PHP, Ticker

[chemical]

Me and my friend are trying to make an online game, and I was wondering... how would I create the ticker in PHP? How can I make it run each hour... and how would I go trouh all the accounts and raise the amount of resources needed.

[pablissimo]

You could make it run every hour by setting it up with cron with any parameters you need. That bit's easy enough.

The resource bit would, I guess, be done by querying your database to return all users then running whatever formulae you need to calculate resources on each user before UPDATEing their records and moving on.

This on your own server or a web host?

[chemical]

Well, I've been thinking about crontabs. Was the first to hit me, but is there a another way to do it? I want to be able to pause ticks etc.

I know I have to query each user.. but exactly how do I do it in PHP... Needed help with the actual code there.. if somebody got any exaples please show me.. Just need to add 250 metal to their accounts at first, I could figure out the rest.

I have my own server, yes!

[Structural Integrity]

Originally posted by chemical
Well, I've been thinking about crontabs. Was the first to hit me, but is there a another way to do it? I want to be able to pause ticks etc.

I know I have to query each user.. but exactly how do I do it in PHP... Needed help with the actual code there.. if somebody got any exaples please show me.. Just need to add 250 metal to their accounts at first, I could figure out the rest.

I have my own server, yes!

You can leave a browser open and do some META refreshes. As soon as you close the page your ticker stops.
OR you can do some fancy stuff that updates resources the moment someone logs in. Calculating how many ticks have passed since the last pageview and then update accordingly.

[pablissimo]

I did an ASP ticker that basically calculated resources, finished research and constructions, armies returning to base if over an hour had passed since their last login with ticks happening hourly from when they signed up (so if someone signed up at 13:54 they'd always tick at 54 minutes past the hour).

You can even work that for combat too, just have code tick both the attacker and defender if it's required before letting the battle calc run.

You could still pause ticks with a crontab, just have a field in a settings table in your db along the lines of 'ticking' which can be either true or false. Then in your tick script, get field from db, see if you're ticking or not, if so then tick otherwise don't.

C'est superb.

Example code for querying each user...

$dbSession = @mysql_connect( HOST, USERNAME, PASSWORD );
if ( !$dbSession ) 
  die( 'Couldn't connect to DB' );

if ( !@mysql_select_db( DATABASE_NAME ) ) {
  mysql_close( $dbSession );
  die( 'Couldn't open table: DATABASE_NAME' );
}

$dbResult = mysql_query( 'SELECT * FROM tblUsers' );

$dbFields = mysql_fetch_array( $dbResult, MYSQL_ASSOC );

while( $dbFields ) {
  mysql_query( 'UPDATE tblUsers SET Money=' . ( $dbFields[ 'Money' ] + 250 ) . ' WHERE UserID=' . $dbFields[ 'UserID' ] );
  $dbFields = mysql_fetch_array( $dbResult, MYSQL_ASSOC );
}

mysql_close( $dbSession );

That'd probably add 250 to each person's money, but I bet there's eight-hundred better ways to do it. Plus that wouldn't be very good for combat, you'd need more queries in there to see who is meant to be attacking who for each user.

[chemical]

Thanks Pablissimo. This is ace!

[pablissimo]

Bear in mind I'veonly been doing PHP for a few weeks so I could in fact be spouting complete bollocks.

Most of it reads ok though

[Dave]

Try learning PHP on a basic level before you go into creating a game.

If you have however been programming PHP for a while then it should be fairly obvious to you what to do.....

As for the resources bit, I've edited mine slightly as it does calls to a conres table to check for addtional resources....

