Topic: Little design questions.

Hello guys, I'm currently heavily in the code jungle of PsPong.com and it's growing with everyday that goes by...

But some little questions come up then and again. Maybe someone high up can decide them... or maybe you can just tell me what you want. just a yes/no would be enough.

Ability to edit comments you posted on a match (peanut gallery):

strange. can't think of anything else right now. there was half a dozen this morning... no worries, I'll just post them as the occur, ok?

please respond,

Tyberius Prime

TP: I'm hopefully back now after the computer having Internet troubles (again!!). I would say yes to that - it does add a little bit of extra hassle on the coding front but I think it would be worth it so that people feel more confident about posting.

Emps

honestly, it's like 10 minutes of work :-).
So you're back. Shall I just sent you my development folder, so that you can have a look? ICQ on?

so long,
Tyberius Prime

edit: Flash of genius! We could only allow them to edit the post for one day. Any takers? would prevent people from going to old matches and putting in goatsex links... (not that we'll support any html in our posts...).

[This message has been edited by Tyberius Prime (edited 12-30-2001).]

TP: Go for it and I do like the 24 hour limit which gives people enough time to correct mistakes but not enough time to make the comments complete nonsense.

Is all the code in the portland account? If so I can check it out there otherwise send it to me. I really need to catch up on this and see what needs doing: User logging registration/authentication strukc me as the most important aspect and I wouldn't mind having a crack at mocking up a crude HTML test page to get things like voting and flagging players in place (which should be pretty simple). Anyway I still need to read through what you've done so far.

I've hopefully fixed my problems and am about to reboot the computer so fingers crossed (it could go badly wrong again). Just in case I disappear again!!

Later,

Emps


You're my wife now Dave

it's in your inbox, emp.
Don't like to fiddle with portland right now, but I'll do that later on today...

Edit: guess your pc didn't make it? Well, I'll end this for today... The newest version is on it's way to your mailbox... so long, TP

[This message has been edited by Tyberius Prime (edited 12-30-2001).]

[This message has been edited by Tyberius Prime (edited 12-30-2001).]

ok, here's the next one:

How many matchs should a user be allowed to request at once?
Should a user always be allowed to request a match although he's currently playing one?

so long,

Tyberius Prime

TP: Right I'm back after the odd glitch there (IE is now sulking so I'm using Opera, as well as NS6.1 for any DHTML, but that is why I've been saving the upgrade to IE6 so it should all be back to normal). I need to throw in some reviews and then I'll grab the code.

How many matches? I suspect it depends on the match type. I was working towards 3 basic match types:

Pool: Pretty much what is going on now people throw their hat in the ring and then they get matched up with someone. So I would suggest that they are removed from the pool if they have an active match.

Tournament: Just an idea but we could have people working up a ladder to a final. They would clearly only be allowed one match at a time.

Challenge: A few of these matches (as well as open matches) have taken place and I think it is up to the player to make sure they don't challenge too many people (but we might want to restrict the number to say 2 and pos. remove them from the pool if need be to keep things running smoothly).

There may be more match types and its the players responsibility to make sure that they don't over commit themselves with too many matches.

Emps


You're my wife now Dave

Well, I think we'll implement tournaments once this is up and running... till then, an maximum of 5 challanges, and 1 'open' match should be enough, I think. Although the number of challanges is not really a problem... just so that noone takes our script and emails someone to death by proposing 100 of challanges to them... (ok, we'll have to check if such a challenge is already open, and if it is deny a new one. not to hard.)

mail me, when you're done reading the code. or just post here :-)

TP: I've got your emails (3 yes?) - Opera keeps crashing on me whenever I try to open them (the upgrade to IE6 hasn't helped there either!!) so I haven't managed to grab the code but I'll do that tomorrow (I'm off out now in a minute or so - I'll give it one last go before I leave) and then read everything through and get back to you.

