Newbie Function Question

[tarmer]

Hello all......

Here is my question - And I am not requesting someone do this for me but if one could give some guidance that would be great....

I am wanting to put together a soccer management game (though it could be hockey as well - but let's do soccer for the moment)

Here is the full concept : A manager logs on to the site, where the index shows stuff (tables, recent trades, match results etc) He can than click on one of many links.. One will be rosters, one will be stats, one will be past results. He will also be able to input line-ups for his next match(s) from a form that the game will save..

The sim engine will be fully automated to run these matches by using the submitted lineups and will than update the tables, player stats, bank accounts etc - The engine will also provide match stats and match reports...

That in a nutshell is the concept - Now this is ambitious for a newbie with no real programming experience.. But I look at it as a good challenge... I picked php because of its easy html integration and mySQL integration with out a lot of extra work.......

In any case here are my questions on this :

In C/C++ you can use include (#include something.h) which will allow you to write seperate functions and include them during compile (this part I like as it allows me to seperate the different parts out ) and looks to keep code somewhat seperate.......

Does php have the same ability ( I know it is not compiled but interpeted) but the coding can get rather long as I will have a ton of information for each function

1.) $players - This will be a list of all the players available in the game
2.) $ratings - This will be a list of all the player attributes for various abilities (tackling, passing, shooting etc.. -- these will be from 1-20)
3.) $stats - this will be the player stats

Now whether these can be combined or not I also do not know - I will be using an mySQL database to hold all information in the league

The engine will simulate results based on the following: A manager puts in a lineup of players - Each players attributes are totaled for a "number" - This "number" along with a "tactic" (which will provide another number) will be the basis for all probabilities of actions.. Let's look at a situation...

Team "A" has submitted a lineup -

Team A has the ball on their side of the field. It will attempt to score. Generate a table from 1-100 (0-99) and populate it with the following factors : Player from team A's skill, Opposing Player's defensive capability, distance from goal, amount of fatigue (duration of game). This table will look something like this (imagine +1 to make it simpler, so 1-100 not 0-99) :

1-50 : Player successfully advances the ball
51-60 : Player fails to advance the ball but maintains possession
61-73 : Player fails to advance the ball and loses possession
74-82 : Player passes the ball far upfield to another attacker
83-95 : Player loses possession of the ball and the enemy attempts to score
95-100 : Critical failure : The player loses possession of the ball and instantly yields a goal to the opposing team

2) In the event of 1, roll again, but now have a different set of options for being on the opposing side. In the even of 2, make the same roll on the table again. In the event of three, make the same rolls for the opposing team, but use a different table as they're closer to the goal. In the event of 4, make the rolls again but change the player's statistics to Player 2 on Team A, and assume numbers being closer to the goal. In the event of 5, roll a table where the opposing team either succeeds or fails based on the skill of a random player. In the event of six, instantly give a goal to the opposing team (in the game of soccer this happens way less than 5% of the time, it'd be more like .01%, but you could also roll on another table of critical failures that include injury, or looking stupid for ten seconds).

3) Repeat the process based on the results.

NOW this is a LOOONNGGG post but I wanted to give you the basic concept - So back to my question.....

What would be the cleanest way to put this together ? Should I have multiple functions, some other thought - also there will be substitutions - red cards, yellow cards, injuries (at least by random chance) - and this will all be stored in mySQL for output

Thoughts

Thank You in advance

[Derokorian]

First and foremost: Welcome to PHPBuilder.com! This is a great place for learning PHP (at least IMO) and getting help when you stumble. You're going to want to try to get something going and come back with problems

Gonna try to help you out a little bit at a time, let's see how this goes 😃

tarmer;10996643 wrote:

In C/C++ you can use include (#include something.h) which will allow you to write seperate functions and include them during compile (this part I like as it allows me to seperate the different parts out ) and looks to keep code somewhat seperate.......

Does php have the same ability ( I know it is not compiled but interpeted) but the coding can get rather long as I will have a ton of information for each function

Yes php does have the same ability, look at include, include_once, require, and require_once.

