Doing donations/purchases withing your game (Nightly WIP)

The current nightly WIP builds of the OHRRRPGCE have a new feature that you might be interested in testing.

You can now add a "Purchases" special menu item to your menu.

You can define products (or donations) that people can buy in-game.

On Windows/Mac/Linux, this is based on Paypal, and works by the honor system (so it is really only useful for donations)

On OUYA, this does actual in-app purchases through the OUYA Discover store. I am going to be adding similar support for android games to do purchases through the Google Play store, but for now only the OUYA version of this is implemented.

To define products, go to "Edit General Game Data" -> then to "Platform Specific Options" and then to the very bottom of the menu where you will find "In-App Purchases (experimental)"

In this menu you can enable the "paypal" store



Then you add a new product



Then you set the details for that product



For the Paypal store, the important piece of information is the "Button ID". To create one, you log into your paypal account, then go to the tab labelled "Merchant Services"



And then you will see a place to click to create new buttons or edit ones you have created before.



After you have finished creating your button, the only information you need is the button ID, which is a bunch of numbers and uppercase letters. it will look something like this: VF2VSR48CTFN8

In a way, this whole paypal purchase/donation system is kind of like a more elaborite version of writing a text box that says "If you like this game please donate to myemail@whatever.com using paypal" except that it will be really easy for the player to use it if they want to.

Also, if any of the few people who packaged their games for OUYA wants to know how to set this up for the OUYA store, just let me know, and I will explain in detail

Ack! Spambot! Spambot! Er...wait.

This could be cool to have. I don't know how to deal with paypal, honestly. Though having people money me out of pity seems nice. I dunno. I'll have to think about it. I may slap a thing onto some stuff being all "hey, if you want to money me, go ahead. I don't care!"

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dOn'T MiNd mE! i'M jUsT CoNtAgIoUs!!!
Play Orbs CCG: http://orbsccg.com/r/4r6x

I deal with paypal for the selling of fanart and such to fund my current projects so I'm familiar with the paypal side of things but how does this work in game? Is this feature somehow linked to a textbox which triggers a payment option, then once the payment is complete it causes a tag to be enabled which then makes a certain feature in the game accessible? That would be pretty neat for people dealing with a very professional project so that they could spread around their demo and get funding for their game. Either way it's a neat concept and I like how there's no set prices. Honor systems always come off as less money-grabby.

EDIT: So after downloading the nightly I've taken a closer look. I see that the feature can trigger tags to be enabled but how is the payment window brought up by the player? Does the option to make payments just occur upon new game or do I somehow choose when a payment can be made? Like when a player beats the demo, reaches a certain point, talks to an npc, accesses their menu... etc...

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⊕ P E R S O N A L M U S I C: https://open.spotify.com/album/6fEo3fCm5C3XhtFRflfANr
⍠ C O L L A B M U S I C: https://dustpuppets.bandcamp.com/releases

I think it would be a good idea to put a disclaimer on the menu reminding authors not to set the donation button if they use copyrighted materials or other people's intellectual properties in their games without permission.

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Ohhhhhhhhh yeah, that'll be a thing that's advisable. I second this.

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dOn'T MiNd mE! i'M jUsT CoNtAgIoUs!!!
Play Orbs CCG: http://orbsccg.com/r/4r6x

Definitely! Don't want anyone getting in to legal troubles.

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⊕ P E R S O N A L M U S I C: https://open.spotify.com/album/6fEo3fCm5C3XhtFRflfANr
⍠ C O L L A B M U S I C: https://dustpuppets.bandcamp.com/releases

The only way to make payments in-game is to edit your menu and add the new "Purchases" special menu item. It will not appear in your menu if you don't add it manually.

It can be in the main menu, or a menu that is brought up by a script or a text box.

When you choose to make a payment, a separate browser window is opened, and the OHRRPGCE window is paused until you come back and "confirm" the purchase.



This is a good idea! I will add something like this.

Alright so I gave it a go but I'm running in to this error:



Some things you may want to note:
-I'm running on MAC
-I tried proceeding to the payment option while in "test game" within CUSTOM
-I used the paypal code that you used as an example code since I figured it probably existed but perhaps just making my own would remedy the problem...

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⊕ P E R S O N A L M U S I C: https://open.spotify.com/album/6fEo3fCm5C3XhtFRflfANr
⍠ C O L L A B M U S I C: https://dustpuppets.bandcamp.com/releases

Oops! This is a result of me doing a lousy job of testing this on Mac. (Did I test it at all? Maybe not!)

Thank you for bringing it to my attention. I have a pretty good hunch as to why it is happening. That Terminal_wrapper.sh script is something that is included inside the mac version of Custom, but not inside of the mac version of game (because until now there was no need for it)

I'll see if I can fix it so that it is not needed.

Off topic, but a question to you, James.
I have magic healing spells set to do healing element and magic element damage to a target, and I have my heroes set to absorb healing element 100%, but magic element is normal damage, yet I'm getting hurt by the spells, does a character have to be able to absorb ALL elements in an attack to absorb the damage? Because this shouldn't be happening, from what I'm figuring here.

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dOn'T MiNd mE! i'M jUsT CoNtAgIoUs!!!
Play Orbs CCG: http://orbsccg.com/r/4r6x

Thanks, and no rush. I just wanted to see it in action but its not something I'd even implement until I have a solid demo up and am looking for donation or whatever.

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⊕ P E R S O N A L M U S I C: https://open.spotify.com/album/6fEo3fCm5C3XhtFRflfANr
⍠ C O L L A B M U S I C: https://dustpuppets.bandcamp.com/releases

Terminal_Wrapper.sh should only be used to bring up a Terminal window for the user to see. I would guess that running open on a URL (via SHELL or our wrapper) would open a web browser in OSX; failing that an AppleScript script could be used to tell the browser to open a URL (see Terminal_Wrapper.sh), but I would avoid AS if at all possible.

Ah, that makes sense.

Okay, I have fixed (and tested) the url opening code on Mac. sheamkennedy, can you try again with the latest mac nightly?

I have just tested it and can confirm that it does work. I was wondering though, I noticed the paypal button you had created is set at $1.00. Do you know if there's any possible way to make the button such that the player chooses the donation amount. (for example, Suzie Q really enjoys the game and instead wants to donate her whole life savings of $5.47, or John Doe can only scrounge up $0.02 and wishes to donate that instead...) If not then I guess I could always just make many payment denominations to choose from in-game.

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⊕ P E R S O N A L M U S I C: https://open.spotify.com/album/6fEo3fCm5C3XhtFRflfANr
⍠ C O L L A B M U S I C: https://dustpuppets.bandcamp.com/releases

Excellent!

In the Paypal button creation tool, there is an option to set multiple prices for a single button, but it seems to do the price breaks entirely in the HTML, so linking to the button_id alone doesn't work.

There is also an option for a "Donate" button that lets you specify any amount, but It includes a big warning that you are not allowed to use it unless your are legally recognized as a tax exempt charity, so I didn't try it.