If you want your game to have an online leaderboards and you're developing a mobile game, then you'd probably want to use Play Games Services (Android) or Game Center (iOS). For desktop games, you might use Steam's leaderboards with Steamworks SDK. But if you want more control, you have to create your own system. This article shows one of the ways of achieving that.

The way this leaderboard works, is that each player can submit their score by specifying their own name and a password. If another player with the same name already exists, then both passwords must match. The name must be at least 3 and below 24 characters, and from 5 to 24 for the password. This can be changed in the source code.

To start, install Google Cloud SDK along with google-cloud-sdk-app-engine-go component.

Create a new project on Google Cloud Console and note the project's ID. The leaderboard service will run as an App Engine application, which is free to use below certain quotas (see pricing).

Deploy the leaderboard service

Clone or download tinrab/simple-online-leaderboard repository.

git clone https://github.com/tinrab/simple-online-leaderboard

Navigate to the simple-online-leaderboard folder and deploy the service using gcloud command. Replace the PROJECT_ID with your own ID.

cd simple-online-leaderboard gcloud app deploy . --project = $PROJECT_ID

Your leaderboard service should now be available at https://[PROJECT_ID].appspot.com .

To post a new score, you can issue an HTTP POST request.

curl -x POST "https://[PROJECT_ID].appspot.com/api/scores?name=Lambert&score=42&password=12345"

Get all scores with this request.

curl "https://[PROJECT_ID].appspot.com/api/scores?skip=0&take=3"

The response will look similar to this. Scores will be sorted from highest to lowest.

{ "data" : [ { "name" : "Blinn" , "score" : "53" } , { "name" : "Lambert" , "score" : "42" } , { "name" : "Phong" , "score" : "24" } ] }

The skip parameter tells how many records to skip, and take the maximum number of records to return.

Unreal Engine project

Inside your UE4 C++ project, locate the [PROJECT_NAME].Build.cs file and add the following dependencies.

PublicDependencyModuleNames . AddRange ( new string [ ] { "Core" , "CoreUObject" , "Engine" , "InputCore" , "Http" , "Json" , "JsonUtilities" } ) ;

Create a C++ class called LeaderboardClient . Open LeaderboardClient.h and declare some structs to hold the response data.

# pragma once # include "CoreMinimal.h" # include "GameFramework/Info.h" # include "Runtime/Online/HTTP/Public/Http.h" # include "LeaderboardClient.generated.h" USTRUCT ( ) struct FPlayerScore { GENERATED_BODY ( ) UPROPERTY ( ) FString Name ; UPROPERTY ( ) FString Score ; } ; USTRUCT ( ) struct FGetScoresResult { GENERATED_BODY ( ) UPROPERTY ( ) TArray < FPlayerScore > Data ; FGetScoresResult ( ) { } } ;

Declare delegates which will be used to call functions on request completion.

DECLARE_DELEGATE_TwoParams ( FGetScoresCompleteDelegate , FGetScoresResult , bool ) ; DECLARE_DELEGATE_OneParam ( FPostScoreCompleteDelegate , bool ) ;

Declare the ALeaderboardClient class. This will be a singleton with all the necessary middleware functions between your game and leaderboard service.

UCLASS ( ) class SIMPLELEADERBOARD_API ALeaderboardClient : public AInfo { GENERATED_BODY ( ) private : static const FString URL ; static ALeaderboardClient * Instance ; FGetScoresCompleteDelegate GetScoresCompleteDelegate ; FPostScoreCompleteDelegate PostScoreCompleteDelegate ; void OnGetScoresRequestComplete ( FHttpRequestPtr Request , FHttpResponsePtr Response , bool bSuccess ) ; void OnPostScoreRequestComplete ( FHttpRequestPtr Request , FHttpResponsePtr Response , bool bSuccess ) ; public : ALeaderboardClient ( ) ; static ALeaderboardClient * Get ( ) ; void GetScores ( int32 Skip = 0 , int32 Take = 100 ) ; void PostScore ( FString Name , FString Password , int64 Score ) ; FGetScoresCompleteDelegate & OnGetScoresComplete ( ) ; FPostScoreCompleteDelegate & OnPostScoreComplete ( ) ; } ;

Inside LeaderboardClient.cpp implement the singleton and replace PROJECT_ID with your project's ID.

