Level sharing progress report
Like I said before, I haven't done much actual coding lately, but that has given me a lot of time to rethink my design choises regarding the user-created level sharing functionality. Initially I had two options: One based on simple anonymous FTP server for uploading/downloading levels, other was custom file sharing server with HTTP based API. Both solutions require some learning as I haven't done stuff like this before.
I chose the HTTP based option. Mostly because I was afraid the FTP based solution would be too limiting on features. Having that in mind, I designed the web server option way too generic and flexible, which lead to ridiculous amount of work for what is basically a very simple functionality, passing levels to your friends. This is certainly not the first time I've made this mistake..
Currently I have the raw first implementation maybe about 40% ready and I'm already seeing several of potential security and maintenance problems that I would have to solve. Because of this I have decided to put this work on hold and try my luck with the much simpler FTP based solution instead. I will have to start almost from scratch, but I believe this gives me a lot better changes of actually completing this feature some day.
Posted on 2012-10-29