Game-development Log (11. Persistence and Authentication)

1. Introduction + WebAPI for map tiles
2. Visual Studio Online
3. Loading data to Vector Tiles
4. Rendering image tiles
5. CDN Caching for map tiles
6. Adding Units and Basic Interaction
7. Attack and Explosions
8. Performance Checkpoint
9. Bootstraping
10. Real-time with SignalR
11. Persistency and Authentication
12. Scaling up the loader process
13. Polishing the experience

Work-in-progress: https://site-win.azurewebsites.net

On this new iteration the units now have owners. A user can only move his own units (represented in blue) and won't be able to change the other player's units (represented in red).

Authentication

I've used the default template that comes with ASP.NET MVC 5. It includes most of the logic to create and manage users, integrate with Facebook/Google/Twitter, including persistence support with Entity Framework.

I did have to tweak it but most was actually pretty simple. Here's the end-result:

• I've added register/log in buttons at the top.

• After Log-in/Register the username is displayed, included a dropdown menu with additional options. The "Profile" button opens a new page to link between local and external accounts and to change the password.

The aesthetic still needs tons of work, but at least most of the functionality is there. Currently I only allow local users, Facebook and Google.

Persistence

The unit movement is now persisted on a SQL Server database at Azure, using Entity Framework. To validate it just move an unit and refresh the browser.


Add Units

I've added a "Developer" menu. Currently it allows units to be created on the map.

HTTPS (and CDN)

As I've added authentication to the site I've changed everything from HTTP to HTTPS. Unfortunately, although Azure's CDN supports HTTPS endpoints, it gets much slower than its HTTP counterpart. Also, I was getting random 503 responses.

So, for now, I've removed my usage of Azure's CDN altogether, either pointing to the blob storage for the static image tiles or to the Tile-Service webAPI for the dynamic ones.

I really love Azure, but its CDN really sucks, particularly comparing against the likes of Amazon, Cloudfront, Akamai, Level3, etc.