Fetching Data from GameBus

How can I fetch data from GameBus so people can play against their own and other's playthroughs?

In the devlog entry: GameBus & SugarVita (Concepting), I described how the entire "GameBus and SugarVita" system would need to be made. In the entry: Saving Data to GameBus, I talked about how I managed to save playthroughs to GameBus. The only thing that is left is to fetch the data from GameBus.

Research Methods

Library

Product analysis

I started of by looking at all the available endpoints in GameBus. I did this with the help of a Swagger page. I found a method that is capable of fetching all data from the circles the player has joined. With this I would be able to get all players and just fetch their data by using a method that fetches acitvities from a player. Unfortunately due to privacy reasons I got unauthorized errors which meant I needed something new.

Field

Problem analysis

I presented the privacy problems to Pieter and he discussed this with GameBus developers. After that, I visited Vadym Markelov in search of a solution. We got a very inconvenient, but sufficient solution for now. It comes down to people joining 1 big SugarVita circle which has some special properties enabled which makes it possible for people to see each others activities in their newsfeed as long as they got points for it. This is possible by making a circle join a so called challenge which gives points to people that successfully did SugarVita activities.

Task analysis

After going over every possibility with Vadym, I ended up with the following tasks in order to make everything work:

Automatically join the SugarVita circle after logging in
Automatically connect to the SugarVita data provider in GameBus
Fetch all activities with a SugarVita_Playthrough game descriptor from the newsfeed of a player

Workshop

Prototyping

First up is automatically joining a circle after logging in. Obviously the player only needs to join the circle once, which is why I first use a GET method which fetches all player circles. When the SugarVita circle is not already present in the list, the player will join the circle.

Next up, the method to connect to a data provider. This is needed as a way to give the SugarVita data provider consent to post data on the player's GameBus account. This method also gets called after a successful login

After all this setting up it is finally possible to fetch SugarVita activities from yourself and others.

Results & Validation

The result is a system where the player automatically gets set up to be able to post and fetch SugarVita playthroughs to and from GameBus. Down below is the response from the server after fetching the data and the list you see is a list of SugarVita activities which include the playthrough data. The actual UI which would show this data is yet to be created.

This system is yet to be validated at the time of portfolio deadline.

Usage

The system gets used as a basis for people to eventually be able to fetch SugarVita playthroughs of their own and others once the UI is properly implemented.

Sources

GameBus App. (n.d.). GameBus. Retrieved March 21, 2022, from https://app.gamebus.eu/