Roku Developer Program

[Komag]

Speaking of navigation wishlist, some way to jump back to top selectors when at bottom of a long list without having to scroll (or even pgup) to the top

[Romans_I_XVI]

I've already got that Komag, just press the back button. 🙂

[Komag]

Oh nice. I've noticed good use of Back throughout

[EnTerr]

Yes, Romans' does good UI.

Something about the colors bothered me - why is the start green and the finish is red? Shouldn't it be the other way around... or rather - yellow for start (as being neutral/safe to stand on or middle-traffic light) and green be the goal, ultimate save? Seems better to exploit the intuition of running from trouble, not towards it. 

[Komag]

I like that idea. Actually, the first two or three times I played, I thought I was starting on red (as it's blinking), and I was surprised when I just walked off the edge somewhere else!

[EnTerr]

"Komag" wrote:
I like that idea. Actually, the first two or three times I played, I thought I was starting on red (as it's blinking), and I was surprised when I just walked off the edge somewhere else!

Also a good point, yes! Makes sense for the player position to be animated since it's "consuming" (tilting/crumbling/...) the plate under, so a motion, "something is happening". Don't know how if that would look good with speed-play.

The Finish tile actually stops blinking when exit-condition is satisfied, i.e. all blues were visited. Stop on the last before final (and die) to see it. Too bad for the effort coding that since that remains un-noticed - nigh all levels have the last tile before finish be blue, so can't really notice the change. I was going to suggest having the finish tile yellow and it turns green when exit condition is satisfied - and when in "yellow" status not be deadly. Right now if you step on final before all blues are touched, you die - alternative view would be, stepping on finish and... nothing happens, have to go back and finish the job. 

[EnTerr]

(Apologies for reshuffling pieces of your reply but you made many points and i want - while addressing them - to link them in narrative)

"Romans_I_XVI" wrote:
I'm sorry you can't enjoy my game.

i had to bend over backwards to pass your "gimme-your-email" invasion of privacy - and set up a bogus email for Roku. That's the only time i have done it. In other cases my response is chuckle, followed by prompt "delete".

If hundreds of thousands of people are willing to share their email with PBS Kids for no apparent reason, 

"Hundreds of thousands of people are doing it" is not a high mark.
Billions of people have trusted Yahoo with personal data. This past week 500,000,000 of them got burned - did you hear?
And a personal anecdote from me: i tend to hand unique email addresses to companies i open accounts with, so based on spam i know who have leaked their user DBs: Adobe, Sears, Scottrade, Paypal. Well not Paypal per se but one of the merchants i have paid to via Paypal and Paypal shared my email with said merchant - which is like the case with Roku sharing email with you. Now, if i cannot trust the above companies with my email - why should i trust you?

I figured I made it about as easy as possible. [...]
I'm sure the majority of people will have no problem clicking a button that instantly takes care of 

How easy is something does not make it right. Killing a person is easy, guns have an easy "point & click" UI. Should you do it to spare annoyance?

It's essentially the same as OAuth, people love OAuth. 

No, this is nothing like OAuth. OAuth provides an "access token", not abusable contact info.

Sorry, but an online game requires you to log in in some way.

Do they? Have you tried agar.io, slither.io, diep.io?

I have to store a large amount of user data; levels you've published, highscore/rating/difficulty vote for every level you play, all your work in progress editor levels, etc. It exceeds the amount of storage that we're allowed to use on an individual Roku.

... and so you store it on a server. Which uses unique ID to match the app instance. That could be many things - like .getPublisherId() or a token handed down by the server. No excuse for email.

Plus this makes it so even if you get a new Roku you don't lose all your data, and it can sync between multiple devices in your house.

This thought makes sense. If Roku has a cloud service akin to iCloud, it would been easy for app to share info between different players via cloud storage. A bit on the side, i don't see the need to share data for "Tiles": the published levels have been "confiscated", the drafts probably should stay only on the player created, jury is out on the votes (as you mentioned it could be different people play on the same device, so it's not 1:1)... but maybe that's not all you have in mind.

I asked Roku if there is a way to get an account ID (because I just need something unique to identify the user) but they said it's not possible.

Well, the Co people tend to think "inside the box". And indeed, there is no "out of the box" way to auto-identify an account. And that is intentional.

the hassle of going to a separate website to create an account.... where they would also enter their email to create said account...

I am totally with you on this one. Which is why apps that really, really need to create account with email/password et al - better have that friction point later in the workflow and not at the front door. Buy me a drink first! I have seen many iOS apps suffering the "show me ID at the front door" syndrome. They don't fare well.

However! There are better ways to accomplish what you want on Roku. Specifically the one i have in mind, your app would benefit from it. True, it's not well-documented (shocker!) and it's not free - but on the plus side, it's an API that have existed for many years and you have used already even. Let me make it a puzzle trying to figure out what is it 🙂

[Romans_I_XVI]

@enterr

As a player, I like how the game is set up. I know exactly what features would be missing if it wasn't set up how it is, and I would be sad that those features would be missing for the majority just to appease the paranoia of the minority.

If the game tanks and nobody plays it, I will give you a solid congratulations, gladly accept your "I told you so", and completely restructure the underbelly of my game.

Until then, I'm going to stick with how it is, because I'm really happy with how it is.

Thanks

[EnTerr]

"Romans_I_XVI" wrote:
As a player, I like how the game is set up. I know exactly what features would be missing if it wasn't set up how it is, and I would be sad that those features would be missing for the majority

Wait - what features would be missing if instead a unique server-side account were to be created easily (on a 1:1 per Roku-user-account basis) without knowing the email? Seems you did not have the patience to read all i wrote to the end before hitting "reply".

just to appease the paranoia of the minority.

500,000,000 fracked users is a minority? That is some bold thinking on a scale i cannot grasp. I mean, are you targeting beyond the population of the Earth?  😛

If the game tanks and nobody plays it, I will give you a solid congratulations, gladly accept your "I told you so", and completely restructure the underbelly of my game. 

It won't tank - lighten up! It will do just fine. 
I never implied (ab)using email as unique key would notably affect its popularity on Roku, where it has no competition. Nor do i think the Co reviewers will give you hard time for asking email - like i pointed earlier, they approve indiscriminately total shovel-ware - no reason to expect them to start caring suddenly. What i am saying is that you are doing something evil, because it's possible and easy. Which does not make it right. I was holding you up to a higher standard. 

[Romans_I_XVI]

How would I go about creating an account on a 1:1 Roku-user-account basis without having some unique identifier of said account? Email is the only unique identifier I am aware of, if you have something else I'm all ears. I would love to be able to skip that user data request screen.