Null Player Records

[LouMan]

I have created and tested a timed CTF plugin (with help) that seems to be functioning fairly well, despite my very basic understanding of C++. One annoying issue that crops up from time to time is the null player record. I have managed to remove most functions that reference the player record from the plugin, save one: the function that will kill all players from a team whose timer has expired. The code that I have is as follows:

Code: Select all

if (RedTimeElapsed >= TimeLimit) {

  bzAPIIntList *playerList = bz_newIntList();
  bz_getPlayerIndexList ( playerList );

  for ( unsigned int i = 0; i < playerList->size(); i++ ){
		
    bz_PlayerRecord *player = bz_getPlayerByIndex(i);

    if (player){
		
      if (player->team == eRedTeam)
        bz_killPlayer(player->playerID, true, BZ_SERVER);
		
    }

    bz_freePlayerRecord(player);

  }

  bz_deleteIntList(playerList);
  RedLastTime = bz_getCurrentTime ();
  RedLastWarn = bz_getCurrentTime ();
  bz_sendTextMessagef (BZ_SERVER, BZ_ALLUSERS, "Red team did not capture any other team flags in time.");
  AdjTime = (int)(TimeLimit / 60 + 0.5);
  bz_sendTextMessagef (BZ_SERVER, eRedTeam, "CTF timer is reset to %i minutes for the red team.", AdjTime);
}

With this code, everything works great until there is a player present with a null player record - which happens from time to time for reasons I do not understand. When a player has a null player record, this code will necessarily skip him/her for the mass team kill (pointers to team and playerID of player record). Not really fair when one or two players are not killed when they are supposed to

Does anyone know a work-around for a null player record and how I might identify this player for a mass team kill?

[Enigma]

Never mind, this post was useless. After reading an article from Devx, I found that delete checks for NULLness. Just ignore this.

[A Meteorite]

I'm not exactly sure why null player records happen, but I have a little logic that you could probably apply: You could make a vector of player slots that have had a null player record. Then later on (maybe a tick event or even later in that function?) you could loop through that vector and attempt to kill each one. Of course, this seems like overkill for such a simple solution.

Anyone else who knows more info on null player records would be greatly appreciated... I'm also designing something where a null player record just can't be tolerated - it'd be extremely bad.

[LouMan]

I tried the vector of player slots and a later kill/kick to no avail. My next thought is to try and use the player update event to kill them rather than a loop through the current players. To do this, I think I'll need to track the number of player update events versus the sum of players - I think.

[DTRemenak]

Real, connected players should never have null player records.

[LouMan]

I have figured a work-around for the null player records after discovering that this was the result of empty player slots, which I have seen time to time. For example, if a game had the following players:

Slot Callsign
____ ________

0 Player1
1 Player2
2 Player3
5 Player4

The null player records would be slot 3 and slot 4. Since I used the player index function with the playerlist size function, my team kill function would only test for slot 0, 1, 2, and 3 (4 total players, starting at 0); NOT slots 4 or 5.

To remedy this, I added a variable in the player update event that updates to the largest player slot (playerID) in every player update event:

int TempID = ((bz_PlayerUpdateEventData*)eventData)->playerID;

if (TempID >= LargestPlayerID)
LargestPlayerID = TempID;

I use the LargestPlayerID value as the upper limit to my team kill loop and it seems to work fine now

btw - the LargestPlayerID variable is reset to zero in my player join event coding, so that it gets a refresh every time a player joins.

[DTRemenak]

bz_getPlayerIndexList already provides a list of valid id's.

In your original code, try changing:

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    bz_PlayerRecord *player = bz_getPlayerByIndex(i); 

to:

Code: Select all

    bz_PlayerRecord *player = bz_getPlayerByIndex(playerList[i]); 

Alternatively, use iterators to step through playerList directly.

i ranges from 0 to numPlayers, consecutively.
there are i playerList entries, but they are nonconsecutive.

[Enigma]

to:

Code: Select all

    bz_PlayerRecord *player = bz_getPlayerByIndex(playerList[i]); 

This is just a small note.

playerList will give you a compiler error. Since playerList is a pointer, playerList would need to be (*playerList) or playerList->operator[](i), if you want to use that operator.


I can't believe I did not notice that you were not using playerList, as I wrote a function for killing a team the day before.

[LouMan]

Thank you so much gentlemen. I used the playerList->operator[](i) and everything seems to work well.