PHP Game Questions

[catacon]

Hey all! I have been working on creating a MMO game in PHP using MySQL databases, and I need some help. The game will be turn based, meanin that when a player does something (i.e. attacks) it takes a certain number of turns. When someone registers, they have 75 turns. I need a way to give the player 10 turns every hour, whether they are logged in or not. What is an easy way to do this?

[faulkner132]

Just log the start time of their first move, the number of moves they have left, and the time of the last time you added moves. From there you can do a calculation of the number of hours elasped from their last move and add to their turns accordingly.

[catacon]

First move meaning what? How do I log the last move they made, get the time now, and what would the calcuation look like? I tried that, but I couldn't get it to work.

[catacon]

Anyone? Anyone at all?

[faulkner132]

You really only need to log the last time you calculated how many moves they have left. From this time when you run the new calculation to see how many new moves they have, determine the number of moves from the old time.

Update the calculated time and you should be able to repeat this procedure.

[catacon]

Again, what would these calcuations look like?

[faulkner132]

Don't know the functions off the top of my head, but PHP has an extensive collection of date/time functions. You can use these to determine the number of hours difference from one time to another.

[radiopunk]

Here's a usefull function for you:

PHP Code:

<?php 
function getmicrotime(){ 
   list($usec, $sec) = explode(" ",microtime()); 
   return ((float)$usec + (float)$sec); 
} 
$last_turn= getmicrotime(); // <-- This is the timestamp representing "When was the last time the player received turns, gold or whatever, this will be uploaded in the database.

// CODE TO BE INTRODUCED IN EVERY PAGE OF THE GAME:
$now = getmicrotime(); // <-- gets the timestamp in the moment the player loads the page.

$secs_passed = $now - $last_turn; // seconds passed since the last turn
$min_passed = ($now - $last_turn) * 60; // minutes passed since....
$hours_passed = ($now - $last_turn)* 3600; // hours passed since...

if($hours_passed > 0){ //If more than 1 hour has passed since the last turn...
  Update_rankings_code(); // Here you can add a update ranking code to
                                    // update the rank tables every hour
  $gold_per_turn=10; 
  $moves_per_turn=10;
  $gold=$hours_passed*$gold_per_turn;
  $moves=$hours_passed*$moves_per_turn;
}
?>

And so on
Notice: This may not be valid code. I used it just to show you the utility of the getmicrotime() function. I hope you get the ideea.