Simple text game, part 2
From Whirled
Using text services
The current version blindly accepts all words. That's not good. Instead, let's use the server-side dictionary service to validate them. You may wish to reference GameControl and ServicesSubControl for more info on the services we will use.
Let's change the keystroke handler as follows:
/** Called when the user presses a key inside the inputField control. */
protected function keyEventHandler (event :KeyboardEvent) :void
{
if (event.keyCode == 13) { // user hit Enter
if (_control.isConnected()) {
_control.services.checkDictionaryWord ("en-us", null, _inputField.text, processWord);
} else {
_responseField.text = "Error: disconnected.";
}
_inputField.text = "";
} else {
// any other key just clears the message box
_responseField.text = "";
}
}
You may notice several interesting things here. First, the game now checks for server connection before making the service request (if we try to do this without checking, it'll cause an exception). But it also means that the game no longer runs stand-alone. We'll deal with that below.
Second, we specify the locale as "en-us" to check against the American English dictionary. That's the only one we have right now. Sorry. :-)
Third, when calling checkDictionaryWord, we don't get a return value from that function call. It calls the server to do the check, which is not instantaneous - we will get a result later, but we can't be sure when, and we certainly shouldn't pause the game while we wait for this result. :-) So instead, we pass in processWord, a callback function closure, which will be called with the results once they become available.
Uploading
Since we need a server connection, we can't just run the game locally anymore. I mean, we can, but because of the isConnected check, the game will just print out an error message. (Go ahead, try it. :-) (Actually, the game will work fine; apparently the sdk has changed behavior since this tutorial was originally written. However, you wanted to learn how to upload your game, didn't you?)
To test this game, upload it to the server. Log into Whirled, select the Me tab in the top row, then the find the Games icon in the My Stuff row and click that. You should see a Create your own Game! section at the bottom of the page, with a button that says, Upload... to the right. Click that button, and a new Upload Item form will open.
- Under Name, type the name of your game.
- Select an appropriate Genre and set the minimum and maximum number of players for your game.
- Under Game Media tab, hit Browse..., and select your .swf file in the file system browser that appears. When the file has finished uploading, you should see a preview of your game in the window.
- Select a Party for game type - it's the type of a game that lets participants enter and leave at any time
- Optionally upload a Screenshot of the game for other players to get a preview of the game.
- Optionally upload Furniture Media and 'Thumbnail Media. The former determines what the clickable game looks like when a player encounters it in Whirled. The latter is used to represent the game in e.g. the Shop.
- Finally, hit Save at the bottom. Your game should show up in your inventory!
There is also a full listing available of the options for games.
To test play your game to make sure the upload worked, click on it, and then click on Play. It should give you different messages based on the words you enter.
By the way, if you make changes and rebuild the game, you don't need to delete the old game and re-upload everything. Instead, just edit the existing game, reupload the updated game media and click on Save.
Next: we will add scoring, and discuss multiplayer testing.
