Excellent - thanks for sharing!

Thank you for sharing this!

I was just looking around for a scoring system, but since i'm lame still they seemed to complicated. I think I'm going to give this a try.

I'd like to see a simple example of a game in use. Something like I don't know take a rectangle, add event listener to it to add 1 to the score, then seeing how this fancy pants score thing works and how it loads and saves data. Or somethin'

I'll be back if I can figure it out and post. Off to coding magic land fun time.

-ng

I finally got a chance to check it out.

It's cool!

I noticed, that after I launch it tap a few times on player 1 or 2 that the score stays there. I think that's really cool.

Ok Mr. fancy pants, this is very nice. I also noticed you got away from the package...seeall stuff as well.

I'm going to start with this and put it into my game. Then find a way to send scores to facebook, twitter, openfient, gamecenter etc etc.

I suppose I could also use this and cook up a way to show when a level is complete (something like bubble ball, when you complete a level, it shows it marked). Looks like the logic is there, but I don't know if would be suitable for something like that.

Maybe one day I can have a

"Developed with Corona"
ALSO
"MADE WITH LIME AND ICE"...sounds like a tasty drink to me. Of course you also have "Rum" so if i make a game with all of that, people will think I have a pub or something...lol.

Anyway, great stuff as always!

ng

ok, I guess I got it!
you can't save this

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myTable[i] = display.newImage ( img_path )

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local _myTable = {}
for i = 1, #myTable do
_myTable[i] = { x, y, path, isBusy }
_myTable[i].x = myTable[i].x
_myTable[i].y = myTable[i].y
_myTable[i].path = myTable[i].path
_myTable[i].isBusy = myTable[i].isBusy
end
 
local myBox = ice:newBox ( "myBox" )
myBox:store( "myTable", _myTable )
myBox:save()

@GrahamRanson yes! I already figured it out, thank you for such a great module!

p.s.
pls make some documentation/how-to on it :)

I confirm ICE is working EXCELLENT on iDevice!!
Thanks again @GrahamRanson

Thank you for sharing, Graham.

I just downloaded the ice.lua and main.lua package to take a quick look, and I noticed there is no mention of MIT license in ice.lua, or any mention of it being free to use (for commercial or personal purposes). I'm wondering if it's just an oversight, or it is indeed copyrighted material with reserved rights, and if so I feel I shouldn't really include it in my game project...

That sounds great! Thank you, Graham!

Thank you very much Graham for this! It's great and very - very useful.
A simple documentation would be also nice.
Thank you!
:)

Hey Graham, I'm finally able to start incorporating ice.lua to my game project, replacing the simple json based save/load functions I've worked out a few months ago.

I have a quick question (and let me know if I should email you directly from your website for questions like this). I have:

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-- in my main.lua
json = require("json")

Since ice.lua requires json and sqlite3, I'm replacing the above with requiring ice, but I'm not sure which way I should go:

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-- should I simply require like this:
require( "ice" )
 
-- or... can I require like this?
-- could there be any harm in doing so?
ice = require( "ice" )

Thank you Graham. I'm a real newbie, and if I'm asking too many things that I should know already, please just let me know.

Anyhow, as I mentioned, I have save/load system using json. I'm going to keep it in place as I establish a new ice based system.

So, after I require ice, what do I do next? How do I initialize the icebox? I'm guessing, my code must first check if any icebox is already saved, and if it is saved, load the icebox, if not I can safely create and save it at run time.

When using json, I initialize the data table and then, after that, I call load function like this:

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-- initialize data
local myData = {}
local numLoop;
local maxDataEntry = 100 -- this is just for example, and in this case, it assumes there are 100 data entry
 
-- initializing the variables
for numLoop=1,maxDataEntry
        myData[numLoop] = 0;
end
 
--this is how I load data
local function loadData()
        -- io.open opens a file at path. Returns nil if no file is found
        file = io.open( path, "r" );
        -- nothing is loaded if there's no file found
        if file then
                -- read all contents of file into a string
                contents = file:read( "*a" );
                scoreList = json.decode( contents );
                io.close( file );
        end
end
loadData();
 
-- during the game play, myData table will be modified
-- every time any data value changes, I call saveData function like this:
local function SaveGame()
        file = io.open( path, "w" );
        if file then
                contents = json.encode( myData );
                file:write( contents );
                io.close( file );
        end
end

How do we do this using ice? How can I find out if there is icebox already saved? If icebox is found, I'd want to load it after I initialize the data. Or should I be thinking differently?

