[Kowalsky]

Which is the most optimal way to find a player within a certain radius. I saw that in many plugins a loop through all players is being executed and check for entity_range (get_distance). However in my opinion it would be way more efficient to use find_ent_in_sphere (of course the fakemeta way) for such a case. Is it the truth?

[klippy]

Yeah, I would say that's better too. Probably something like:

PHP Code:

while((iEnt = find_ent_in_sphere(iEnt, fOrigin, fRadius)) > 0 && iEnt <= MaxClients) {
    // Do stuff to them
} 


that will limit the search to only players. MaxClients is equal to get_maxplayers(), and you should use that global variable if you are using 1.8.3.

[Fr33m@n]

Difference between them should be trival. Note that with origin version you can choose on Z axis to check a different point than the ent/player origin such as the feet origin or whatever Z origin +- X.