News: Finishing Up the Base Code for the Z-Band/phpBB3 Merger

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Today I finished up properly porting my Z-Band server code into a phpBB3 compatible setup. I got the game links on the leader board page, and selection boxes on the registration and score update pages being created dynamically after checking a game database list. So when I add support for a new game to Z-Band, rather then editing all the pages, I can just add the new games' info to that database.

After that I fixed a hole in my score update code that would allow the same user to effectively confirm his own score update, and potentially pad his score total like crazy. The page now only accepts the confirmation from the other player.

There's little left to do with the server code for now. Sure I could flesh out the leader board page some more, write real tournament handling code, maybe optimize a few database storage things, display records in a users profile or posts, or something else. But I'm happy with it as it is, for now.

I'm not certain what I want to work on next. Perhaps I'll take a break in preparation for the poll hitting 50 and working on polishing the clone client up. At the very least I should now get a jumpstart on considering aspects of the program for when I would release it. Like a decision on a name. Any protocol changes or optimizations I might want. What channel it will use (#Z-Net, or something new). And a couple other things.

For now, here are 2 new links to the Z-Band server pages along with the 2 I've released before. Keep in mind though, that you can't use or even view the top 2 pages without a account on the forum. Also you can't really use them without a 2nd person. For a game registration to be ok'ed by the server, both players involved need to fill out the form on the Registration page exactly the same except obviously supplying the other players name as opponent. so tinkering around solo won't really show you that much. At this time, there's no way to confirm that a match is registered after the fact, other then for the second player who signed up seeing the "Match Registered 2/2" message right after signing up. At this time, matches stay permanently registered until unregistered or I manually delete them. The score update page also requires submissions from both players to clear with the server. It only increases the score 1 point at a time, so it isn't well setup for users to manually update like this. As of writing this, I'm realizing this is more clunky to use manually then I thought. But that's fine to me I guess, for now. I honestly didn't intend for this to be used like that, and am only making it so just to have something public to show for this project. It certainly won't be a priority, but I may work on tuning it up for manual use if I'm bored and people wanted to use it.

Z-Band Registration
Z-Band Score Update
Z-Band LeaderBoard
Z-Band UserLog