Just released game heavily dependent on Firebase, would love feedback

[Ken Romley]

 I just published my first Unity/Firebase App, Words On A Wall (https://wordsonawall.page.link/GetTheApp) and it was only possible because of the way I was able to leverage the Firebase libraries. I've had a very positive experience using Firebase's capabilities. The game depends on: Authentication, Real Time DB, Storage, Messaging, Crashalytics, Distribution, Dynamic Links, and Remote Configuration and is available for both iOS and Android devices (and has an Angular website to support configuration)

It is a free game and I would love input. 

Positive reviews are always great, but letting me know about any problems is the best way for me to improve the game's experience for everyone.

Aye from Firebase support suggest I post this here after he helped me figure out some minor bugs (the android version had some problems with the proguard config file that I needed to sort out so minify didn't break things).

[Sam Stern]

Thanks for sharing Ken!  Its great to see an app that finds a real use for so many Firebase products.  I'll check out the game. 

Also feedback goes both ways: if you want to send us some thoughts on your experience with Firebase were always eager to hear!   Good or bad (as you said, bad may be more helpful). 

Good luck!

Sam

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[Ken Romley]

Hi Sam,

Overall, Firebase has been great. That said, I did struggle with some issues. 

Things I thought were difficult include:

With Authentication, the Unity documentation was challenging. I had to go and get a branch off a github library to get the Google Sign-in to work (iOS library problems). The Firebase docs link to direct Android/Swift code for getting the initial authorization which goes against the whole reason people are using Unity. They want a Unity library that can generate either solution without needing native code.

The second difficulty with authentication is getting the callback to notify the client app that a user is authenticated. I wanted to wait for a full authentication, and then use that to call my Node.js servers to access my SQL database. I would guess this is a fairly common codeflow, but was quite difficult to finally get to work.

With storage, I tried using an embedded function to resize images for profiles, but ended up pulling it out. I only wanted the function to apply to certain subfolders, and that didn't seem to be possible. 

With Real Time Database, I read a bunch of posts online about costs getting out of control. That led me to greatly minimize the information I store just down to the keys for the objects that have changed. When a change is triggered I provide the key from my mobile client to the NodeJS server to pull the full data from the SQL database. A chunk of work could have been avoided if the costs were in line with what I'm paying for my MySQL databases.

With Dynamic Links, the android stuff stopped working as soon as I needed to minify my app because the 64K limit on the Dex table was exceeded. It requires fixing up the Proguard config file, which would have been good to have mentioned in the docs.

Those were the big ones, but once again, overall I've found Firebase to be hugely valuable. Hope that helps.

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[Sam Stern]

Thanks for all the feedback Ken!  All good points, and interesting that you chose to use Realtime Database and your own SQL database side-by-side.  I will forward these notes along to some PMs/Engineers from the products you mentioned to make sure that they're seen by the right people.

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[Ken Romley]

Sam,

I went first. How about some feedback on  Words On A Wall (https://wordsonawall.page.link/GetTheApp)? I would love to get your impressions.

Best,

Ken

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[Sam Stern]

Fair enough!  Downloaded the game and here are my first impressions:

• The game asked me for Notifications permission before I had even got past the splash screen, my instinct is always to say "No" when I don't know what they're for.  I'll say yes for the purposes of seeing the full experience though.
• I like the "Play as Guest" option, I chose that.
• The art style is fun!  Would be nice if the font could match the background art a little more though, it sticks out.  
• The tutorial was very good and thorough.
• Seeing past clues is a fun addition to the Codenames formula.
• I am glad there was a solo challenge, helps with the issue of trying the game quickly.
• When playing alone I would like to skip some of the animations/dialogs between guessing words.
• The solo challenge providing clues is unexpected!  I like seeing what other users said.
• Does this work through ML of some kind?  How does the computer "guess"?
• Oh I see I have to wait for someone else to guess.  Now I get it.

Overall it's a nice mobile implementation of codenames!  I think the one thing I would say is find a way to use less text.  Make the UI suggest the next action by drawing your attention to the right option, I think if you play other mobile games you'll notice this happens in very subtle ways.

Good luck!

- Sam

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[Ken Romley]

Also, from the settings you can turn off the animations. I will have to think on making that more easily available.

If you know codenames, one of the other features that took some work was providing a full recap. In multi-player games there is often a big delay between turns (e.g. a day). The quick recap reminds a player of what they did and gives the reward of how their partner responded. 

Just some stuff I thought you would have missed if you didn't play a multi-player game.

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[Ken Romley]

Thanks Sam. I greatly appreciate the feedback.

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