$query = "SELECT id, m_roids, c_roids, e_roids FROM accounts";
$result = mysql_query($query);
while ($row = mysql_fetch_row($result)) {

    $m_add = 250;
    $c_add = 250;
    $e_add = 250;


    if ($row[1] < 100)
        $m_add += (350-$row[1])*$row[1];
    else
        $m_add += 250 * $row[1];

    if ($row[2] < 100)
        $c_add += (350-$row[2])*$row[2];
    else
        $c_add += 250 * $row[2];

    if ($row[3] < 100)
        $e_add += (350-$row[3])*$row[3];
    else
        $e_add += 250 * $row[3];

    $query = "UPDATE accounts SET metal=metal+$m_add, crystal=crystal+$c_add, eonium=eonium+$e_add WHERE id=$row[0]";
    mysql_query($query);
}

Basicaly adds 250 'base' resources, and then roid resources.

250 if you have over 100 of that type, 350 otherwise.

[Mong]

There's a reason ticker-based games shouldn't be coded in server-side scripts like PHP & ASP.

Originally Posted by Mong

There's a reason ticker-based games shouldn't be coded in server-side scripts like PHP & ASP.

What should they be coded in then?

[pablissimo]

A compiled language would be a good start.

[Dave]

Originally Posted by Mong

There's a reason ticker-based games shouldn't be coded in server-side scripts like PHP & ASP.

Indeed there are.

But if you dont know any compiled languages, then what other option do you have?

Besides, with Zend Accelerator, my ticker script runs fast enough so that it doesnt matter.

[Raging.Retard]

Originally Posted by Mong

There's a reason ticker-based games shouldn't be coded in server-side scripts like PHP & ASP.

Any 'decent' ticker should do most of the processing within the DB server itself rather than in the code, so its not *that* crucial.

[General Martok]

I asked spinner on the last real life Rucphen meet how he made the game tick, and he used cronjobs, how i don't kno anymore after that bottle of whiskey and quite a few beers (fecking cold, needed alcohol)

[JetLinus]

I'm quite sure the actual ticker itself is coded in C++... Some time ago (~ >2 years ago) in creator's hour a creator said that (was it even spinner?).
And then there was a thread once on the forums, about "making your own pa like game", and ppl started discussing, until after some time, Spinner turned up and said: "Hey, GO AWAY PLS! If you don't like PA it's ok, but hey, pls DON'T discuss your own game on our boards" (something like that).
He also gave some "tipps" for those "game-making-n00bs", like:
- sooner or later money WILL be a problem, etc, moan, bla
- don't use that kiddy php or mysql stuff, after having passed the 100k user boundary, you will simply see your server going down. use C++., the language of choise

I'm not too sure about that, but I _do_ think that some time, dunno when, this quote: "C++ is the language of choise" (in exactly THIS spelling ^^) was said by a creator.

Ah well, maybe I've dreamt it all ^^

[Rayden]

you have more control over a compiled 'ticker'..

i've been fiddling with the idea of writing an engine in c++ which runs as a deamon and the php/asp interface to the public. everything happens in the engine. that way nothing is static!

[djbass]

Originally Posted by JetLinus

I'm quite sure the actual ticker itself is coded in C++... Some time ago (~ >2 years ago) in creator's hour a creator said that (was it even spinner?).
And then there was a thread once on the forums, about "making your own pa like game", and ppl started discussing, until after some time, Spinner turned up and said: "Hey, GO AWAY PLS! If you don't like PA it's ok, but hey, pls DON'T discuss your own game on our boards" (something like that).
He also gave some "tipps" for those "game-making-n00bs", like:
- sooner or later money WILL be a problem, etc, moan, bla
- don't use that kiddy php or mysql stuff, after having passed the 100k user boundary, you will simply see your server going down. use C++., the language of choise

I'm not too sure about that, but I _do_ think that some time, dunno when, this quote: "C++ is the language of choise" (in exactly THIS spelling ^^) was said by a creator.

Ah well, maybe I've dreamt it all ^^

I documented a long time ago after talking with spinner & fudge & vish how their engine worked. Every element of the game ran from compiled code done in C++ and ran off a Sybase database. This included the pages which were fast-cgi (a modification of CGI protocol that retains the program in memory instead of loading it for every instance of a page).

=[DJ Bass]=

[Flayer]

use a loop and check the time between it?