for the exact same capability. Wouldn't it be possible to leave such functions out, and instead have a section on the “documentation” page explaining just how such functionalities can be achieved using Game Maker Server. By showing a set of scripts that offers the exact same functionality, as for instance the statistics functions, users would be able to simply copy paste these scripts and execute them as easily as if they were using the build in functions. This would be almost as convenient as having the functions, but would substantially reduce the size of the extension, give users the option of leaving them in or out, and would let users customize the scripts to suit their own needs. It might also give people a greater insight into the use and possibilities of the INI-functionality and the extension in general. Could this be a possible solution to the problem?
Size43 (Administrator) on 6 Mar 2016, 17:25:52
That would indeed be what I'd do if I decide to remove it from v3.

On the other side, there's a balance to strike between doing "the bare minimum" and "everything". If I were to look at what I could remove because it's already possible in some way, I could remove highscores, player/instance synchronisation, sessions, INIs and variable synchronisation because all those things could be implemented using just P2P messages and Binary Data Blocks. I won't, because those parts provide ease of use. They provide an implementation that will most likely work on first try, because it's been tested over and over again.

By that same reasoning I might not remove achievements or statistics if it turns out it's used often enough, which is exactly what I'm trying to find out with this post :)
captain_davy on 6 Mar 2016, 18:45:13
Fair enough :)
namlunthkl on 4 Mar 2016, 16:43:42
Oh, I love both of them but.. I think Statistic is very very important*
Size43 (Administrator) on 6 Mar 2016, 17:30:34
Thanks!
programer786 on 1 Mar 2016, 18:06:34
Hi,
I don't need statistics but I need achievements. They are very useful when you don't like the Google Achievements
Size43 (Administrator) on 3 Mar 2016, 09:54:50
Thanks for the feedback! I'll keep that in mind.
matthe815 on 28 Jan 2017, 23:12:18
I use GameJolt for the achievements and statistics, so I don't really think it's too necessary.