High Scores and Steam Leader Boards

I'm working on the first post-release update to the game, which will contain a number of smaller changes and fixes, as well as high scores and integration for Steam leader boards!

Work on this feature took a lot longer than expected; mostly because of some tricky UI design (which I'm still not 100% happy with) as well as figuring out how to use Steam's API.

High Scores

At the end of every game of Crush Hour or Time Attack, the results are stored in a local database which serves as a high score.

The result screen has been re-designed to display the player's three highest scores, after each round:

Additionally, a full high score is available in the same menu as the achievements overview, which is accessible from the main menu.

To make high scores consistent, you can no longer adjust the time limit for Crush Hour, or the target % for Time Attack (which is now set to a target of 100%): To adjust the sliders you will need to play in Custom mode.

Also, high scores are only saved and displayed for single-player games!

Confetti!

When a player beats their high score, the score is highlighted and they get a bunch of confetti! 🎉

How was this amazing effect achieved? You see, I went on the Unity Asset Store, bought a UI particle effects solution, and, uh, used one of the example particle effects to slap it into my results screen. Done.

Usually my approach is "I'll do it myself!" but in this case I can't say I regret being lazy, heh. Also, the asset was on sale, soooo... Either way, it adds a nice bit of polish to the feature!

Steam Leader Boards

If you are playing the Steam version of the game, high scores are going to work slightly different because they integrate with Steam's leader boards feature!

In addition to your own high scores, the ranking will also include the high scores of your Steam friends:

Find out who of your Steam friends is best at destroying a city; it's not a competition, but also it kind of is.

Every entry in the high score that has a Steam user avatar has been retrieved from Steam's leader boards; every other entry has been loaded from the local high score database.

"Steam Friends, only? Why no global leader boards?"

If none of your Steam friends play the game, this feature will not add as much to your playing experience, unfortunately.

For that, having global leader boards would be very nice—however...

Cheating the scores is really, really trivial. Since the scores are calculated on the client's side (rather than an online server's) it's very easy to manipulate that number and upload whatever score you want to Steam's leader board.

If there were global leader boards, players would absolutely abuse this.

Now, they still can, but only their Steam friends would see: Which doesn't have the same impact, exactly, and if you're friends with a cheater on Steam and are tired of seeing their haxx0red high score... that's a problem that is pretty easy to fix, hah!

Thanks for Your Support!

Having some scores to beat should give an extra bit of motivation and improve the game's re-playability!

I hope to wrap up work on the game update quickly, to publish it as soon as possible!