Getting and storing data on server

[light_bringer77]

Hey everyone, just joined the forums.

I'm a flash game developer, and for my next game I wanted to try and implement 2 things.

1. I'd like to enable players to save their game data online, probably by using a simple ID/password combo, maybe without any registration.

2. I want the game to retrieve a few key values from server on each launch. I was using playtomic in the past to do this, but they closed so... This would probably be a few numbers, a few booleans and 1-2 arrays/strings and would serve to adjust a few behaviors in the game (e.g. ads frequency, maybe some key game balance) and to be able to whitelist/blacklist websites hosting the swf.

I don't know what kind of tools I should use and know very little about things like PHP, SQL, AMS, if AS3 can directly interact with outside servers/websites...

Any advice is much appreciated!

[moot]

Flash is just like an html form when it comes to data. You need a php or .net website. Unless you want to get into coding, you can buy this from an online contractor (a coder in India or Europe) for pretty cheap because it's so standard. You can use MySQL (database) to store the data. Php MySQL hosting is pretty cheap.

Remember, your game is not secure. People can change everything that your swf sends and receives.

[light_bringer77]

Remember, your game is not secure. People can change everything that your swf sends and receives.

Just to make sure, you mean that the data sent to server or the data sent into the game can be manipulated, right? Should I be concerned with this beyond people cheating in-game? Because it's pretty easy to cheat in flash games anyway.

[moot]

Any data sent to the server and the data received from the server can easily be intercepted and changed by somebody that codes or hacks. The swf is submitting a form, you can catch the data when it leaves the swf, update it, then send it off. When the database responds, you can update the response.

You can get into security, but it's a whole issue itself. If you do basic encryption and basic modern security in a php login site, people will have to know code and do a little work to hack it - hackers will give you their tools.

So just don't make the scores matter - the user only affects himself if he hacks or cheats. If you offer a prize for high score, and the public finds out about it, your winner will definitely be a hacker.