Have a good New Years Eve,

Emps


You're my wife now Dave

in case you can't get at your mails today, the current code should be up on portland, although it is not working there (I adjusted the db, but the PHP version on portland is giving me strange errors and I didn't feel like fixing it yesterday, since there was a party I had to attend :-)

so long,

Tyberius Prime

and again an update in the codebase... I'm still suffering from my new years celebration, so not very much today...
it's a) in your inbox and b at www.squiddle.de/JP/pspong/pspong_code.zip

so long,

Tyberius Prime

TP: Got it - I was having trouble getting it from my email. I'm fighting a stinking hangover but will check it out fully tomorrow.

Emps

well, when you're done reading it, I did an update on it :-).
Just a few functions this time. The list is in your inbox.

so long,

Tyberius Prime

TP: You've done an impressive amount of work there - I can't claim that my use of OOP in PHP is quite where I'd like it to be and I'm currently having trouble testing PHP offline (it never rains but it pours) but that all made sense. As you have done quite a lot of the backend work I thought it might be a good idea to mock up a crude front end (its pretty skeletal so it should fit with whatever layout is decided upon) so I've uploaded it into the folder you created on the Portland account and can send you a zip if required. The pages are in place to view the user's data, game stats, current matches, matches, mark a match or player, etc. (the player's side will be a version of this) although everything is clearly hard coded rather than being drawn from the DB but hopefully it should give you an idea of how things hang together. If you are cool with that then we can start slicing up the pages into includes and dropping the relevant bits of PHP in, as well I assume, as creating spoof accounts for testing purposes.

I have forgotten to create a comments page and there are a few notes around about reloading and redirecting and I'll sort them out now (I keep thinking of things I've missed) but it seems to work OK.

A few notes:

1. Sorry about all the red I tend to use it for testing purposes.

2. It won't yet work in NS4.x but I should be able to produce a solution.

3. Its really only been been tested in IE5 (although it does seem to work OK in Op5 although it will need more work to look right).

4. There appears to be an error with the PHP on the mark page (lack of testing).

Its all starting to look quite promising.

Emps


You're my wife now Dave

hey emp.
I'm quite busy right now, but I should be able to look into it this evening.
I'll continue working on the backend then, implement the flagging of matches and users, and then make some sample pages for the use of the templates and stuff. Also, all the forms we'll have will call php files in the /scripts folder, which will validate the input and manipulate the objects accordingly :-)
Oh great, now I am to get my sister from her horse riding place.
bye,

Tyberius Prime

Edit: with your local PHP try foxserv. It's a bit of a heafty download, but it works really well. (it's a combined Apache/mysql/php installer.)

[This message has been edited by Tyberius Prime (edited 01-03-2002).]

hey emp, new code at this place. Check the 'did today.txt' to see what I did to the backend.

I looked over your code, and it seems mostly ok. I'd suggest putting the stylesheet in a seperate file though.
I also added a simple login script (doesn't report yet, if someone tries to breake in) and a login.html that contains the coressponding form.

so long,

Tyberius Prime

TP: Got it and I'll look at it in a minute.

Yes I prefer working with the CSS inside the webpage intially but you are right its getting unweildy and I'll extract it into one file. I've uploaded the latest version of the HTML pages which I'm happier with and the CSS and JavaScript is ready to go into external files. I've added the start of the registration page although we'll need to hammer out exactly what goes in there I thought it best to allow people to specify if they want their alerts as HTML or plain text - I really like what you've done with the email alerts but I know some people would like the choice (as some of us are still in dialupville!!).

Nuts not being able to test offline has got me and I've made a mistake - now fixed. Hmmm.... looks like I need to do some work to get the JavaScript to work for Opera. Anyway problems aside that should give you a better idea. I'll extract things to external files which should make things simpler.

On the home testing front I've been using nusphere but networking the computers has made it grumpy, however, I should be able to fix it or work around it.

Emps


You're my wife now Dave

hey emp,
I'm currently dowloading what you did. I'll add the scripts for the various forms we'll use today. Also, I'll take care of the html/plain-text mail issue.

Could you do me a favor and put the actual pages into the /pages directory? that way we can keep them somewhat seperate from the code. Thank you.

hey emp.
new code at either the usual url, or in your mailbox.
the server side end is nearly done, just some last scripts.
I'll whip up a documentation pretty soon.
Contact me if you run into troubles.

so long,
TP