AlabamaHit Posted November 1, 2008 Share Posted November 1, 2008 I'm starting this cause I'm curious on everyones opionon on this. The topic is... Crons vs Time Stamp ==================== What do you think is fastest? For a website that is?... Please explain your reason behind answer also... What it is basically do you think that using crons would be faster than blacking a user with a Time Stamp...... Also please post your comments on if you think Time Stamp Won't work. ==================== My Answer.. I would say that Time Stamp is faster.. 1. There are not alot of queries running on a page. That has to run every min. 2. It would stop queries from running when there is no users online...Like only updateing users online. 3. umm....stopping alot of usless queries... 4. Less queries running has to mean a faster site? Right? ------------------------- My Cons...... 1. Code would be a little harder... Well thats the only bad thing i can see... Please post your thoughts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Anonymous Posted November 2, 2008 Share Posted November 2, 2008 Re: Crons VS. Time Stamp Personally, I run the timestamp method almost 100% across the board, although certain maintenance tasks I still run from crons - garbage collection, but even those only run a couple of times a week at the outside and they will only run if the system is not under too much load. No need to update all users online either, just perform the relevant regeneration when and where you need to - ie when the user requests a page. Of course you may have to regenerate their data and perhaps an opponents data during combat, but as you know both parties involved it's simple enough. Crons can cause terrible lag, esp when you have a lot of users so you get a speed advantage. The code for handling of timestamps may at first seem more complex, however it is far better at ensuring data integrity, (unless of course you are using transactions throughout). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hash-Op Posted November 2, 2008 Share Posted November 2, 2008 Re: Crons VS. Time Stamp Personally, timestamps. As you said AlabamaHit, less queries on the page thus a faster board. I would still use crons for truncating tables etc. [[ Its enjoyable :lol: ]] Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Floydian Posted November 2, 2008 Share Posted November 2, 2008 Re: Crons VS. Time Stamp For things like updating a user's energy or health, I'm not a big fan of using timestamps for that. Suppose a user's health goes down to 0, and they don't log in for a day, their health will stay low and they would not be attackable for a long time. If everytime a user tries to attack someone, you're performing calculations to determine if they need a health update, that could result in more cpu usage than just updating everyone at five minute intervals (which is one query vs however many get run using the timestamp method there) IMHO, getting rid of the one minute cron is highly essential, 5 minute crons and up, the returns on that might not be worth it. It could be, but it also might not be worth it, so blind guesses here just don't cut it. Hence, if you're going to worry about it, then you should be running some tests to see what the differences are. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlabamaHit Posted November 2, 2008 Author Share Posted November 2, 2008 Re: Crons VS. Time Stamp Yeah, I'm running test on it. And i see what you mean Floydian by it not giving health back without them being online. I didn't think about that yet. lol, See that why i started this post lol... This post is just to get some gerneral ideas. I'm not really plaining on using this on my mccode game. I plan on useing this in another project I have. Please keep the ideas and thoughts coming :) And thanks Nyna and Hanif Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zeggy Posted November 4, 2008 Share Posted November 4, 2008 Re: Crons VS. Time Stamp Not sure what you mean with your question, cron and timestamp are two different things. It would be better to compare specific implementations. Crons are good for certain things, while timestamps are good for others. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cronus Posted November 4, 2008 Share Posted November 4, 2008 Re: Crons VS. Time Stamp Timestamps should replace the minute cron no doubt. If you know how to do it, this is your best bet, I will being doing this to my game sometime soon. Have had plans to do it for a while. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlabamaHit Posted November 4, 2008 Author Share Posted November 4, 2008 Re: Crons VS. Time Stamp thats is what this question was... what do you feel on the two options... And I don't mean on Mccodes. lol....thats why i posted here and not in that section. lol.. I want to know what your thoughts are of it. ....Mostly if you think that a timestamp is faster? