Updating mysql table/cell every hour

Deposeni

How would I update a MySQL Cell, in a table, for every row... Every hour, on the hour? Without Cronjobs preferbly...

I.E. Every hour, each user gets 100gold added to their "money" cell... Thus adding 100gold to the amount of money they have. (I'm building an RPG, can you tell? 😃)

Edit: I currently will have 61+ columns in my 'Player' table, for my RPG... my friend said this is bad... Is that true? I can't think of any other way to keep all the user's information....

HalfaBee

Cron is the obvious way to do this.

I suppose you could have a script that did the addition and then slept for 1 hour and respawned itself and exited.
It could be prone to problems.
You would have to check that the script was always running in other scripts that were called reguarly.
If you have reasonably even traffic you could always check the time and do the addition and set a db entry telling what time it was updated at the start of each page.

I wouldn't worry about 61 columns too much. Mysql can handle much biiger tables.
You could always split the tables up and have the players ID as the key for each table.

Halfabee

Deposeni

Thanks... I kinda figured I'd have to use cronjobs 🙁

What would my cronjob look like? I've honestly never used them...

Unrelated question: I'm making a map system... a PHP script that will read from a .txt file, that looks like this

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XUUUUUUUUTTUUUUUUUUX
XUUUUUUUUTTUUUUUUUUX
XUUUUUUUUTTUUUUUUUUX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

X = Mountains
U = Grass
T = Path to walk on

I basically want the script to read it, and have X be changed into mountain.gif, U - grass.gif, and T - path.gif... Then have a player be able to walk around on it... BUT only show a 5x5 area of the map - and show a new 5x5 area of the map each time the move (Lets say they're at

XXXXX
UUUTT
UUUTT
UUUTT
XXXXX

and go west, the map would change to

XXXXX
UUUUT
UUUUT
UUUUT
XXXXX

While keeping them at the exact center of it.... How would I do this? I was thinking using a coordinate system (10, 10), but how would I read/print the new map from that? I've never done something like this...

Edit: I forgot to mention, I will also have a table named "Locations" - with each coordinate on the grid as an ID (I.E. 5x5 is 5x5y) - so that I can have "Players here", "Monsters", etc.... How would this tie into the above?

If you could understand me at ALL - feel free to answer me question, it'd help a lot 😛

Edit: What about "Collision Detection"? A player can't run through mountains, now can they? :-P

spstieng

I guess this is a bit out of topic (no PHP) - but making RPG games is fun :-D Thinking of doing the same myself.

As for your map systems..... I think using alphabetic values is not a good idea. Is the map generated at random? Do you have an algorythm for creating paths, mountains, grass etc?

No?

1) If you are typing in each map "by hand", why not put in gfx stright away?
2) Use a numberic co-ordination table or something (arrays?) Replase certain co-ordinates with gfx
3) Use ANSI gfx instead of GIF - Ansi can be displayd in DOS mode, GIF cannot (IIRC) - Ever played Nethack?

I've never generated a game (yet) - but this is my "logic".

As for your databse, it is good practive to have several smaller tables.

E.g:
A table for all items available in the game or you can even split this up into subgroups - table for all types of swords, armour etc.
A table for spells (priest, wizard, druid etc)

A table for character name and stats
A table for inventory
A table for skills

and so on.

Good luck in your development.

Deposeni

Thanks - But I meant to do a WEB-BASED game... So I'd need to use .gif's, and I am creating the map by hand.

HalfaBee

Your crontab file should look like this

0 /usr/local/bin/php /full_path_to_the Script/script.php

You may have to change /usr/local/bin/php to the location of php on your host.

I'll have to think about the questions 🙁

HalfaBee