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10:06 am
January 4, 2009
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Kleothera
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| New Member | posts 6 | |
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I dont suppose there is a way for the client to not display the ip address of the host, but display the actual ip of the player? Some MUDs forbid multiplay of the same player (ie two chars belonging to the same person to play simultaneously), and this host allows one to bypass this limitation. I would also guess (not tested yet) this would create the problem of two people off mudgamers not being able to login into the game at once since they would be showing as coming off the same ip. This would kind of defeat the purpose of the web client.
Any thoughts short of, permit them all to "multi play"? There are reasons why this rule is in place and backed by code- preventing cheating by transfering stuff between players, not using the second char as a bot but a discrete entity, etc etc. I think most RP intensive games enforce this rule as well.
Any workabouts that anyone can think of? And yes, maybe I missed something, but we have our first complaint about it today under 48 hours after we got listed here and its kind of "meh" after me raving about the client as being one of the probable faces of the future of MUDing.
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11:53 am
January 4, 2009
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Orrin
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I don't think it's possible to report a different IP because the server needs the correct IP of the proxy to send the data to. I can limit the number of connections to the mudgamers client from a single IP. This would prevent someone multiplaying by opening several client windows here, however it would not stop anyone from having one connection through mudgamers and another from their own IP using their own client.
You are correct that multiple players on the mudgamers site would appear to be from the same IP and that this could fall foul of any anti multiplaying code on your server. However the same would be true of family members playing from a home network, or anyone connecting from the same school or workplace. This has always been a problem with coded systems to prevent multiplaying.
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6:32 pm
January 4, 2009
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Fire
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| Member | posts 53 | |
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There is a way to do this, but it would take both of you working together to solve the issue. Since Orrin has access to the original IP, his client can send it out when queried properly. The game would then write over the client's IP address with the one supplied by Orrin's client. This could be done similar to the way that an old telnet client used to do it, with a simple string that is recognized by the client, something like: "This MUD supports the mudgammers.com flash client."
- Client connects
- Game recognizes and intializes a new socket
- Game assigns the socket's IP address
- Game sends the welcome screen, including the compatibility string
- Client recognizes the string and sends the original IP address followed by a linefeed
- Client recieves an IP address and assigns it to the socket and then waits for normal login
Pardon the psuedo-markup. You would of course need to work out the rest of the logic such as what happens when someone tries to use an IP address for their name, but it shouldn't be too hard.
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 Genius without education is like silver in the mine – Benjamin Franklin
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8:31 pm
January 5, 2009
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zivilyn
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| Member | posts 15 | |
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What might be beneficial, the listing owner (person who can alter the listing etc), have a 'view players connected to <your game>' screen.
Have it show the sockets there.
IE:
There are 4 players currently connected to <your Mud> through the Mudgamers Portal:
141.152.244.185 :pool-141-152-244-185.phil.east.verizon.net
<more here>
Or:
There are no players currently connected to <your Mud> through the Mudgamers Portal.
Or maybe simply a log of time/date/socket? Though the above one would be sexah ;)
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 Zivilyn/Skol/Dave
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9:40 am
January 8, 2009
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Orrin
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Yeah Dave I agree some kind of administration screen showing connected IPs or a log would be neat, but it sounds like it would be tricky to implement and I honestly don't think it would be worth the time involved.
Following on from what Fire said, it would be possible to report the true IP of the player using subnegotiation perhaps, but again it's not easy to implement. The client itself has no access to the player's IP address, so this would have to be done from the proxy itself. I'll take a look at the code, but as it's not my own I am not sure how easy these changes would be to make.
However, I don't believe that coded systems to prevent multiplaying are the answer, given that you cannot use IP addresses to distinguish between different individuals playing on the same local network at home, school or work. The mudgamers site is really no different from that.
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4:27 pm
January 8, 2009
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zivilyn
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I hear ya Matt, it all comes down to a look/see type thing anyway. Could easily be 4 guys in a dorm, or a couple at home, or one guy with two chars, only way to know is to watch. If someone _really_ wants to play more than one at a time via triggers etc, it's tough to stop or catch if they're smart about it heh.
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Zivilyn/Skol/Dave
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11:41 pm
January 8, 2009
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Fire
| | Austin, Texas | |
| Member | posts 53 | |
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I also agree. One of the first things I learned was how to hide/change my IP address. There are so many different free web proxies available today…
Not only that, but look at all of the free web-site hosts that also allow limited shell access. It's only a matter of grabbing the latest tintin clone, installing it on a free host and voila! instant IP change, legally.
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Genius without education is like silver in the mine – Benjamin Franklin
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1:55 pm
March 29, 2010
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KaVir
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Sorry to necro an old thread, but I was curious as to whether or not any means was ever added in the end for identifying MudGamers client users. I have no rules against multiplaying, so there's no incentive for people to use proxies, and so I find that IP addresses actually provide a fairly passable way to distinguish between different players in the majority of cases.
Of course its only approximate, as a few players do connect from the same school or household, but that's fine – I'm just trying to get a rough idea of client popularity among my active players, partially out of curiosity but also so that I can see which protocols are worth supporting. I collect the stats here:
http://www.godwars2.org/mwi/clients
As you can see, MudGamers and TMC only show up as 1 user each, because they hide the IP address of the player. They're seldom used anyway (mostly only by new visitors, who don't hang around long enough to show up in the stats) but it would still be nice if I could more accurately represent the number of users.
Orrin: Do you keep track of the popularity of your muds' custom client? If so, what approach do you use? And is it possible to do the same with the MudGamers client?
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2:29 pm
March 29, 2010
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Orrin
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I don't have the same problem with my own client as it's not operating via a proxy so the server can access the IP address of each connected client as normal.
There is a version of the MudGamers client which doesn't connect via a proxy so I can switch your game to use that if you'd prefer. Of course this does mean you have to serve your own flash policy file. Let me know if you want me to do this or need any help setting it up.
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3:13 pm
March 29, 2010
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KaVir
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Wouldn't that effectively be the same as setting up my own version of FMud? I'd like to do that at some point, but as I've never used flash it's sort of slipped down my todo list.
I was rather hoping there might be a more generic solution, though, as I've got the same problem with players connecting through TMC.
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8:45 pm
March 29, 2010
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Orrin
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It's the same in the sense that the client functionality is similar, but obviously if you want to run FMud you set that up and host it yourself, whereas with the MudGamers client people connect via this website.
I don't think there is any generic solution, but I'm certainly not a networking expert. There were some suggestions in this thread about ways to forward the IP to the MUD server but it's honestly not something that I see a big need for. The proxy server I use is not my own and while it's working fine for my needs I don't really want to start tinkering with it to add something that is only of limited use and can be worked around by having the client bypass the proxy anyway.
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