highscores script

ryneaux

I am re-creating a flash game of mine and saving high scores in a MySQL database. In the earlier version each new score was simply added to the database and when retrieving the top 10 scores I simply ordered results based upon score descending. However, with time I had hundreds of scores saved even though I was only showing the top ten.

I changed my score script to simply update existing scores, under a certain name, if the score was better than the current saved score... and if it was worse just ignore it all together.. That at least helped reduce the number a little... but still there were hundreds of scores that were stored that no one would see.

So, this time I decided to write a script that would truncate the table each time scores were retrieved and then to simply re-insert the top 10.

This works most of the time... however, every once in a while it happens that I get double the scores... like it never emptied the table and just reinserted the scores...

Anyway... here's the code... interested in suggestions, thanks...

if($_POST['action']=="get"){
	$tscores="";
	$tempnames=array();
	$tempscores=array();

$scorequery=mysql_query("SELECT * FROM ".$score_table." ORDER BY pscore ".$sort_order);
if(mysql_num_rows($scorequery)){
	$til=@mysql_numrows($scorequery);
	for($i=0;$i<$til;$i++){
		$pn=mysql_result($scorequery,$i,"pname");
		$ps=mysql_result($scorequery,$i,"pscore");
		array_push($tempnames,$pn);
		array_push($tempscores,$ps);
	}
}
$cleanquery=mysql_query("TRUNCATE TABLE $score_table");

$scorecount=count($tempscores);
if($scorecount>$maximum_results){
	$til=$maximum_results;
} else {
	$til=$scorecount;
}
$a=1;
for($i=0;$i<$til;$i++){
	$populatequery=mysql_query("INSERT INTO ".$score_table." (pname,pscore) VALUES ('".$tempnames[$i]."','".$tempscores[$i]."')");
	$tscores.="name".$a."=".$tempnames[$i]."&score".$a."=".$tempscores[$i]."&";
	$a++;
}
while ($a<=$maximum_results){
	$tscores.="name".$a."=NONE&score".$a."=0&";
	$a++;
}
$thisoutput=$tscores;
}

vicodin

Although im not 100% sure how more results are getting in but I have a felling its to do when you get a score which is the same as another score already in the top 10. Instead of doing a count of how many entries there are in the array to get your maximum result, predefine that the loop will only happen 10 times. That way you can never go over.

ryneaux

As I mentioned it isn't a matter of how many scores... the check you refer to is only for cases in which there are less than 10 scores... to make sure not to insert empty results... otherwise the maximum is set to 10 ($maximum_results).

As I said originally, it seems there are times in which the table is simply not truncated... and then when the top ten are reinserted I get double the scores. So, my question is more along the lines as to how I might make sure the table is actually emptied before re inserting... or as to why exactly it would ever happen that the scores are not emptied.