Random () help please

[everton]

hi guys,

i am trying to make a few things appear random in my game, i thought the below code was good enough, but the random items are appearing far to quickly,

what i want is items to appear at very large intervials, im talking days before anyone see's one's for testing i made the code


[QUOTE]
$randevent=rand(0,1500);
$event="";
if($randevent==0){ $rare1=1; $event="Your villagers have uncovered the eye of evil stone..."; }
if($randevent==250){ $rare2=1; $event="Your villagers have uncovered the jewel of death stone..."; }
if($randevent==350){ $rare3=1; $event="Your villagers have uncovered the stone of fear..."; }
if($randevent==450){ $rare4=1; $event="Your villagers have uncovered the dragons eye stone..."; }
if($randevent==550){ $rare5=1; $event="Your villagers have uncovered the statue of eden..."; }
if($randevent==650){ $rare6=1; $event="Your villagers have uncovered the priest of lier stone..."; }
if($randevent==750){ $rare7=1; $event="Your villagers have uncovered the sphere of sin stone..."; }
if($randevent==850){ $rare8=1; $event="Your villagers have uncovered the knights of satan stone..."; }
if($randevent==950){ $rare9=1; $event="Your villagers have uncovered the weather witch stone..."; }
if($randevent==1500){ $rare10=1; $event="Your villagers have uncovered the gods of war stone..."; }[/QUOTE]



i figured at 1500 it would take a while to find them all, but i had them within 10 mins, can someone point out my mistake?? or give me a little advice on how to lengthen the returns, i really need to nail this its been 2 days lol

as always thanks a mill for the help.

[heckenschutze]

Maybe, store the last appearance timestamp in a database, and if its been say past 2 hours, then you can spawn another. ?

Eg, When the item appears, store the time() it appeared in a SQL db.
The next time you want an item to appear (using the random system you have), check if its been over 2 hours since the last 'spawn' if it has spawn the new item, if not, don't.

[taith]

now... this could work... however switch, is SOOO much faster for stuff like this :-)
[code]
$randevent=rand(0,1500);
$event="";
switch($randevent){
case "0":
  $rare1=1;
  $event="Your villagers have uncovered the eye of evil stone...";
break;
case "250":
  $rare2=1;
  $event="Your villagers have uncovered the jewel of death stone...";
break;
case "350":
  $rare3=1;
  $event="Your villagers have uncovered the stone of fear...";
break;
case "450":
  $rare4=1;
  $event="Your villagers have uncovered the dragons eye stone...";
break;
case "550":
  $rare5=1;
  $event="Your villagers have uncovered the statue of eden...";
break;
case "650":
  $rare6=1;
  $event="Your villagers have uncovered the priest of lier stone...";
break;
case "750":
  $rare7=1;
  $event="Your villagers have uncovered the sphere of sin stone...";
break;
case "850":
  $rare8=1;
  $event="Your villagers have uncovered the knights of satan stone...";
break;
case "950":
  $rare9=1;
  $event="Your villagers have uncovered the weather witch stone...";
break;
case "1500":
  $rare10=1;
  $event="Your villagers have uncovered the gods of war stone...";
break;
}
[/code]

[heckenschutze]

Thats the same code, put another way...

[taith]

well... if you think about it... they got a 10/1500 chance of getting one of them... thats 1/150, so if you load 150 times, so if you load the page every few seconds... you could very easily find one in 10 minutes...

[spelltwister]

you can either increase the random number or do something like...

$chars = array('a','b','c','d',...'1','2'...'0'...'A','B'...)
$top = sizeof($chars);
$mystring = $chars[random(0,$top-1)]+$chars[random(0,$top-1)]+$chars[random(0,$top-1)]...... for as many characters as you want

if($mystring == "aA120"){
  //find first item
}
if($mystring == "114BZx"){
  //find second item
}
obviously each addition character in the string will decrese the likely hood a bit.

[everton]

[quote]Maybe, store the last appearance timestamp in a database, and if its been say past 2 hours, then you can spawn another. ?

Eg, When the item appears, store the time() it appeared in a SQL db.
The next time you want an item to appear (using the random system you have), check if its been over 2 hours since the last 'spawn' if it has spawn the new item, if not, don't.[/quote]


thanks for the help guys!!

could you point me to a tut on storing the time stamp so i may learn it and try to fit it in that sounds like a great idea!! :)

[spelltwister]

I just have a column int he database with timestamp and then for the upload, $timestamp = time();

Then it's just a simple SQL query mysql_query("update `rare_items` set last_occurance = $timestamp"); or something like that