It's true that the functionality does open up the door, a little, for social engineering as you describe. Of course, you shouldn't enter personal information (particularly credit card details...) into any website or web application that you don't explicitly trust. I think everyone needs to understand that; while we could prevent greenfoot.org being used for such purposes (by removing this new API or limiting it to a much greater extreme) we can't control what goes on in the wider web; it is, therefore, important that students are educated about these issues anyway.
Finally, we would certainly take down any scenario that we ascertained was collecting data for nefarious purposes. I personally doubt we'll see this happen, but it is something that we have talked about previously amongst the group.
Is the a method that clears all data for every user in the scenario? A master reset, if you will.
Probably the easiest thing for us to do (to avoid having to alter the Greenfoot client) is to add a function on the website to clear the data (available to the scenario author and site admins only). I've already written the functionality to get the current data as a CSV file BTW (available to same people), I just haven't made it live on the site yet.
Greenfoot 2.2 is great. I don't believe it's a beta. Within half an hour, I could integrate the highscore APIs into my scenario Jump! . I also like the built-in Counter class.
Keep on building great new version of Greenfoot!
What would be about adding a Method, where you can get a List of all users in sorted order?
Because then we could add a Highscore, where you can scroll through.
I still think in addition to the getTop(), a getRange(int min, int max) that returns a list of users from min position to max position (inclusive)
Just realized I completely forgot to finish my sentence. I still think aforementioned method *would be useful
How fast can data be entered and retreived from the server via PlayerData? If it's a fairly fast interface (at least when seeking the PlayerData of a specific Player), there's a definite potential for real-time multiplayer with others on the Gallery!
Storing is significantly different between within Greenfoot and the gallery. It is noticeable when it is done.
The intention was never to allow real-time communication. Data is stored in and retrieved from a proper database (Mysql) and this will almost certainly introduce some lag. Also, the storage server uses TCP/IP; TCP was never intended for real-time stuff; real games generally use UDP.
Ahhh. So perhaps something slow and stately like Checkers or Chess.. not something twitchy and real-time like a shooter or unit-based strategy game.
Even that would require crafty and unreliable means of consistent communication between multiple players. For example: a lobby for who is online and recognizing if the other player (once a game with another has somehow been established) is still there. Though I guess its possible, its definitely not supported as it has been clearly been discussed. The best thing is to have the appropriate functionality which I would like an answer from a developer if this is a wish list for the near future. On that note, I believe this topic on multiplayer has been addressed.
