Designing tables for storing various requirements and stats for multiplayer game

Question

Original Question:

Hello,

I am creating very simple hobby project - browser based multiplayer game. I am stuck at designing tables for storing information abou

Answer 1

If i was designing a database for such a situation, i might do something like this:

Quest
    [quest properties like name and description]
    reqItemsID
    reqSkillsID
    reqPlayerTypesID
RequiredItems
    ID
    item
RequiredSkills
    ID
    skill
RequiredPlayerTypes
    ID
    type

In this, the ID's map to the respective tables then you retrieve all entries under that ID to get the list of required items, skills, what have you. If you allow dynamic creation of items then you should have a mapping to another table that contains all possible items.

Another thing to keep in mind is normalization. There's a long article here but i've condensed the first three levels into the following more or less:

• first normal form means that there are no database entries where a specific field has more than one item in it
• second normal form means that if you have a composite primary key all other fields are fully dependent on the entire key not just parts of it in each table
• third normal is where you have no non-key fields that are dependent on other non-key fields in any table

[Disclaimer: i have very little experience with SQL databases, and am new to this field. I just hope i'm of help.]