Writing Game Center Apps in iOS

Creating Leaderboards in iTunes Connect

Problem

You don’t know how to start incorporating leaderboards into your iOS games.

Solution

Set up leaderboards in iTunes Connect.

Discussion

One of the functionalities in Game Center is the ability to manage leaderboards in your iOS apps. For instance, you can write a racing game for iOS and have players compete to achieve the best score. You can then report these scores to a leaderboard and allow the players to see the leaderboard. This gives your players a reason to come back to your app (in order to compete with their friends).

To use leaderboards in your app, you must first create them for your app in iTunes Connect. Here is how you can do that:

1. Go to the Apple Developer Portal and select iTunes Connect from the righthand side of the screen.

2. In iTunes Connect, select Manage Your Applications.

3. In Manage Your Applications, select the app you want to add a leaderboard to. To add a leaderboard to an app, you must have already enabled Game Center for it (Figure 1-4).

4. Once in the app in iTunes Connect, select the Manage Game Center button on the righthand side of the screen.

5. Under Leaderboard box, select the Set Up button.

6. Select the Add Leaderboard button on the top lefthand corner.

There are two types of leaderboards in Game Center:

Single Leaderboard

A leaderboad that you report scores to and retrieve scores from. This can be, for instance, a leaderboard for one of the levels in your game. Level 1 of your game can have one leaderboard, Level 2 can have ...