How to Create Time Based Leaderboards

You can use the GameSparks platform to create Leaderboards that are based on time. Examples of these are:

• Highest Score in the last 30 days.
• Most improved in the last 7 days.

To implement time based Leaderboards, you'll need to perform some specific set up tasks.

This tutorial explains how to set up a time based Leaderboard. We'll go through the process of creating a Highest score in the last 30 days Leaderboard, one that is built once a month. After following the tutorial, you should be able to create other combinations for time based Leaderboards that meet your own requirements.

Creating the Event

1. To start, we need to start tracking in our Running Total the day a particular score was made. We'll create:

• A new Event with a SCORE Attribute.
• A second DAY Attribute to hold the day of the score.

Note that we've added a default value to the DAY Attribute:

• Adding this default value means you don't need to pass a DAY Attribute as part of the LogEventRequest and the platform will calculate it.
• We're using an expression (starting with a $ sign). There are a few expressions available that allow you to automatically calculate a value for the default. The one we are using is ${now}, which will automatically resolve to the epoch time of now.

Expressions? See below for available expressions.

2. Click to Save and Close the new Event.

Creating the Running Total

3. Once we've configured the Event, we need to create a custom Running Total for the Event, one that allows us to have an entry for each player and day combination:

In this Running Total, note that we've included Day under Group By. This means the Running Total will keep a track of the player's scores for each day.

4. Click to Save and Close the Running Total.

Creating the Leaderboard

5. We can now create the Leaderboard to consume the Running Total data. Because it's a time based, we'll create a scheduled Leaderboard that:

• Runs once a month.
• Only consumes data for the last 30 days when being built.

Note that we've configured this Leaderboard:

• To be built every month by setting Update Frequency to Monthly.
• To only consume the last 30 days by adding under Filter Value the expression:
  • ${now - 30 * 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000} - This is now minus 30 days expressed as milliseconds.

With this kind of Leaderboard setup:

• When the Leaderboard is built, it will have a Short Code formatted as HSL30D.SCHEDULED.YYYY-MM-DD, where the date components are the dates of the Leaderboard build.
• With this process, each previous scheduled Leaderboard is preserved, and you can query for historical data using the date component of the Short Code.
• When you make a ListLeaderboardsRequest, each of the built Leaderboards will be returned in the Response so you can query which Leaderboards are available.

6. Click to Save and Close the new Leaderboard.

Expressions

You can build expressions:

• ${now} - Shows the epoch time and is a long.
• ${format(now, "yyyy-MM-dd")} - First parameter is a long; the second parameter is a java simple date format date pattern.

For more formatting options, see here.