Hey guys,
the reason that I chose 1st of August for the shutdown is that the App Engine SDK is now deprecated, and Google only promises that applications that depend on it (like Flox) to run until July 30th, 2020. (Here's the document that mentions that date).
Google doesn't definitely say that the apps won't work longer than that – it just says they "might" not work any more. I won't be able to upload new versions, though.
- So, worst case: starting August 1st, Flox doesn't run any longer, and the shutdown is immediate.
- Best case: it does run even after that date, but the server code can't be modified.
Since we don't really know, I must recommend to you to assume the worst case and work on an alternative. However, if August 1st happens AND Flox still works AND there are still users out there who need it – then we can definitely let it run longer, as long as my costs running it are covered. I'm sure we could find a way to make that happen, and discuss something personally then.
Still, as I said, it's a risk – so if you want to take it, @2dguy, depends on the project and how critical it is to have it running without downtimes until 2021.
Shaun_Max is there any alternative for flox leaderboard?
There is an alternative to Flox that might work for you, as well: Apple Game Center and Google Play Services (e.g. via this ANE). The leaderboard system they have is very similar to the one Flox' uses.
Furthermore, you can use those services to store some per-player data, as well – as SaveGames. It's not as flexible as Flox, and on iOS you never know when exactly the OS will sync the data, but if you take that into account, it can work really well. Plus, it doesn't cost anything.
Two downsides: (1) setting up everything on Google Play is a nightmare – at least it was when I used it and (2) you need to use GameCenter / Google Play Services for login, as well. (Which you can also see as an advantage, because users don't need to sign up specifically for your game.)
Another alternative is to write a small backend for that stuff yourself. I'm currently giving that a try for my upcoming project: a Sinatra-based REST-service running on Heroku. It's not that much code in the end, but of course it takes a while to read all the documentation and set it up, so it's probably not the fastest route.
mfrasier this plus starling slowdown... What else you got cooking Daniel?
I'm still self-employed, though I didn't earn much money since Adobe stopped giving me base income. 😉
I saved enough to be able to give a project a try that I've been pondering about for a long time – and something I've got really high hopes for! It's an educational app with a twist I haven't seen yet in this area – of course I'll tell you all about it as soon as there's something to show.
To be honest, I'm struggling a bit with it, though – it takes much longer than I anticipated. I'm using Flutter, which is really great – but it took a while to get used to, as it's quite different to Starling or Feathers. Then there's the Sinatra-backend which I mentioned above; but the main issue is that I'm really more an API-developer than an app developer, so I'm losing far too much time writing beautiful code, and find it hard to motivate myself for the more tedious graphic and user interface design stuff. 🙄
But I'll get there some day, I'm sure of it!