HIGHSCOR v0.6HIGHSCOR v0.6by Darrel Plant, Moshofsky/Plant
HIGHSCOR is a utility for all of us who don't want to mess around with CGI scripting just to get a simple Shockwave game to save a list of high scores. This early version is made available for testing with all of the usual caveats about opening your machine to security breaches and a denial of any responsibility for havoc it might wreak on yourcomputer or to your files. I am not responsible, this is Overnight Software, written overnight for your protection.
v0.6 is very simple. This is what you'll need:
HIGHSCOR runs on port 1080 of the machine. It has three fields at the top of the screen showing that port, the machine name, and the URL that points to HIGHSCOR itself. There are also 10 fields for both the high-scoring names and the scores themselves.
To set up HIGHSCOR, download the file and decompress it. Get a copy of the XtraNet Xtra and put it into an "Xtras" directory in the same folder as the HIGHSCOR application. Add the File IO Xtra(s) to the "Xtras" directory. Double-click the HIGHSCOR application and you're off.
HIGHSCOR already has scores entered. You can tab through the fields to change the values, then click the reset button at the lower right to reset the global values used as a high score list.
To send a new name and value to HIGHSCOR (and to retrieve the list) use a Shockwave Lingo command that looks like this:
GetNetText "http://mobile.moshplant.com:1080?id=0&name=Darrel&score=1000"
You can test the URL by typing it directly into a Web browser.
Substitute the text in the field "URL" for "mobile.moshplant.com:1080?id=0&name=" in your Shockwave movie. Replace "Darrel" with the player's name, and substitute the appropriate high score value.
Version 0.6 allows you to modify the port and id values by editing the preferences file. They are the first two items in "highscor.txt", which is saved in the same directory as the application.
HIGHSCOR will check the score against the current high score list, then return a string to your movie composed of the updated high scores, in comma-delimited mode.
To retrieve a list of the high scores before your player begins, set the "score" value to a number lower than anything that will appear on your high score list, like -1.
This is the appropriate sequence of events to use HIGHSCOR in your movie:
what you'll get will look like this:
"Darrel,1000,Darrel,1000,Darrel,1000,Darrel,1000,Darrel,1000,Darrel,1000,Darrel,1000,Darrel,1000,Darrel,1000,Darrel,1000,"
Ten names, ten scores, separated by commas. Do with it what you will.
v0.6 does not do any error-checking of values either entered in the fields or sent to the movie from a Shockwave file.
Obviously, this version is limited. I hope to be able to add more functions soon, but this may get some of you going just fine.
Plans for the future:
Please send any comments to me at dplant@moshplant.com.
changes from 0.5 to 0.6
0.5 - first functional version
©1997 by Moshofsky/Plant
