TUTORIAL - How to make GamerTags using PHP/MYSQL - Page 2

thatjoshguy · 09-28-2008, 07:30 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by .11

My only question is, why is your text low quality? Is that the effect of it?

It's not intentional actually, it's just the font used and lossy jpeg compression. You can use any true-type font, or even let PHP use it's own font if you prefer. This was my first version of the gamertags, it will get better (even though I've never been much of a graphic designer).

Quote:

Originally Posted by .11

One other thing does it use any traffic or something? If your site got, like 2000+ actual members online a day (not visitors). Would you host the gamertags on another server?

Everything uses bandwidth. The downside to these things is they are generated every time the image is viewed, so there's some processor time for you. It's not much at all though, but there is a limit as to what any server can handle. It's not havining 20,000 users that would hurt, it's having 20,000 people each viewing a gamertag at the same time. The image is never actually saved anywhere it's just kind of tossed together and displayed, and as you can see the script only takes a fraction of a second to run, so I would imagine as long as my gamertags don't get posted on the main page of Google I should be okay for a while

You could of course modify the code to instead generate and save the gamertag to a static file, and only generate them all once a day or something using a cron job. That would save you on processor time throughout the day, but cost you disk space as well as one big chunk of processor time while the cron job is running, not to mention that the tags would not be updated instantly, which I dig. I guess it's really up to you. I don't have so many guests that its affecting me yet, and TBH I consider myself lucky as my day job is at an ISP, so I have a private server for this stuff. It's nothing fancy, but it gets the job done. If the gamertags ever affected the main site where I would have to move them to another box I may, but I doub't the arcade will ever reach that status as I do no advertising at all, lol.

FLASHMAN:
I'm not sure exactly what you mean, you don't upload anything to a database it just holds information. The database has (or should have) all the user information such as their username and whatnot in it. All this script does is ask the database "Hey! Tell me about this guy!" and the databse sends the script everything it knows about them (all the stored information) and then the script prints it out. Sorry if that description is too dumbed down, I'm used to training people with little to no computer experience, so I have a tendancy to over simplify things...

thatjoshguy · 09-28-2008, 07:51 AM

OK, I've made some changes. Changed the font, and instead of using JPEG, I've switched to PNG and the resulting image is MUCH MUCH cleaner.

Easy to switch as well. If your source images are PNG, change "ImageCreateFromJPEG" to "ImageCreateFromPNG" wherever necessary.

To output the final image as a PNG, change the last few lines from:

Code:

header('Content-type: image/jpg');
imagejpg($rImg);

TO:

Code:

header('Content-type: image/png');
imagepng($rImg);

that's all there is!

.11 · 09-28-2008, 08:02 AM

Ah ok, it looks great now. But it was weird, on this site it looked low quality. But when I viewed the image by itself it looked fine. See here

thatjoshguy · 09-28-2008, 08:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by .11

Ah ok, it looks great now. But it was weird, on this site it looked low quality. But when I viewed the image by itself it looked fine. See here

LOL, most liekly you viewed one of them as I was updating it, as I just finished the updates. Yes I know, it's not a good idea to work on a live server, but it's how I do things

FlashMan · 09-28-2008, 03:48 PM

Can you post a psd, jpeg, png template of the newer version of your gamertag.

.11 · 09-28-2008, 04:10 PM

Looks better nice graphics at the top

thatjoshguy · 09-29-2008, 07:10 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FlashMan

Can you post a psd, jpeg, png template of the newer version of your gamertag.

I'd rather not, otherwise what would make it special?

It's pretty much the same coordinates, just a different font and some added elements. Refer to the first post if you want the basic layout idea, it shouldn't bee too hard to take the blank oine supplied there and draw over it in photoshop.

09-28-2008, 07:51 AM	#12 (permalink)
thatjoshguy Contributing Member Join Date: Jun 2008 Posts: 29	OK, I've made some changes. Changed the font, and instead of using JPEG, I've switched to PNG and the resulting image is MUCH MUCH cleaner. Easy to switch as well. If your source images are PNG, change "ImageCreateFromJPEG" to "ImageCreateFromPNG" wherever necessary. To output the final image as a PNG, change the last few lines from: Code: header('Content-type: image/jpg'); imagejpg($rImg); TO: Code: header('Content-type: image/png'); imagepng($rImg); that's all there is! __________________ -ThatJoshGuy Iron-Wookie Arcade

09-28-2008, 08:02 AM	#13 (permalink)
.11 Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2008 Posts: 223	Ah ok, it looks great now. But it was weird, on this site it looked low quality. But when I viewed the image by itself it looked fine. See here __________________ John McCain, Why So Serious?

09-28-2008, 03:48 PM	#15 (permalink)
FlashMan Senior Member Join Date: Sep 2008 Posts: 393	Can you post a psd, jpeg, png template of the newer version of your gamertag. __________________ \| Play Fun Online Games \| HP Computer Speakers \| >> Free Online Arcade Games <<

09-28-2008, 04:10 PM	#16 (permalink)
.11 Senior Member Join Date: Mar 2008 Posts: 223	Looks better nice graphics at the top __________________ John McCain, Why So Serious?

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