Welcome to the fifth edition of our ‘Developer Diaries’, keeping you informed about the progress of Reality Clash and the latest updates from our developers on the game.
For this developer update we wanted to focus on the backend technology that drives some of the key features of the game.
Nearly every modern mobile game will utilise a BaaS (Backend as a Service) to allow the developers to remotely communicate with and update the game and provide an enhanced user experience.
Reality Clash utilises this technology in many ways and we want to explain a few of these to you.
Player Accounts
Every Reality Clash player creates their own unique player profile which securely stores all your relevant information such as name, user profile, gameplay statistics such as kill/death ratio as well as your weapon purchases, custom configurations and loadout. The cloud profile also ensures your preferences and inventory are automatically restored if you switch devices.
These profiles can also be accessed by the Reality Clash trading platform so purchases will automatically show up within the mobile game.
Leaderboards
Comprehensive leaderboards allow us to store the results of your in-game fights and as the game grows, highlight the best local, national and global players to let you see how you compare against your friends.
Economy
The economy forms one of the largest parts of the BaaS and this is where we store all the information regarding weapons and consumables. Weapons in Reality Clash are defined by a large number of parameters to ensure that combat is as realistic and fun as possible and that each weapon has its own strengths and weaknesses.
The economy can be updated at any time to add new weapons and items to the mobile game without requiring an update of the app. This provides a smoother user experience whilst also allowing us to ensure you are always up to date.
DLC
Each weapon’s models and textures are stored in a compressed downloadable package. This means we can add new weapon assets to your game alongside updates to the economy without re-downloading other weapons that haven’t changed, which reduces the bandwidth that the game requires.
Cloud Code & Data
It used to be that all the data and code needed to be on the device itself, but now we have the ability run code and access data from the cloud. This feature opens up great opportunities to react to the community, reward players remotely and support future features such as Clans, Tournaments and Competitions
Push Notifications
We want to ensure that you never miss anything that is happening, so the BaaS allows us to send notifications to your device such as challenges from other players, updates on new available weapons or new safehouses in your area that may interest you.
Analytics
The analytics system allows us to track how players are using the game and iterate and improve the gameplay and user experience using this feedback. For example, if we notice that players are utilising certain features more than others, we can add new shortcuts to make them more accessible.
AB Testing
AB testing allows us to try out new game features on different focus groups to see how they are received before we release them to the entire world. We can add a new feature and then test it with different parameters in different geographical locations, monitoring the feedback and tweaking the gameplay accordingly.
The BaaS allows us to easily balance and improve the game once it is released without having to make players download large updates to the game on their devices. It isn’t the only online technology being used however, as the game also utilises custom servers that ensure you can easily find opponents to fight and validate combat to make it harder for nefarious players to cheat. There will be more about that in a later update.
Thanks for reading!