Week 2 – Planning Player Registration, Login with MySQL and PHP

This week, I began outlining the next major step in my game's development: implementing a secure player authentication and data-saving system. The goal is to allow players to register and log in to the game, while also tracking and storing their scores in a persistent online database. The scores will be implemented in the later part, I mainly focused on Registration and Login and also having a secure password using Hash and Salt so that even if a Hacker looks at our database he won't be able to see our password.

To achieve this, I will be using:

• MySQL as the database management system to store player information (e.g., usernames, passwords [hashed & salted] .

• MAMP (Mac Apache MySQL PHP) as the local development environment, which allows me to run a full web server stack on my machine.

• PHP scripts to handle server-side logic for registration, login, and score updating.

Key Features I’m Aiming to Implement:

1. Registration System:

Players can create a new account which takes a username and password both have to be minimum of 8 characters via a form.

PHP script will validate and sanitize input data.

Passwords will be hashed before storing in the database for security.

2. Login System:

Players can log in using their existing credentials.

PHP will authenticate input against stored hashed passwords.

A session/token system may be used to manage login state.

3. Score Saving and Retrieval: 

Once logged in, player scores will be stored and updated in the MySQL database.

This ensures player progress is persistent even after quitting the game.

4. Secure Communication:

I plan to implement measures such as SQL injection prevention, password hashing  and salting using password_hash() and password_salt() using the sha-256 encryption method to encrypt the password ( I have kept it to 5000 rounds , the more rounds you enter the more secure and encrypted your password becomes , but it may affect the loading time)

While everything is currently being tested in a local environment via MAMP, the long-term plan is to migrate the database and PHP files to an online hosting server, making the system accessible across the internet.

What's Next

In next week's blog, I aim to show working screenshots and breakdowns of the PHP scripts, database schema (mySQL), and Unity integration (likely using UnityWebRequest for server communication, a bridge between Unity and the mySQL Database on a server).

References

1. https://www.mamp.info/en/downloads/(MAMP Download)
2.