NOW this is a LOOONNGGG post but I wanted to give you the basic concept - So back to my question.....

What would be the cleanest way to put this together ? Should I have multiple functions, some other thought - also there will be substitutions - red cards, yellow cards, injuries (at least by random chance) - and this will all be stored in mySQL for output

I would say that you should do some learning, and get beyond just function to have objects, then you could have objects like Players, who have different actions (functions) and and stats (properties) and might look something like this:

class Player { 
   public $name; 
   public $stats = array(); 

   const DefaultStatValue = 3; 

   public function __construct($name) { 
      $this->name = $name; 
   } 

   public function setStat($name,$value) { 
      $this->stats[$name] = $value; 
   } 

   public function shoot() { 
      $chance = isset($this->stats['ShotPower']) ? $this->stats['ShotPower'] : self::DefaultStatValue; 
      $roll = rand(0,10); 
      if( $roll < $chance ) { 
         echo $this->name .' shoots and scores!'; 
      } else { 
         echo $this->name .' missed a shot.'; 
      }
   }
} 
$tarmer = new Player('Tarmer'); 
$tarmer->shoot(); 

echo '<br>';

$dero = new Player('Derokorian'); 
$dero->setStat('ShotPower',6); 
$dero->shoot();

echo '<br>';

$pele = new Player('Pelé');
$pele->setStat('ShotPower',11);
$pele->shoot();

For more have a look at the PHP manual on Objects. I hope this briefly showed the power of Objects as it would relate to your project.

There are a LOT of moving parts to what you describe, I suggest reading the PHP manual as it is not just very well documented but it has many examples on using things. To top it off it has some of the best user contributed notes of any documentation I've seen! So I would then start trying to do little parts and when things aren't working as planned come back here for help.

[tarmer]

Thank you for the response... It is much appreciated, I know this seems a big task for a new guy but I thank you for the guidance

I will look into the sections you noted

[tarmer]

can you include these class definitions as (include files)

In other words -

Main PHP program (this is the engine)
pieces of the engine (players), (events) etc..

So I can write the pieces of this seperate and just include a callout to them

ie... include players.php, include events.php etc ?

[tarmer]

Ok...

In looking at your snippet - I have another set of questions before I get started down the input road....

I do not intend on creating players in the program.... There may be well over 8,000 players - What I will be doing is setting up tables in mySQL with player information..

Name, Age, Nationality, Team (if any), and attributes - shooting, passing, tackling etc.....

So I do not think I would need to use classes for those definitions - but would want to call to the dbase to use that information.... Thoughts

[Derokorian]

Well you can build the classes from information in the DB. But to your previous post, I'm not great with words see if this gives you a better idea:

// Person.class.php
class Person {
   public $name;

   public function __construct($name) {
      $this->name = $name;
   }
}

// Player.class.php
class Player extends Person {
   public $team;
   public $stats;

   public function setTeam(Team $team) {
      $this->team = $team;
      $this->team->addPlayer($this);
   }

   public function setStat($name,$value) {
      $this->stats[$name] = $value;
   }
}

// Manager.class.php
class Manager extends Person {
   public $team;

   public function setTeam(Team $team) {
      $this->team = $team;
      $this->team->setManager($this);
   }
}

// Team.class.php
class Team {
   public $name;
   public $league;
   public $manager;
   public $players = array();

   public function __construct($name) {
      $this->name = $name;
   }

   public function setManager(Manager $manager) {
      $this->manager = $manager;
   }

   public function addPlayer(Player $player) {
      $this->players[] = $player;
   }

   public function setLeague($league) {
      $this->league = $league;
   }
}

// Main.php
function __autoload($class) {
   $file = dirname(__FILE__) . DIRECTORY_SEPARATOR . $class . '.class.php';
   if( file_exists($file) ) {
      require_once($file);
      return TRUE;
   }
   return FALSE;
}

$Badgers = new Team('Badgers');
$Badgers->setLeague('ISL');

$Joe = new Manager('Joe');
$Joe->setTeam($Badgers);

$Bob = new Player('Bob');
$Bob->setTeam($Badgers);

You could of course build all this from the DB, but now you get more intracate and its up to you how you would build from the result, whether you want an object for each person to better handle each person individually or if you just want a single team object, which maybe part of its construct then would be to fetch all players in the DB who are a member of said team... I hope I'm actually being useful to you.