# include "LeaderboardClient.h" # include "Json.h" # include "JsonUtilities.h" const FString ALeaderboardClient :: URL = TEXT ( "https://[PROJECT_ID].appspot.com/api" ) ; ALeaderboardClient * ALeaderboardClient :: Instance ; ALeaderboardClient :: ALeaderboardClient ( ) { Instance = this ; } ALeaderboardClient * ALeaderboardClient :: Get ( ) { return Instance ; }

Implement functions for posting scores to the server. When request finishes, the PostScoreCompleteDelegate delegate gets called.

void ALeaderboardClient :: PostScore ( FString Name , FString Password , int64 Score ) { TSharedRef < IHttpRequest > Request = FHttpModule :: Get ( ) . CreateRequest ( ) ; Request -> SetURL ( FString :: Printf ( TEXT ( "%s/scores?name=%s&password=%s&score=%d" ) , * URL , * Name , * Password , Score ) ) ; Request -> SetVerb ( TEXT ( "POST" ) ) ; Request -> SetHeader ( TEXT ( "User-Agent" ) , TEXT ( "X-UnrealEngine-Agent" ) ) ; Request -> SetHeader ( TEXT ( "Content-Type" ) , TEXT ( "application/json" ) ) ; Request -> SetHeader ( TEXT ( "Accepts" ) , TEXT ( "application/json" ) ) ; Request -> OnProcessRequestComplete ( ) . BindUObject ( this , & ALeaderboardClient :: OnPostScoreRequestComplete ) ; Request -> ProcessRequest ( ) ; } void ALeaderboardClient :: OnPostScoreRequestComplete ( FHttpRequestPtr Request , FHttpResponsePtr Response , bool bSuccess ) { if ( bSuccess && Response . IsValid ( ) ) { if ( EHttpResponseCodes :: IsOk ( Response -> GetResponseCode ( ) ) ) { PostScoreCompleteDelegate . ExecuteIfBound ( true ) ; return ; } } PostScoreCompleteDelegate . ExecuteIfBound ( false ) ; } FPostScoreCompleteDelegate & ALeaderboardClient :: OnPostScoreComplete ( ) { return PostScoreCompleteDelegate ; }

Similarly, implement functions for fetching scores from the server.

void ALeaderboardClient :: GetScores ( int32 Skip , int32 Take ) { TSharedRef < IHttpRequest > Request = FHttpModule :: Get ( ) . CreateRequest ( ) ; Request -> SetURL ( URL + "/scores" ) ; Request -> SetVerb ( TEXT ( "GET" ) ) ; Request -> SetHeader ( TEXT ( "User-Agent" ) , TEXT ( "X-UnrealEngine-Agent" ) ) ; Request -> SetHeader ( TEXT ( "Content-Type" ) , TEXT ( "application/json" ) ) ; Request -> SetHeader ( TEXT ( "Accepts" ) , TEXT ( "application/json" ) ) ; Request -> OnProcessRequestComplete ( ) . BindUObject ( this , & ALeaderboardClient :: OnGetScoresRequestComplete ) ; Request -> ProcessRequest ( ) ; } void ALeaderboardClient :: OnGetScoresRequestComplete ( FHttpRequestPtr Request , FHttpResponsePtr Response , bool bSuccess ) { if ( bSuccess && Response . IsValid ( ) ) { if ( EHttpResponseCodes :: IsOk ( Response -> GetResponseCode ( ) ) ) { FString Content = Response -> GetContentAsString ( ) ; FGetScoresResult Result ; if ( FJsonObjectConverter :: JsonObjectStringToUStruct < FGetScoresResult > ( Content , & Result , 0 , 0 ) ) { GetScoresCompleteDelegate . ExecuteIfBound ( Result , true ) ; return ; } } } GetScoresCompleteDelegate . ExecuteIfBound ( FGetScoresResult ( ) , false ) ; } FGetScoresCompleteDelegate & ALeaderboardClient :: OnGetScoresComplete ( ) { return GetScoresCompleteDelegate ; }

Wrapping up

Wherever you need to use the leaderboard, include the header file.

# include "LeaderboardClient.h"

Get an instance of the client, bind a callback function to one of the delegates, and call desired method.

ALeaderboardClient * LeaderboardClient = ALeaderboardClient :: Get ( ) ; LeaderboardClient -> OnPostScoreComplete ( ) . BindLambda ( [ ] ( bool bSuccess ) { if ( bSuccess ) { UE_LOG ( LogTemp , Log , TEXT ( "Successfully posted score" ) ) ; } else { UE_LOG ( LogTemp , Log , TEXT ( "Failed to post score" ) ) ; } } ) ; LeaderboardClient -> PostScore ( TEXT ( "Lambert" ) , TEXT ( "12345" ) , 42 ) ;

You can fetch scores like this.

LeaderboardClient -> OnGetScoresComplete ( ) . BindLambda ( [ ] ( FGetScoresResult Result , bool bSuccess ) { if ( bSuccess ) { for ( auto PlayerScore : Result . Data ) { UE_LOG ( LogTemp , Log , TEXT ( "Name: %s, Score: %s" ) , * PlayerScore . Name , * PlayerScore . Score ) ; } } else { UE_LOG ( LogTemp , Error , TEXT ( "Could not get scores" ) ) ; } } ) ; LeaderboardClient -> GetScores ( ) ;