Handling long lengths of time? Persistent Countdowns.

ID:1312206
 
Jul 3 2013, 2:56 am
How should a game handle long lengths of time?

For example, if a player orders some rare item from afar, and it is meant to take 2 hours to reach their inventory, what is the best way to go about programming that in BYOND? Surely a 2 hour sleep() would be truly ridiculous.

Furthermore, what happens if the server crashes in that time? They've already paid for the item; they need to receive it.
Jul 3 2013, 3:02 am
A 2 hour sleep(or well, spawn, probably) is fine. If server shutdown/crash is a concern (which I suspect it is), then you'd also want a way to persist the event, and load those up on start-up, compare the time you saved it versus the current time, then spawn() the difference / process it right away.

This has given me an idea for my event scheduler library.
Jul 3 2013, 4:29 am
I personally would write a item delivery scheduler. It would be told what items to deliver to who and when. Then you just save it and load it.
Jul 3 2013, 4:31 am
How do you do "and when" though? Check every tick if it holds some items to be delivered at that second?
Jul 3 2013, 4:35 am
Jul 3 2013, 4:39 am
Haha, I knew there was a lib out there that would help with this, and I suspected you were the author Stephen. I'm currently developing another section of my project, but once that's done I'll have a thorough look at your library and see if it will facilitate the development of the next section.

(Once I have a concept concreted in my mind I build it, and with the spare mental time start thinking and conceptualizing the next section)

I suspect you'll have to deal with me pestering you a bit when that happens :P
Jul 3 2013, 4:49 am
No problem. Best to use the forums on that hub entry, so I don't forget. I'll look to add some persistence backing to schedulers at some point soon(ish).