How to make finished games finished

[Perun]

Jean-Yves,

I don't know how you implemented (or did you) flagging for finished games, but here's a thought:

Regicide
After each turn, check is made against status of all kings. If only one is alive, game is flagged finished in the database and doesn't display anymore in active games list on the main list, as well as in individual player lists.

example:

select id from kings where alive=true
or
select count(id) from kings where alive=true

if recordcount>1 then there is more than 1 king alive, or if count>1 then the same

Military conquest
Same as above, but another check is made to see if there's more than one owner of the lords. If not, game is over.

example: if you use method 1 in Regicide check, and save the result then you can use

select count(id) from lords where owner !=result

if count>0 then game is not over yet

World domination
Same as militray conquest, yet another check is made to see if all citadels have more than one owner. If so, game obviously isn't over yet.

example: again, if you use method 1 in Regicide check, and save the result then you can use

select count(id) from strongholds where type=citadel and owner !=result

if count>0 then game isn't over yet

In the end, if checking returns true, then one simple final

update games set finished=true where id=current_game_id

should close the game.

I think that these few checks wouldn't slow down game significantly, since they would be performed only on "End turn" click. And there shouldn't be much database use, since these checks are all simple COUNT selects. And since we almost always choose Regicide, only one simple select is used in most cases.

I don't try to be smart, just making a suggestion. ;D Hope you don't mind.

[Matija]

We always choose regicide, because other methods aren't implemented.

At the beginning of the game all lords are unaligned, and even further in the game, there may be time when only one lord and citadel are owned, and towards the end, some lords may be dead, others still unaligned, and even some citadels unaligned, or owned by dead players.

While in the case of citadel the victory condition might be Own All Citadels, it might not be practical - if only one player is left with his lords, it might take him a very long time to grow troops to take enemy citadels with - while with lords it is impossible.

Anyway, various situations must be taken count of in those checks that might complicate them a little.

[Ringthane]

As it seems, JY will probably implement a lot of optional stuff for the player who sets a game up to decide. This will probably lead to only one game mode with countless variants according to the optional parameters... thus, it seems that Igor's rule (extended) might apply well.

[Old Shendemiar]

Good idea!

Easy and useful

[Perun]

At the beginning of the game all lords are unaligned, and even further in the game, there may be time when only one lord and citadel are owned, and towards the end, some lords may be dead, others still unaligned, and even some citadels unaligned, or owned by dead players.

There's no problem here - we check only kings, not all lords. In Regicide, game is over when all other KINGS are dead, not all lords!

You're right about unaligned lords and dead owners, though. So for Military Conquest select should look something like this:

select L.id from lords L inner join kings K on (L.owner=K.id)
where L.owner!=result and (L.owner is not null and L.alive=true and K.alive=true)

if recordcount>0 then there are lords that are enemies and still alive

Still, one simple query.

While in the case of citadel the victory condition might be Own All Citadels, it might not be practical - if only one player is left with his lords, it might take him a very long time to grow troops to take enemy citadels with - while with lords it is impossible.

There IS a game type named World Domination, after all. Select for checking citadels can be even simpler, though:

select distinct owner from strongholds where type=citadel

If recordcount>1 then no player owns all citadels.

[sparrowhawk]

I'm currently working on the end-game victory stuff, plus an option for the game creator to delete the game himself at any point, as I can do already via the admin pages. This is to save me the hassle of doing it myself!

I have changed the end-game checking part *hugely* so there are bugs and no doubt some that I have missed, which means that I have not been fixinf bugs for a few days.

Anyone out there know PHP/MySQL and fancy coming over for an all-night code-fest in the west of england?

[Old Shendemiar]

I Fancy... But it's bit far away, and i don't know PHP/MySQL... (But i know SQL, can't be very different)

[Perun]

I'm not very good in programming, but will help as much as I can... ;D

[Ringthane]

I know a lot of VB, and haven't coded in more than two years, and I am less than 3 hours from there, so I guess I'm in too (I can bring some cheese and sausages).

[sparrowhawk]

thanks guys - but in truth I don't want you to see how ropey some of my first php scripts are!!! ;D