Online high scores

#1 There are a whole bunch of ways you can approach this. You can easily do it in PHP with a MySQL db behind it. For example, assuming you've got the high scores saved in a table in mysql as place, name and score, you can just fetch the list as a response to a web request and echo it out as one long line using tabs to separate the data (then use getField() in the httpobject::onLine function to fetch it:

Server returns something like:  1\tLeetPlayer\t45982\t2\tAnotherLeetPlayer\t123\n

function myHTTPObject::onLine(%this, %message)
{
     for(%iii = 0; %iii < getFieldCount(%message); %iii++)
     {
           %place = getField(%message, %iii);
           %name = getField(%message, %iii++);
           %score = getField(%message, %iii++);

          // Do something with this score
     }
}

You could also do something more robust, where you get one score per line, and then you can enable the initial request to take a range (like start at score 1, end at 100) so you can deal with larger high score lists if you're so inclined.

Encryption is probably a must for submission. The post that implements the AES encryption in the engine is easily matchable by en/decoding on the server in either PHP or Java (just watch for block padding issues), give that a look. It's super-strong and not very processor intensive for short command strings like score-submission is likely to have.

#2

Quote:you can just fetch the list as a response to a web request

How do you do this?

Quote:The post that implements the AES encryption in the engine

I figured out what AES is, but what do you mean by that statement ? What is the post ?

Thank you for your response.

#3 Assuming you have a web server with PHP4 and a mysql database running, you'd create a php page, perhaps "scores.php" which would contain:

<?php
        $conn = mysql_connect("localhost", "someUsername", "somePassword");
        mysql_select_db("dbName");

        $query = "SELECT tblScores.place, tblScores.displayname, tblScores.score" .
                                "FROM tblScores " .
                                "ORDER BY tblScores.place ASC";

        $result = mysql_query($query,$conn);

        if (!$result)
        {
                echo ">NOSCORES";
        }
        else
        {
		$scoreList = "";

                while (($row = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)))
                {
			if (!empty($scoreList))
			{
				$scoreList = $scoreList . "\t" . $row["place"] . "\t" . $row["displayname"] . "\t" . $row["score"];
			}
			else
			{
				$scoreList = $row["place"] . "\t" . $row["displayName"] . "\t" . $row["score"];
			}

                }
		echo $scoreList . "\n";
        }
?>

which assumes you've got the mysql database 'dbName' with a table 'tblScores' that contains colums 'place', 'displayName' and 'score' in it, and that the webserver can access it at localhost by user 'someUser' with password 'somePassword'. (In other words, substitute your own proper info here for your setup).

I've not run that, and it is definitely example code; you'd want to put this in a function and put more checks, output it differently, etc. BUT barring stupid spur-of-the-moment coding errors on my behalf, that should actually function (or be close at least. ;-)


I was referring to this thread that talks about adding AES encryption facilities to the torque engine. I used that page to add console commands for encryption and decryption of strings pretty easily. The hardest part was figuring out and fixing the differences between this AES implementation and Java/PHP's implementation in order to make one capable of decoding the other's encryptions. One of the bigger things I recall running into was that the data block size was padded on one and not the other, so you had to artificially pad the block to an even block size (16 bytes) in order for it to work. There were a few other issues, but nothing too horrendous. Look into the mcrypt stuff in PHP (or the Cipher classes in java) for the server implementation.

#4 Ok, I understand how to encrypt and send the data with a gotowebpage statement.

What I dont understand is how TGE grabs the data. That php script will send the data to the browser.

Luke, I really appreciate your help.

#5 Here is a snippet of script code that will request the best scores from the Lukes' php code above and then process it after it receives it. Pretty self explanatory.

function dowloadHighScores()
{
   // Make the HTTPObject if it doesn't already exist
   if (!isObject(DownloadHighScoresObject))
      new HTTPObject ( DownloadHighScoresObject );

   // Ask web site for the scores
   RUploadCourseObject.get("www.basicbob.com:80", "scores.php");
}

function DownloadHighScoreObject::onLine(%this, %line)
{
   // For debugging echo out what we are getting back from the web site
   echo(%line);

   // Only need to do something if we are actually getting scores
   if (%line $= ">NOSCORES")
   {
      // Do whatever you want if there are not scores
   }
   else
   {
      %index = 0;
      %done = false;
      while (!%done)
      {
         // Get the info for this
         %place = getField(%line,%index);
         %name = getField(%line,%index+1);
         %score = getField(%line,%index+2);

         if (%place $= "")
         {
            // We are done
            %done = true;
         }
         else
         {
            // Do something with the info

            // Step up the index to get the next score info
            %index += 3;
         }
      }
   }
}

After you make sure this is running, I'd recommend that you modify it to have the php return some sort of string like "HEREARESCORES" at the start of the $scorelist and then check for that in the torque script. That way you can recognize whether you are getting real scores or a HTTP error message back from the web sitie

#6 Wow, thanks guys.

This is going to be really cool. After I get it all working I'll be sure to try and seperate it and post a full example of working code.