Corona Setup

Integrating with GameSparks

Integrating Corona with GameSparks is straightforward:

• Open the Build.settings of your project and add the following:

  plugins =
    {
      ["plugin.bit"] =
      {
          publisherId = "com.coronalabs",
          supportedPlatforms = { iphone=true, android=true, osx=true, win32=true }
      },
      ["plugin.openssl"] =
      {
          publisherId = "com.coronalabs",
          supportedPlatforms = { iphone=true, android=true, osx=true, win32=true }
      },
      ["plugin.gamesparks"] =
      {
        publisherId = "com.gamesparks",
      },
    },

Now you'll have access to the GameSparks SDK for your project.

Setting Up and Connecting

1. The first step is to connect to your Game's backend. For this step you'll need your API Key and API Secret, which you can get from the Configurator > Game Overview page of the portal.

2. Begin by requiring the necessary class, we'll do this in the main.lua file:

local GS = require("plugin.gamesparks")

3. You then create a function that outputs the information received and sent through GameSparks for debugging purposes. We'll call this function writeText and it will print a String variable:

local function writeText(string)
  print(string)
end

4. Next, we'll create a function which will update us if the GameSparks module succeeds or fails in connecting and we'll call the function availabilityCallback with a boolean parameter:

local function availabilityCallback(isAvailable)
writeText("Availability: " .. tostring(isAvailable) .. "\n")

  if isAvailable then
    --Do something
  end

end

The function will print the availability condition as well as perform any logic when the result of the condition is true or false. This is useful to determine whether or not the GameSparks API is ready to use.

5. For the next step we'll be connecting to our Game's backend using the API Key and API Secret:

--Create GS Instance
gs = createGS()
--Set the logger for debugging the Responses, Messages and Requests flowing in and out
gs.setLogger(writeText)
--Set API Key
gs.setApiKey("293711ZXWjA9")
--Set Secret
gs.setApiSecret("DgnYnPUE2D0RetwKAy5XPUxxxN7pl36e")
--Set Credential
gs.setApiCredential("device")
--Set availability callback function
gs.setAvailabilityCallback(availabilityCallback)
--Connect to your game's backend
gs.connect()

Once you've run your project, the availability function will inform you if you're successfully connected:

• If no output is shown from the function and your debugger is stuck in a connection loop then double-check your credentials (API Key and Secret) and check that you are connected to the internet.
• Once you've successfully connected, you should get the message "Availability: True" in your output console.

In the next section we'll be learning how to register and authenticate users.