Server Saving Optimization

[Rian]

I'll get straight to the point. This tutorial doesn't cut down on useless information getting saved. Right now, the server saves every player every 10 minutes at the same time.

What this tutorial will do, is make the server save each player individually. Just one player at a time. It makes a pretty big difference when you've got more than a dozen or so players online at once.

Tutorial Difficulty: 1/5

Things to change:
* frmServer and frmServer Code
* modGlobals
* modGeneral


Lets begin in modGlobal. Add this code anywhere you please in modGlobal.

Code:

'Player Saving Constants
Global PlayerI As Byte

That was simple. Lets move on to frmServer.
Start by adding a new timer. Name the timer PlayerTimer. Enable it to False, and set the interval to 10000.

Were not finished with frmServer yet, but for now lets browse over to modGeneral.

Find and replace this code:

Code:

Sub PlayerSaveTimer()
Static MinPassed As Long
Dim i As Long

    MinPassed = MinPassed + 1
    If MinPassed >= 10 Then
        If TotalOnlinePlayers > 0 Then
            Call TextAdd(frmServer.txtText, "Saving all online players...", True)
            Call GlobalMsg("Saving all online players...", Pink)
            For i = 1 To MAX_PLAYERS
                If IsPlaying(i) Then
                    Call SavePlayer(i)
                End If
                DoEvents
            Next i
        End If
        
        MinPassed = 0
    End If
End Sub

With this code here:

Code:

Sub PlayerSaveTimer()
Static MinPassed As Long
Dim i As Long

   MinPassed = MinPassed + 1
   If MinPassed >= 10 Then
      If TotalOnlinePlayers > 0 Then
         PlayerI = 1
         frmServer.PlayerTimer.Enabled = True
         frmServer.tmrPlayerSave.Enabled = False
      End If

   MinPassed = 0
End If
End Sub

Sub PlayerSaveTimer was saving every player more or less at the same time every 10 minutes. What we did, is change the sub to activate a new timer every 10 minutes. Look for If MinPassed >= 10 Then in the code because I recommend changing that 10 to a higher number such as 120. That would make our new timer activate every two hours.

Anyways, were finished with modGeneral, and as I mentioned earlier, were gonna go back and finish frmServer now.

Open up the frmServer code, and add this code at the bottom:

Code:

Private Sub PlayerTimer_Timer()
Dim i As Long

    If PlayerI = MAX_PLAYERS Then
        PlayerI = 1
        PlayerTimer.Enabled = False
        tmrPlayerSave.Enabled = True
    End If
    
End Sub

If you remember, we set this timers interval to 10000, or 10 seconds. This new timer saves 1 player every 10 seconds until every player has been saved. This should greatly reduce stress caused by the player save.

Credits go to PsychoBoy for original concept.

[William]

Didn't see this before I made my tutorial. This is another way that is very affective.

[Xlithan]

There's a timer called tmrPlayerSave which has a 60 second interval.

It called Sub PlayerSaveTimer()

Should I delete this?

I also get this run-time (Subscript out of range)

Code:

IsPlaying = IsConnected(Index) And Player(Index).InGame