stevedirt wrote:So after making the game in PHP / SQL and having a few people play it ....
Too many calls to the server. My host limits the amount of CPU time one person can use in a given hour / day. On its best day the game had 153 plays and almost maxed out my CPU time.
Was fun making the game and giving it a try .. going to look more into html5 and see if anything cool can happen there.
I've haven't seen your game, but the CPU time seems kind of odd to me.
The resources you mostly using, shouldn't be all that extensive. HTTP server, PHP server and MySql server should do most of the work. Sounds like you might be executing more SQL Queries, while parsing the same information in PHP fields. Or somehow you are spawning processes, that aren't closing properly. UNIX can be fickle, and if you open a process, and leave it open. Then repeat the process, you end up running 2 open processes. I've slowed down many a UNIX server, just by incorrectly forgetting to close a process, or spawning many in a loop.
You might want to look into WineHQ game maker. From little I've seen of it, it seems to follow the spirit of AC, but using PHP/Sql over HTML/Java. Or if you want to try and correct a game maker yourself. I might have an old Access DBase around, where I was trying to make a web sight generator, for image cataloging. The SQL Tables might be of the same structure, that might work for PHP.
I am extremely old school and old tech. I had to help debug and migrate, a real time transactional server in Sybase. While keeping it live in a legacy and transitioning forward. The sybase coding is away above my brain pan level, but debugging and band aiding on the UNIX/Shell apparently was not. I don't know PHP very well, but then I never learned sysbase scripting. So I might be able to give you a few pointers if you want to create a PHP-AC for the community.