preventing refreshes

[GundamSV7]

hi there, I'm currently making a game and I'm having a problem with players refreshing, the problem is, when they refresh really quickly instead of slowly clicking the links to attack, they attack multiple times instead of once. I thought about putting a time() variable into a database and having something like a 5 sec timer delay before their able to attack again, but that's kinda tedious, do you guys have any recommendations on how to stop users from refreshing rapidly?

[drawmack]

Using the database isn't that bad. Stick a timestamp field in there. Then before you update the database check to make sure that they havn't updated in 5 seconds. It's only like three lines of code.

[Erestar]

All in all, I'd say that you'd want to implement a generic timer system for all of your commands, along the lines that each player should have the same chance of doing something, regardless of connection, or if they're using a third party program to play them game.

Since I don't know anything about your game I can only make general comments, but it sounds like you may want to implement the concept of a "round", where only one action, like a movement or an attack, can occur from any one player. If you do this stuff now, you may be saving yourself some headaches later on. I think its always better to put things like this in at the begining instead of trying to bung it in in the end. That's why most game development projects never make it to the end.

More importantly, what's this game all about, and when's it going to be done? 😉

Erestar