Edit: Can you tell I'm bored today? LOL Look at all the code just on the fly out of no where.

[bradgrafelman]

tarmer;10996654 wrote:

can you include these class definitions as (include files)

Of course, so long as you include()/require() the files that define those classes before you actually try to use them.

tarmer;10996660 wrote:

Ok...
I do not intend on creating players in the program.... There may be well over 8,000 players - What I will be doing is setting up tables in mySQL with player information..

But a database will simply let you store and retrieve information about a player. What are you going to do with the player's information once you retrieve it from the DB in your PHP code? Just store the information in a bunch of variables or maybe a large array?

... Or instead, you could instantiate a Player object and allow the rest of your code to interact with the information you retrieved from the DB via the method/properties you've defined in the class.

tarmer;10996660 wrote:

So I do not think I would need to use classes for those definitions - but would want to call to the dbase to use that information.... Thoughts

See above.

If your PHP code is doing nothing but retrieving data from the DB and spitting it out to the user's browser, then I suppose there's not much to be gained from using OOP (unless of course you just want the practice 😉).

EDIT: Woops, replied while Derokorian was doing the same.

[tarmer]

Thank You all again, Just trying to wrap my head around the concept...

Here is the thought (well exactly) & classes are fine (if I understand the use)

The dbase stores all the league information. For a game to simulate what would be needed is 1.) The sim engine 2.) The manager input (lineup)

The lineup would take information (it could be a form, pulldown whatever) that the manager would input (players, tactics, subs) and pass this to the sim engine as $lineup (and print to a web page the information ) something like this...

http://olmecfm.com/odfl/preview.jsp?MatchId=247

In the simpilest form the engine will than take the lineups and sim the match - The outcome of events will be based on some said events.....

So this is my ignorance but if I write a "include" file that has the classes defined - Lets say (as shown below) -

Players: (This would be all needed in the player call out)
$public NAME
$public NATION
$public CLUB
$public AGE
$public POSITION
$public CABILITY
$public PABILITY
$public VALUE
$public ACCELERATION
$public CREATIVITY
$public CROSSING
$public DIRTINESS
$public FINISHING
$public FLAIR
$public HANDLING
$public HEADING
$public INJURYPRONE
$public LONGSHOTS
$public MARKING
$public ONEONONE
$public PASSING
$public STRENGTH
$public TACKLING
$public GOALS
$public ASSISTS
$public CLEANSHEET
$public YELLOWCARD
$public REDCARD
$public SUSPENSION
$public INJURY

So I would just call those out as functions to the class player... - The idea is that the dbase would populate this information - I plan on using a csv file to input the player information to mySQL - so the players are allready created with the appropriate attributes and I would just want the sim engine to update player information and update the dbase tables after each match accordingly..

Joe scores a goal so this goal is updated from the sim engine to the dbase

[spufi]

$public NAME

Should be

public $name

The only time you should use all caps for a variable is when it is a constant.

[jcswart]

It seems like more than anything you are struggling with two concepts: objects controlling the simulation, and accessing the database.

I don't mean to say that you don't understand it but that rather you are having a hard time architecting your application in a language that is new to you.

If it were me I would have classes for each major part of the simulation: SoccerPlayer, SoccerTeam, GameUser, GameEngine, DatabaseManager.

SoccerPlayer = the individual simulated players.
SoccerTeam = a collection of SoccerPlayers, tracks match history, etc.
GameUser = a human player within the simulation. tracks name, id, email, etc.
GameEngine = this is where the heavy lifting takes place, where the matches are simulated, etc.
DatabaseManager = handles connections and reading\writing to the database.

