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A Closer Look at Profile Management

 

Soon after making the decision to get started on Galactic Wars [3] 2.0, I ran into the problem of managing users and their profiles in a way that was not going to limit what I could do with the game. This article gives you a closer look at how I am handling users in the game.

I have decided to model my system after Halo 3, making a few assumptions along the way:

  1. Abstract Game from Player Specifics

    By removing the use of any specific PlayerIndex in the code, I can build a game that supports any player on the system so long as they are signed in.

  2. Force Sign-In

    I am only going to worry about players that are signed in to GamerServices (online or not). When a user signs off, the system makes sure it is not the last player. If it was the last player, it raises event with which I use to go back to the start screen.

  3. One NetworkSession to Rule Them All

    By utilizing the built-in Network Session code, I will force all gameplay to go through a standardized lobby which will work for any type of gameplay whether it be campaign, local multiplayer, coop, deathmatch or whatever I decide to add to the game. This is very similar to Halo 3’s system and is done to ease the development of the UI code.

Let’s take a look at the code. I first declare the class which includes a list of profiles, an event and two event handlers.

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using Microsoft.Xna.Framework.GamerServices;
 
namespace FocusedGames.GalacticWars.Data
{
    class ProfileManager
    {
        private List<Profile> activeProfiles = new List<Profile>();
 
        public event EventHandler LostAllGamers;
 
        public ProfileManager()
        {
            SignedInGamer.SignedIn += OnGamerSignedIn;
            SignedInGamer.SignedOut += OnGamerSignedOut;
        }

Next we need to handle when a gamer signs out. If the profile exists in our system, we need to remove them and make sure we still have gamers left.

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        protected virtual void OnGamerSignedOut(object sender, SignedOutEventArgs e)
        {
            Profile usedProfile = GetProfile(e.Gamer);
 
            if (usedProfile != null)
            {
                activeProfiles.Remove(usedProfile);
 
                CheckForGamer();
            }
        }

Similarly, when a gamer signs in we need to make sure that it isn’t already in the system for some reason. If it isn’t, we create / load it and add it.

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        protected virtual void OnGamerSignedIn(object sender, SignedInEventArgs e)
        {
            Profile newProfile = GetProfile(e.Gamer);
 
            // If the profile isn't in our system, we need
            // to load it!
            if (newProfile == null)
            {
                newProfile = Profile.FromGamer(e.Gamer);
 
                if(newProfile != null)
                    activeProfiles.Add(newProfile);
            }
        }

Finally, the two helper methods:

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        public Profile GetProfile(SignedInGamer gamer)
        {
            for (int i = 0; i < activeProfiles.Count; i++)
                if (activeProfiles[i].Gamer == gamer)
                    return activeProfiles[i];
 
            return null;
        }
 
        public void CheckForGamer()
        {
            // If no profiles are here, we need to 
            // grab one!
            if (activeProfiles.Count == 0)
            {
                // Delegate the responsibility. Listener can move to a specific screen.
                if (LostAllGamers != null) LostAllGamers.Invoke(this, EventArgs.Empty);
            }
        }
 
        public Profile[] ActiveProfiles { get { return activeProfiles.ToArray(); } }
}

On the next page we will cover exactly what the Profile class is and what it does!

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This entry was posted on Thursday, October 16th, 2008 at 12:13 pm and is filed under Tutorials, XNA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

2 Responses to “A Closer Look at Profile Management”

  1. JeBuS Says:
    October 24th, 2008 at 12:25 pm

    Could you talk some more about the “One NetworkSession to Rule Them All” aspect? I was thinking of doing something similar myself, and it’s always helpful to read about how someone else is going at it.

  2. John Sedlak Says:
    October 30th, 2008 at 10:48 am

    I will go into it in great detail but in general the idea is that no matter what option they select from the main menu they will end up in a network session based game. The Xna Framework has a session type for local games as well so I force single player games to go through the session setup just like a LAN or Live game would. The benefit to doing this is that I only need to write one version of the lobby code that works independent of session type.

    Hope this helps!

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