Flash Game Hi-score tables

Many of the games developed by Galaxy Graphics include a hi-score table. Hi-score tables are an effective way of making a game more viral - people want to come back to see if they're still top, and they also want to send the game to a friend, to see if they can beat them. However, Flash cannot handle hi-scores alone. It needs help in the form of a database and a server-side scripting language. A simplified hi-score procedure is below:

Sending and storing the scores

1. User plays game, gets a score, inputs name and clicks "send" (all within Flash)
2. When Send is clicked, Flash sends the name, score etc to an external script which processes this information into a database held on the server. This script can be written in PHP, ASP, Coldfusion etc. PHP and ASP are by far the most common, so it is neccessary that your (or your clients) server have both the ability to run a scripting language, and the ability to store and read/write to a database.
3. For all the actions in step 2, you will need the services of a web developer skilled in databases and the language that your server supports. If this language is PHP and the server supports a MySQL database, then Galaxy Graphics can assist with this. If you intend for a web developer to handle this part of the job, Galaxy Graphics can provide a technical PDF file detailing exactly how it all works.
4. The processing script can also do various checks on the validity of the score, to help ensure against cheating. This is essential if you are offering a prize for the top score. The details of how this works are also contained within the technical PDF file mentioned in step 3. Be aware that no anti-cheat method will be 100% perfect. Anything can be broken if someone is determined enough, like the DVD copy protection for example.
5. If you want to capture other information such as email, phone etc, then any of the games can be modified to include extra fields to capture these.

Retrieving and displaying the scores

There are two ways you might wish to display the scores

1. In a HTML page. Your web developer can set up a page to pick out the top scores from the database This is by far the easiest option, and gives you a lot of options for controlling the design of the page and the display of the scores. Click here for example of how this can look.
2. From within Flash itself. Your web developer can write a script to output the top 20 (for example) as an XML file. Flash can import this file and display the contents from within the game. The wire buzzer game uses this method and can be seen here.

Further Information :-

Flash Game Licensing FAQ - your questions answered

Flash Game Licensing Terms & Conditions