Hi, I am currently playing with the idea to join here but from what i saw about looklocker so far, it does not have many features (i have not read EVERYTHING yet - so i might very well be wrong here!!).

i mean, a highscore can also be a time - not only points - and it is not automatically the “highest” value that has the top score - it can be the lowest also (in a racing game scenario - best time).

can lootlocker support different sorting and multiple values per entry (like time AND score)?

the reason why i ask is (please don’t get me wrong here!) that i already have my own api and backend server up and running and it does have a leaderboard feature which (to me) looks more powerful than lootlocker, so if i would get ranked high enough and i would be required to use lootlocker it might be a downgrade for the game.

if you score points AND have a time measure, there might be some multiplication algorithm in place that calculates the final score value, but still, “time” and “collected points” must be recorded for each player so it can be shown in a leaderboard view. Like you know from many other games - there’s leaderboards with like “15224 points” and with some detail columns attached “artifacts collected, running time, killed enemies” – can lootlocker support entire structures with details for the leaderboards?

You are (to my understanding) not required to use Lootlocker in the Jam. You can use your own solution or just an offline score.

I have not yet looked much into the feature list of Lootlocker, however I'd assume it can support more complex scores. If not through the Leaderboard system, then with one of their other features.

But you can always use your own backend. Would be great to see different solutions and compare them. Don't forget to mention any work done before the jam, as is't still a GameJam.

“The top 3 winning games are required to implement Lootlocker leaderboards to ensure score accuracy.”

this sentence was the reason i was asking – of course, it’s a future-me-problem, and likely never takes place - still… as we can use “any” system beforehand, we then have to switch in about no-time to lootlocker before the streamers start their challenge.

that looks… strange to me

According to the docs there's a metadata field which can store additional details for a given score entry. But you would still need to figure out a formula to create one score number where the higher it is, the better.

And as far as I can see retrieving the leaderboards is quite limited as you said, relying on that score number alone.

and if it’s “higher is best” only, then i can’t see me using this for a real project – will dig a bit deeper in the docs but it would be amazingly poor if this is offered as a service even with payment plans if it could not handle race-timings (lowest is best) and other custom formulas. so, there must be more. I hope i can find out.

you can ask any questions you have in their server: https://discord.gg/lootlocker

If you want to sort it solely by lowest time, you could just have the score be a negative number ;)