Quote: "are there always/sometimes/never actual live players involved?"
Sometimes, but that will depend on whether people are playing or not.
Your card for instance (from your last round) is now waiting as Match#8 for anyone who plays in the future. (I looked at the files this morning and saw the "VN1" name)
So, while that card is not necessarily 'live', it was produced by a live person and not an NPC.
Only one other person tried it so far (match 7) and it looks as if they used numbers for their name, so I will have to guess who that was.
However, that card was produced by a live player too.
If you ever play again (and have not cleared your cookies) then your next round of selections will overwrite your card for match 8, so that slot is yours now.
So, the next time someone plays through the list, they would have different results when they get to your card as long as you have made different selections.
I also added a small array of NPC's which have random cards produced, but they all share the last spot on the list, so when ever someone cycles through all cards they are guaranteed at least one random play regardless of whether anyone has 'refreshed' their cards or not.
So, that is the only slot of randomness, whereas all the others (except for the first six) are generated by 'live' players.
I know, this sounds funky, but I have in mind character development for an RPG where each player will have their 'card' that represents their battle character and their stats.
So, Gladiator Quest will have a similar matching system, except I may match players with similar stats for fairness rather than simply going down the list sequentially. (they will aslo have unique battle tactics, so even similar stats will not mean a close match necessarily)
I will not be getting fancy with this Jam entry game, but it was a nice way to test the basics for a more complex system yet to come.
You will be able to change your player name in other games without having to reset your cookies, so you can retain that unique user ID, which is simply the UNIXTIME + a PRIVATE KEY then encrypted with SHA256.
I will be keeping a list of user IDs for that in case two people join at the same second and are assigned the same ID, but I did not bother with this one since I doubt many people will play it.
Quote: "nice little jammer, CE."
Thanks
Good thing there was a file limit at that hosting site.
I made a typo when editing the PHP script for the site, and caused a error which resulted in overwriting the 6 preset matches, and then that caused another error which created an endless loop of file creation.
So, I hit the 10,000 file limit before I could get the thing stopped ( it was perfect locally before I made the typo in editing and glad I hosted/tested there), hence the new 50 player limit in the script.
Coding things my way since 1981 -- Currently using AppGameKit V2 Tier 1