Basic questions: 2 in 1

[Jesterhead]

Hello everyone! First post, and as you've guessed. A question!

I'm not new to making websites, as I've made several website for local companies/stores... giving me some expierience.
Yet, I'm new to the whole browsergame scene! (isn't that exciting?)

As for every project, I started to plan it out... but came across 2 basic problems (typical for browsergames).

1. Action once per day.
I would like to have that people (also non-registered!) can do a certain action once a day. First I thought of using cookies (with a expiring time of a day), but obviously... you can simply remove these and do the action again and again and again...

Then I thought about using IP adresses, but as most internet providers now offer dynamic adresses... you can simply reboot your router (or any other way) to get a new IP.. and so doing the action again... more then once. Any idea's?

2. Short profile url's
I would like to have short url's for the registered players profiles without making a load of empty folders. such as facebook: www.sitename.com/playername or playername.sitename.com Any idea's?

I've searched around the internet and these forums for a while, but couldn't find an answer.
Idea's are greatly appreciated! This looks like a great community, and if people help me.. I'll be helping everywhere I can!

Thanks in advance!
Jesterhead

[pixlepix]

for #2, you could make it so they dont recieve a reward the first time, but get a cookie which allows them the reward tomorrow. The cookie has a code, expireing after one use.

[Jesterhead]

for #2, you could make it so they dont recieve a reward the first time, but get a cookie which allows them the reward tomorrow. The cookie has a code, expireing after one use.

Thanks for your respons, altough I think that you meant to comment on question 1?
For my first question, basically only non-registered users will do this... so there is no reward giving. It's more for refferal purposes.

Thanks tough! Any other idea's?

[pixlepix]

ah yes, Not sure how resource intensive this would be, but you could use a script to create a new php file.

[Ochimus]

First off welcome to bbGameZone. First post too after lurking for a while.

1) I'm not sure how you'd do it but some ideas:
A combination of IP, Cookie, etc.
Find a game ranking script and steal their method for preventing multi voters/cheaters.
Find a tutorial on how to make one of those games (which I assume your trying to make) like Internetometer - I forgotten the names of some others.

If you find out how they do it could you share it with us?

2) There are a number of methods to accomplish this, I believe, such as: URL writing, URL routing and URL mapping. They all accomplish the same general goal but have relatively small differences.
Some links to read perhaps:
The second answer is pretty clear and easy to understand - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/90112/iis-url-rewriting-vs-url-routing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rewrite_engine
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/URL_mapping#URL_mapping
http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/python/tools/webapp/running.html

[Jesterhead]

1.
Thank you for giving me that Internetometer "game". I knew about that game but totally forgot about the name.
I'm indeed trying to create such a game, but obviously.. you can do something with the "thing" you gather.
(More details later, when it's ready for a test)

After a couple more hours of searching, I think that indeed making a combination of IP and cookies is the "best" way to do this. Simply because people can always use another network.. no matter what you try.

Altough I'm going to give internetometer a test on the previous "problems".
- If it succeeds, I may have to rethink about this one.
- If not, I'm "happy"!

2.
Those are some very useful links, I think I need to think out of my php "box"

If anybody has anymore idea's regarding these questions, please let them come!
I'm suprised by the quick and useful reactions here on the forums! (expected 2-3 days waiting time)

[codestryke]

#1 - Several ways to go about this.
a) only allow action/reward for 1 IP address per 24 hrs (most voting sites use this method)
b) to receive action/reward player's must input just an email address
c) use facebook / openid system, 1 login to rule them all

I'm really not sure what you fully want to accomplish with #1 but there are services out there that you can join to get clicks from other people. We have a game where non players can click a referral link of a player so then get some added bonuses. Couple of our players joined a service for clicks and we can get anywhere from 4,000 - 8,000 clicks per day from these services and I can tell you with the utmost certainty that this is the worse traffic you can get to a site. There are some things you can do to get some benefit from this type of traffic but I actually wonder at times if it's even worth it in the long run.

#2: - You are looking at URL re-writting. If you are on an Apache web server you are looking at a modified .htaccess file for this.

Code: [Select]

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^([A-Za-z0-9]+)$ profile.php?u=$1
The above would allow someone to create a link like http://www.whatever.com/profile/codestryke which would get redirected to http://www.whatever.com/profile/profile.php?u=codestryke

Hope that helps

[Jesterhead]

Thank you!

Basically, as you said the point is that players will put links to their profiles to gain benifits (some sort of free advertising).
Probably the most famous example is mybrute? Except in my game this will just be a small part.

I'm not looking to get trafic by paying external services, if players want to use those services they simply get banned.

Thanks for the support! I'm currently testing on Internetometer and several voting sites.

EDIT
I just tested the internetometer game.

The "game" uses IP only, I created an account and isntantly I could give myself a internet with the same IP (meaning they didn't store the registering IP). Next I went on another PC, but unfortunatly I couldn't do that again.

Went downstairs, reset my router, and bam.. another internet.
I don't think there is any way to make this 100% proof to "hackers" is it?

EDIT 2
Thank you codestryke, that code did exactly what I dreamed of!