Game Logs

This passed weekend, I worked on a format for the game logs, which will hold information about what went on during a game. Two logs can be compared together so that players will be able to see how each other did and for scoring purposes. Right now, the logs are XML files, that are written to a temporary directory on the network. I am debating on whether to log these files into our MySQL database, and how exactly to generate the set of pictures that appears to users.

The game logs use a loose XML Schema similar to the following:

<game>
<round>
<main_picture pictureName="" />
<selected_picture timeToClick="" pictureName="" />
</round>
</game>



This will, of course, have to be validated against a DTD. I don't have the experience to write one from scratch, so I'll to do some light reading.

Next, I'll implement some system to pass image sets to the game, so that multiple users can play with the same set of images.