A quick note, about how to require ice.

ice = require( "ice" ) gave me run time error: attempt to index global 'ice' (a boolean value) when I added the following in main.lua:

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ice = require("ice")
 
print( "" )
print( " -- BOX: credits -- " )
local box1 = ice:loadBox( "credits" )
box1:print()
print( "" )
 
print( " -- BOX: food -- " )    
local box2 = IceBox:new( "food" )
box2:load()
box2:print()
print( "" )
 
print( " -- BOX: player -- " )  
local box3 = IceBox:new( "player" )
box3:load()
box3:print()
print( "" )

Changing ice = require("ice") to simply require("ice") worked just fine.

Hey Graham, I'm wondering how I might wipe clean the saved data after it's been saved.

I have Reset Game button, which enable users to revert the game back to original/initial state, i.e., all high score wiped, all unlocked levels go back to locked, etc. Is there a magic function I could call to wipe out all saved data? If not, how might I delete each individual data entry, i.e., what syntax do I use for individual data entry to remove it?

Awesome! That's the magic function I was looking for. Thank you Graham!!!

A quick note to newbies like me who are interested in using ice library, here are basics that should get you going. (Graham, please correct me if I haven't gotten this right.)

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---------------------------
-- in main.lua
---------------------------
myData = nil -- I believe myData should be a global variable
 
-- load previously saved data
-- if no data has been saved, it will simply return nil
myData = ice:loadBox( "myData" )
 
---------------------------------------------------------
-- in main.lua or in any module where you want to work with myData
---------------------------------------------------------
myData:clear() -- clears all saved data from disk
myData:save() -- saves all data in memory to disk
myData:store( name, value ); -- add or modify data entry in memory at runtime 
myData:retrieve( "saved_data" ) -- retrieves the data entry (from disk?)
 
-- Example:  
-- if you want to save high score, and you want to name the high score entry as highScore
-- and if it is 10000, then:
myData:store("highScore", 10000)
 
-- Example:
--  you use variable bestscore for high score then:
local bestscore = 10000;
myData:store("highScore", bestscore)
 
-- Example (edited):
-- if you want to retrieve previously stored highscore
-- and assign the value of the retrieved highscore to a local variable:
local highScore = myData:retrieve( "highScore" ) 

This is all I needed to know to use this library. So amazing.

Graham, thanks for the clarification. I think Asnca should include this library with Corona SDK. It's so easy to use, and it would immensely benefit users with very little coding/programming background.

When I downloaded ICE, there was also a main.lua file with examples. In that file you use both ice:newBox and IceBox:new.

Are those 2 functionally the same or is there some reason to use one or the other?

Brilliant work Graham. Keep it going ... :-)

Hi Graham, excellent code :)
i have a question. In my game, i have 5 levels and i want to keep a different highscore for each of them.
So in each level, at the end of the game, i have a code like this:

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myData = ice:loadBox( "myData" )
myData:retrieve( "highscore1") 
if highscore1 == nil then
highscore1 = points;
myData:store("highscore1", points)
myData:save()
end
if highscore1 < points then
highscore1 = points;
myData:store("highscore1", points)
myData:save()
end

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require( "ice" )
myData = ice:loadBox( "myData" )
myData:retrieve( "highscore1") 
myData:retrieve( "highscore2")
myData:retrieve( "highscore3")
myData:retrieve( "highscore4")
myData:retrieve( "highscore5")

worked like a charm :) thank you a lot Graham, you are the best! :)
when you use myData:save(), it saves the myData to the "disk"?
Wouldn't it be better to check if the score is better than the highscore before saving to disk, because it uses more battery?

This isn't working, like at all. Its acting like it isn't even registering the
first:store() : (

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require( "ice" )
        system.activate( "multitouch" )
    local scores = ice:loadBox( "scores" )
    local first = ice:loadBox("first")
         
    
   local function setScore()
         --first:increment("data", 1)
         first:store("value", 0)
                 first:save()
                
                   print (first:retrieve("value"))
 
                
                
                 print "setScore called"
                --  print (first:retrieve("data"))
        if (first:retrieve("data"))==1 then
                savedPts=2000
                --print "first =" .. " ".. (first:retrieve("data"))
                print "this should only happen once"
                scores:store("best", 5000)
                        scores:save()
                print "this worked"
        --              print "savedPts =" .. " " .. (savedPts)
                --  once = (first:retrieve("data"))
        end
    end
   timer.performWithDelay( 1000, setScore, 1)
 <text>
 
Can anybody shed some light on the subject. (sorry its such a mess... LOL)