Each class has certain properties, that are then mapped fields in a database table. Generally speaking one object will be one row in a table within the database.

It is weird to start getting used to a database being the persistent storage for an application at first (it was for me).

Just remember that reading\writing to a database and actually using that data don't have to happen all at once.

Pseudocode:

<?php

$oDatabaseManager = new DatabaseManager();
$aTeam1 = $oDatabaseManager->getTeam('team1');
$aTeam2 = $oDatabaseManager->getTeam('team2');

$oGameManager = new GameManager();
$oGameManager->simulateGame('team1', 'team2');
$aGameResult = $oGameManager->getMatchOutcome();

$oDatabaseManager->saveMatchOutcome($aGameResult);

?>

[jcswart]

Sorry new to forum couldn't find edit button fast enough.

the psedocode line: $oGameManager->simulateGame('team1', 'team2');

should be: $oGameManager->simulateGame($aTeam1, $aTeam2);

[tarmer]

You guys have all been great with your answers... And I know this is a PHP board - But someone told me that doing this in php will be long and lenghty - and that I should maybe look at javascript..

I am going to try and learn my first programming language - and I realize this may be a big project to start off with ( I have it all penned out as to what I want to do) so I do not want to go down a wrong turn to start...

Would programming a sim engine for this be better in php or as others have said maybe JSP or even c/c++ - I really want this to be all done online so I think c/c++ (besides the learning curve) may not play as well as php, perl or python (even jsp)

Any advice is greatly appreciated

[jcswart]

I am going to try and learn my first programming language

See, I did not realize this was your first programming language. That changes my answer. In short: this is WAY too big to be a first project. And while the idea of writing a simulation game is enticing there is no way you will get it complete if you are just learning to code.

My suggestion is to sign up for http://www.codeacademy.com an online tutorial for programming in JavaScript. I don't think this program should necessarily be done in JavaScript, but that is an excellent interactive tutorial for a beginning programmer.

Also understand that PHP and JavaScript do different things. JavaScript is a "Client-Side" technology. It is mainly used for interacting with the web browser and for making interactive user interfaces. PHP is a "Server-Side" technology. It runs on the server and does a lot of the "heavy-lifting" of a web site, such as interacting with the database.

You really should start with code academy and learn the basics of programming: variables, conditional statements and iterators. Then when you have the basics down start learning PHP, following tutorials and reading up on programming.

Don't run before you can walk, or crawl in this case.

Hope that helps some.

[tarmer]

I appreciate the feedback... And am familiar with the differences - i am tech saavy just not programming savvy...

Though you did say this does not require being done in Javascript - As opposed to other languages - I am trying to get the best idea of what would be good for this (I would also use php to do the dbase work) and maybe just create an engine with javascript...

[jcswart]

As far as using JavaScript to be your engine, I can't really say. I'm no expert myself I've only been using PHP professionally for about 6 months at work.

But as best I understand it the general flow would be:

DataBase <-> PHP Game Engine <-> JavaScript for UI

I don't really know why someone would have said that PHP would be a bad choice, its a fairly easy language to get started with and quite powerful.

It wouldn't really be ideal to use JavaScript as the engine because the code would be user facing, and probably has some security issues. Your database credentials would be exposed, and JavaScript is sometimes browser dependent. PHP is not.

It also seems better to keep the majority of the learning curve to one language. Rather than try and learn PHP and JavaScript really well at the same time, learn one really well first then apply the general programming knowledge to the other language. To really succeed with this project you are going to have to learn programming fundamentals, Object Oriented Programming, and Database Administration basics. In one language alone that is a tall order.

The short answer is that PHP is likely going to be far more valuable in this use case. But I still think you are biting off more than you can chew, and that you should start smaller.

[tarmer]

I have gotten a lot of that with the scope.. I probably need to work on the sim engine first as without it nothing else matters... Than add pieces as I go