Armadillo In-game Purchasing

As far as I know most big fish games are using Armadillo

 

I believe that is true that most (or many) of the games on Big Fish Games use Armadillo. Just don’t look at any of the Reflexive games as an example. Big Kahuna Reef, Wik, and all the Ricochet games on Big Fish Games are using a simple reg code system where the reg code is tied to the user name. They don’t use Armadillo or any other “DRMâ€￾ or wrapper. They don’t use the “Reflexive Arcadeâ€￾ DRM. They just have in-game code using the games UI to ask for a reg code. Nothing fancy about it.

Does someone know of a specific game that does use Armadillo?

 

Our first-party Beesly's Buzzwords sales use Armadillo:

Game info/download
What our nags look like

We don't use any kind of in-game purchasing with this version, though. We had tried out eSellerate's integrated purchasing SDK with a previous version, but decided it was too nonstandard and jarring for some users. Since then they now offer a customizable integrated purchase SDK, which they call "embedded web store" or something. We haven't tried that out. Currently we use standard webpage purchase path that spits out an order confirmation email with their key.

Armadillo itself doesn't provide a system for in-game purchasing, as far as I know. There is some sort of key injection mechanism for Digital River's e-commerce system, but I'm honestly not very clear on exactly how to set that up or where it occurs. The closest you can do otherwise is navigate to the purchase page in the nag screen itself and have the user complete the order there (it's basically an IE-powered window).

 

I haven't seen it in action, but from what I understand the process works like this:

1) Your HTML nag windows contain a link to your order form
2) Order goes through as usual (the nag screen acts a web browser)
3) Armadillo/Software Passport picks up the key and applies it

The purchasing itself is handled by a payment processor, and the automatic key injection will only work on a Digital River-owned payment processor. You can still carry out the order processor in the nag window itself on a non-DR payment provider, but the user would have to copy/paste the key into the form as usual. If you need more specifics I would ask at the Silicon Realms support forum: http://support.siliconrealms.com/

You won't be able to easily do this in-game, btw. It's far easier to do as a utility author; or anything not running full-screen. You'd probably have to minimize or revert to windowed mode when you trigger the reminder window if the game is actually running.

There are other in-place purchasing solutions out there:

eSellerate Embedded Web Store -- Check their SDK for an example app; this would just handle payment, could still pass off to Armadillo for serial handling
Trymedia ActiveMARK -- PopCap's titles are a great example of this in action with customized branding
Reflexive's DRM -- I believe they also license this without Reflexive Arcade distribution

 

We haved use Armadillo in our game Psychoballs (but only the version for Big Fish Games). You can do calls to the ArmAccess.DLL from within your game, so you can check weather the version is registered or not (for example to disable some features). Of course this only works correct after you have wrapped your executable using the Armadillo Application.

If you have Armadillo/Software Passport you can create valid RegKeys on your own with the Armadillo Application, so you dont need a Digital River-owned payment processor as mentioned before. You can do everything yourself if you want to.

 

There is an optional 'buy now' link on the reminder/nag screens. That is what they mean. You can point this to a website or order page directly. Don't confuse this with automated key distribution, it's just a 'buy now' link that can point to any URL you want.

Mark
Cornutopia Games
http://www.cornutopia.net