Online Access

**Red_Giant** · 22nd August 2009, 05:21 PM

Let's say I want to make a game in which you can view and submit scores to an online hi-score board. What is the best way to achieve this? MooClick? FTP? E-mail?

And also, is it safe to use these online functions? Is there any kind of security to stop people taking a peek at the code and getting server login information?

Thanks in advance.

**DavidN** · 22nd August 2009, 05:33 PM

The most common way of doing this is to connect to a PHP page using the Moosock, OINC or Live Receiver objects and send the data through that to a database. This means that the security of the scoreboard is up to the game and page itself (and the server login information is kept in the page code, so your game doesn't have to worry about those) - there's a tutorial for it near the bottom of the Tutorials page, linked on the right sidebar.

**Red_Giant** · 22nd August 2009, 07:06 PM

Ah, sweet.
I am a little experienced in PHP+Databases and ideally wanted an interface like this, but I wasn't very familiar with the online objects in MMF. Thanks a lot!

**James** · 22nd August 2009, 07:56 PM

Try the Get object - it's Java compatible, too.

**Red_Giant** · 23rd August 2009, 01:17 AM

If I'm not wrong, the Get object doesn't seem able to send information, only recieve it.

**DavidN** · 23rd August 2009, 02:18 AM

Because of the way that requests to a web page work, you can send information in the act of receiving something from a page, in the GET query string (see the URL for this page - the page loaded is just "ubbthreads.php", but additional information is sent after the ?, such as the thread and post to look up). The tutorial does this in the same way.

**HyperspazzMan** · 28th November 2009, 09:19 PM

Hey all, I am back. Even know a lot of you don't know me too well anyways lol. Had major surgery and now got my own website up now. I do have a question regarding High Scores.

On my website I have a few games that wont record your High scores and some that do. The 3 that will record your high scores I like a lot. It shows not only 1st - 10th place, but of course the score, AND when it was played. It will show like 1 day ago or 11 days ago. Would this be easy to do? If not I will just do the regular HIGH Score deal where people can see the top 10 scores.

If you need to see what i mean by this go to www.retro64games.net click on onlinegames and then try either lunar lander, battlezone, or Adventure. Either one will do.

Thanks

**KetchupMaster** · 30th November 2009, 08:24 PM

I'm not entirely sure what you're asking, but you can use this php function to convert a date into the "time ago" format:

Code:

function nicetime($date)
{
    if(empty($date)) {
        return "No date provided";
    }
   
    $periods = array("second", "minute", "hour", "day", "week", "month", "year", "decade");
    $lengths = array("60","60","24","7","4.35","12","10");
   
    $now = time();
    $unix_date = strtotime($date);
   
    // check validity of date
    if(empty($unix_date)) {   
        return "Bad date";
    }

    // is it future date or past date
    if($now > $unix_date) {   
        $difference     = $now - $unix_date;
        $tense         = "ago";
       
    } else {
        $difference     = $unix_date - $now;
        $tense         = "from now";
    }
   
    for($j = 0; $difference >= $lengths[$j] && $j < count($lengths)-1; $j++) {
        $difference /= $lengths[$j];
    }
   
    $difference = round($difference);
   
    if($difference != 1) {
        $periods[$j].= "s";
    }
   
    return "$difference $periods[$j] {$tense}";
}