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlabamaHit Posted November 13, 2008 Author Share Posted November 13, 2008 Re: Crons VS. Time Stamp For things like updating a user's energy or health, I'm not a big fan of using timestamps for that. Suppose a user's health goes down to 0, and they don't log in for a day, their health will stay low and they would not be attackable for a long time. I have thought about something on that......you could inplant a code that is included in the site that everyone uses... JUST an example...... say you have a "main.php" which is where the main information of your game is at...so everyone gets this page included.. you could put something like this in there couldn't you? $updatehealth = sprintf("UPDATE users SET health = '%u' WHERE health < '%u' ", ($maxhealth), ($maxhealth)); mysql_query($updatehealth); Now that would update peoples health with them offline......though you now have that running ever page load.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
POG1 Posted November 13, 2008 Share Posted November 13, 2008 Re: Crons VS. Time Stamp I have been working on a timestamp cron implementation... <? $timesinceupdate = time() - $update; if ($timesinceupdate>=300) { $num_updates = floor($timesinceupdate / 300); $result = mysql_query("SELECT id FROM `users`"); while($line = mysql_fetch_assoc($result)) { $updates_user = // get user details $newenergy = $updates_user->energy + (($updates_user->maxenergy * .21) * $num_updates); $newenergy = ($newenergy > $updates_user->maxenergy) ? $updates_user->maxenergy : $newenergy; $newnerve = $updates_user->nerve + (($updates_user->maxnerve * .21) * $num_updates); $newnerve = ($newnerve > $updates_user->maxnerve) ? $updates_user->maxnerve : $newnerve; } $leftovertime = $timesinceupdate - (floor($timesinceupdate / 300) * 300); if ($leftovertime>0) { $newupdate = time() - $leftovertime; // update DB } ?> Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Floydian Posted November 13, 2008 Share Posted November 13, 2008 Re: Crons VS. Time Stamp [sNIPPED] say you have a "main.php" which is where the main information of your game is at...so everyone gets this page included.. you could put something like this in there couldn't you? $updatehealth = sprintf("UPDATE users SET health = '%u' WHERE health < '%u' ", ($maxhealth), ($maxhealth)); mysql_query($updatehealth); Now that would update peoples health with them offline......though you now have that running ever page load.... I don't see how that is better than a cron? Health is normally a 5 minute cron, and I'd assume most games with a fairly active player base are going to have at least one person on loading pages. Putting a query like that on every page load is far far far more inefficient than a cron. I'd go with this as a general rule: If something only has to do with one person, keep it to that person's page loads. If it has to do with everyone, put it in a cron. So, a query that targets all users is for crons, and a query that targets one user is for an individual's page loads. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlabamaHit Posted November 14, 2008 Author Share Posted November 14, 2008 Re: Crons VS. Time Stamp Yeah i was thinking about that....cuase it would have to run that big query all the time, lol......Really was me thinking out loud :-D and thowing ideas maybe someoen would see and and have somethign to go with it, :mrgreen: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vampireduff Posted December 17, 2009 Share Posted December 17, 2009 Where would I put that piece of script you posted POG1? I want to use timestamps instead of crons because I am building a new game on a free hosting site and they don't have crons. I have search how to replace crons with timestamps but I can find nothing about it. and just for the record, I know nothing about timestamps, so any help would be great :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iR00T Posted December 23, 2009 Share Posted December 23, 2009 I wanted to use something other than crons myself, As I really have just found out how much they rely on your server if you have a lot of members. I have found out about something called poormancrons that is something that you go to the pormancrons.install and it installs it on your game, I also figured out that it's not for mccodes but you can convert it to it..but it's a lot of work... Now, I heard about timestamps, UNIX to be exact, I would love to use them, Someone told me to go to the site and set it up and I got a number like 9202853 or something similar to that but that is all that he told me and that is where I stopped, If someone can help me with this please PM me so we can set this up. Thanks, Ganjafreak. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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