Connecting to a server

Which servers the game will have, which builds can connect to them and what a player risks on someone else's server

Warning

No server exists yet, and the game cannot connect to one. There is no address format, no connection screen and no accounts

Which servers there will be

	OWS	NOWS
Full name	Official Web Services	Non-official web services
Who runs it	the developers	anyone
Who moderates it	the developers	the operator
Builds that can connect	all	the full build only

OWS is the default server. Every build of the game knows it on every platform, with nothing to set up

NOWS are community servers. The developers neither control nor moderate them

Steam Workshop is a third channel for levels on PC. Steam builds already list and play the items you subscribed to. Publishing a level there from the game is not possible yet

Which builds can connect

Build	Where it comes from	OWS	NOWS
Store build	Google Play, App Store	yes	no
Full build	GitHub and the project's site	yes	yes

A store build cannot connect to a community server in any way. NOWS support is cut out of it when it is compiled, not hidden behind a setting

The reason is the store rules. A store judges what a program can do, not which buttons it shows. And by their rules, content shown to other people has to be moderated

The full build is planned to get its own application id, so that on Android it can be installed next to the store version. Today every Android build shares one id, com.vertoker.BulletHero

What OWS will have

accounts and terms of service
a check of every level before it is published: a level with an error is refused, a level with a warning goes to a moderator
reports and blocking of levels and users

What an account holds is not decided yet. The server will have its own privacy policy, written when the server exists. It will describe the account and explain how to delete it. The game's and the site's policies do not cover the server - Game privacy policy, Privacy policy

When

There are no dates. The order is: publishing to Steam Workshop, then OWS, then the Google Play build, then the App Store build

Publishing levels to any service will arrive no earlier than the update after gv 1.0.0

Playing together on a server does not exist yet and is not designed

Risks of third-party servers

A community server is run by someone you most likely do not know. The developers neither control nor moderate such servers. The EULA of the full build says so plainly

Risk	Why
Levels with unchecked rights	the operator decides what to check and may check nothing. A level may carry music its author had no right to share
Nobody moderates the content	there is no guarantee that anyone looks at what is uploaded
Files from other sites	the standard policy lets a level fetch a file by a direct URL. Opening such a level makes the game download from a site chosen by the level's author. That is why store builds forbid it
The operator sees your traffic	there is no protocol yet, so it is unknown what exactly the server receives. Treat anything you send as visible to the operator
The server can disappear	a level that exists only on that server is gone with it

A level is licensed under CC BY-NC by default, and its author may pick another license in the level's metadata. A server has to respect each level's own license. Under CC BY-NC nobody may host a level commercially, a community server included, and a server that charges for such levels breaks the license of every author on it

Recommendation

Connect only to servers whose operator you know. Keep your own copy of every level you care about: a level is a folder of files, and a copy on your disk does not depend on any server

EULA

The full build ships with an EULA. It says: community servers are third-party services, the developers neither control nor moderate them

Store builds will ask you to accept an EULA before you publish a level

Neither text is written yet