Hi
I have a table which stores high scores for a video game.

scores table:
| userid | level1 | level2 | level 3 | etc. |
| 1 | 145 | 845 | 73 | etc. |
| 2 | 150 | 798 | 75 | etc. |
| 3 | 146 | 852 | 73 | etc. |

Each of the levels have settings that I need to store. For example the name of the level, how it should be sorted, what format it should be in, and more.

I have tried various methods to store this:
- Have a level table, where the field name for the levels in the score table is the key and then I have | name | sort | format | etc.
- By using a multidimensional array included in all the files.

Both of these ways have their shortcomings, and so I thought, why not just add the settings to the scores table, with a negative user id like this:

| userid | level1 | level2 | level 3 | etc. |
| 1 | 145 | 845 | 73 | etc. |
| 2 | 150 | 798 | 75 | etc. |
| 3 | 146 | 852 | 73 | etc. |
| -1 | name | name | name | etc. |
| -2 | ASC | DESC | ASC | etc. |

and so on. My problem is that all the level columns have been set to smallint to make the table faster. This is an obvious problem when I want to add text to the same column.

What can I do about this? How much does it matter that a column is in the smallint format instead of varchar? There's about 150 levels and 200 users. Is there some way to append a table to another table, ie. to put a table at the bottom of another, so that I can have separate column settings? I'm sorry if this sounds awefully newbie-ish, that's because I am one

I'd appreciate any help, thanks

Fro

use a separate table, where the field name for the levels in the score table is the key and then you have | name | sort | format | etc.