Comments on: Global High Score Lists

By: aschearer

aschearer — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 17:25:53 +0000

Hi DJ, good question. For a large data set I would replace the file mechanism with a database. That would speed up reading the results. I would also advise using some form of pagination — i.e. only fetch 50 results at a time — so that you don’t wind up bringing the entire data set into memory at once. Finally, in my experience if you high score list is that large chances are it is not compelling any longer. Getting to to the top of such a list would be beyond most players after all. If you anticipate that level of engagement I would suggest grouping high scores by a social network — i.e. only show users their friends high scores — which keeps things competitive.

By: DJ

DJ — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 17:13:10 +0000

quick question,

how will this hold up with large data, for example, for over 1,000,000 scores, wouldn't it slow down?

By: aschearer

aschearer — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 20:12:03 +0000

Hey, not a problem I'm glad we're covering this topic, and I'm sure this is a common problem.

You're right that switching to GET data will allow you to enter data through a URL, but I would advice you to keep it as POST data which has certain properties which fit well with the action you're trying to accomplish. The only downside is you can't simply type in the URL and hit enter to see the thing take effect. You'll either need to write a form or write code which posts back to the server. If you are using PHP it's as simple as calling file_put_contents.

By: systat

systat — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 20:08:49 +0000

Hehe, sorry for spamming your website but I fixed it, you need to use

@$GET instead of @$POST in your post.php script.

By: aschearer

aschearer — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 20:01:37 +0000

Systat, to answer your first question, that won't work because you're passing in GET data. You need to pass POST data to post.php in order for the values to be set. See this page for an explanation of the two.

As for your second problem, I believe that though you were getting "success" from post.php you were actually only inserting empty values. Please try correcting your usage for post.php and then board.php should work.

Hope that helps, let me know if it still isn't working.

By: systat

systat — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 19:32:05 +0000

I commented first 2 errors. Now I get succes with post.php but When I go to board.php?num_scores=10 I only get this , , , , ,

By: systat

systat — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 19:24:34 +0000

Hey, when I run post.php?name=something&score=1234

I always get the first error

// verify the username is set and not empty if (!isset($username) || $username == "") { echo "failure0"; exit; }

Do you know what is causing it?

By: aschearer

aschearer — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 19:53:29 +0000

Sorry about that, there are some minor errors with the script. I’ve updated things now such that they should work. Thanks for bringing this to my attention! Also if there is interest I can post a new method for doing global high score lists which allows you to:

Read/Write to a server
Read/Write locally
Cache scores offline when no internet is available
Push local scores to the server when internet is available

Let me know and I’ll prepare things and publish them.

By: aleix

aleix — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 17:36:40 +0000

Great! But I get this error

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_VARIABLE, expecting ';' in board.php on line 22