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For the turn-based browser Flash RPG I'm working on, I'm keeping all player stats in a MySQL database, with PHP as the go-between, for the sake of persistence and to prevent cheating by memory editing. But then it occurred to me that someone could cheat by hacking the client as well by, for example, repeatedly calling the function which adds gold to the database by posting arguments to a PHP page. That means I have to do all logic on the PHP server to prevent that.

Is that a feasible thing to do? My end goal is to have a commercial game that could have a large number of people playing at the same time, and I assume I need to be mindful of the number of operations being performed on the PHP server as well as the number of queries being made to the MySQL database. Although when I look at various web hosting providers that provide PHP and MySQL, none of them seem to mention any limitations on those two things. I'm hoping speed won't be an issue as well. On the free test server I'm using, it takes a couple seconds to get a result back from the database, but you get what you pay for.

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It depends on your skill at programming, but it should be feasible. Remember, Facebook was built in PHP and it serves a pretty big crowd. A better question might be if PHP is the best choice for what you are trying to do. (And the answer is probably "no", unless it's the only language you know and you're not interested in learning a new one).

You will need a better hosting provider, though.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ PHP is the only server-side language I know, and I'm barely familiar with it at that. I'd like to spend more time on developing my actual game rather than the technologies required to make it work though, so I'd rather not learn something new. Can you tell me more about what to look for in a hosting provider? It seems most of them aren't geared for what I'm trying to do. Or at least their marketing materials aren't. \$\endgroup\$
    – BladePoint
    Commented Mar 18, 2018 at 19:33
  • \$\begingroup\$ For the time being, the only thing you should need is one that doesn't throttle your bandwidth or gives you slow connections to your database. Essentially any paid provider should give you a good setup. (And they start as low as $50 a year or something). They won't be geared specifically to what you're doing, but that doesn't matter. All you need is decent performance and a PHP installation. \$\endgroup\$
    – Erik
    Commented Mar 18, 2018 at 20:01

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