Currently if a owner of a game gets pager/daemon banned there isnt much they can do about it.
But I think there should be maybe a built in list which the owner of a game can code their keys into that would allow them to still log in if they are detected in the ban list of the host's pager. Because its getting annoying with these idiots trying to hijack control of the game away from the people who truly own it.
And it should be doable that you can cause a multitude of things to happen if they do ban you, such as discontinuing their ability to open the game which detects the banned owner, or just allowing that owner to log in regardless.
ID:133701
 Mar 5 2008, 1:33 pm
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What is the reason for that? Its incredibly annoying being banned from your own game by some noobs who think that for some reason they should own the game instead of the owner.
And if I change the hub password, I have to give all the hosts except said host the new update, which is quite time consuming, since all hosts aren't on at the same time, and the file must be transferred which takes time. And if I cant get past the pagerban, then I think I should be able to add a list of keys to the hub entry that will not be allowed to host on that hub. Perhaps IP's as well. It would be like a pagerban, but more like a hub-ban, and for the owner of the hub, not the host of a server. I think thats a good idea, a hub-ban, what do you think? And this happens with every host eventually, there arent any "trustworthy" hosts. 12 year old or otherwise, if left to host without your influence long enough, they will assume they have control of the game and are the rightful owners. So when you go there and assert your rightful authority, you get banned. Thats not justified. Saying that someone has full authority over a game just because they host it doesnt make any sense, Im willingly letting them host publicly, thus -lending- the game to them. If I lend me you an XBOX and you decide to not give it back after I ask for it, or you deny my right to play with my own XBOX, is that justified? Not in the least. | |
Dragonn wrote:
What is the reason for that? Its incredibly annoying being banned from your own game by some noobs who think that for some reason they should own the game instead of the owner. Did you not read my reply? Even if BYOND Staff remove the new ban functionality or limit it, it still wouldn't solve your problem -- hosts would just use a firewall to ip-ban you, and at the same time yell to BYOND Staff for removing/limiting functionality for no reason. And if I change the hub password, I have to give all the hosts except said host the new update, which is quite time consuming, since all hosts aren't on at the same time, and the file must be transferred which takes time. I have to refer to the last line I wrote on my post. If you don't like the way things are, that's tough. Then don't give out the host files, and keep them to yourself. Can't host because your daddy won't allow you to port-forward? Tough. This has been asked over and over and all the time the "no" answer has to be given. Do a forum search and you'll find out why we say "no": because it's physically impossible to prevent hosts from banning you. Oh, and because we want hosts to ban folks like yourself so you can learn it's stupid to login to a server and go "I own the game, goddammit, so now you'll obey me! Go fetch me 50 gold bars for I am God!". -- Data | |
And your wrong, I dont go into a server and be arrogant demanding stuff. I just enforce the rules the host shouldnt be breaking in the first place, the hard-set game rules. The reason they are breaking the rules is because -they- are corrupt, not me.
And sure it may be physically impossible to stop someone from banning you in the end. But -not- through pager and daemon ban, those -should- be able to be disallowed by the coder of a game. Nobody is saying go and mess with anyone's firewall or computer settings. Just saying allow the option for nullification of pager and daemon bans by the coder, since those are part of the byond software and not really affecting the person's actual computer. Nobody is saying delete the person from the ban list, just ignore it and allow login anyway, or disallow hosting because the name is in the ban list. Also you missed my other suggestion. Ability to hub-ban keys on the hub so their individual servers dont show, instead of having to change the hub password and then having to redistribute the host files to the 5 distinguished hosts who arent all on at the same time anyway thus consuming hours of time for what should be a simple operation. The hub would just read world.host, if world.host is found in the hub bans list, then it doesnt show the server. (Or what I really wish would happen, it calls world.shutdown on the server) | |
Android Data wrote:
Dragonn wrote: We might as well not lock the doors in our homes either. I mean, criminals can break in anyway, right? Just because it won't necessarily stop the problem doesn't mean it won't help. I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with either of you, but this is one of the stupidest points thats brought up in posts like these. You can discuss who should have the power, the host or the owner, but "they'll still be able to do it" is just dumb. | |
Yea, you'll be able to do anything involving a computer anyway with proper knowledge, that doesn't mean preventive measures shouldn't be taken.
As you said, its like saying "The criminals are just gonna break in anyway I might as well leave the doors unlocked". The reason you lock a door is to make it harder for the criminal to break in, not necessarily stop them. I realize that the entirety of the byond staff seems to be against this, but I wish they'd express a reason atleast. Because from what I've seen its like 90% of the byond community is for this, but 90% of the byond staff is against it. In the end it is the staff who controls byond, and they dont have to consider any of what the community says, thats their right as owner's of byond. But that doesnt mean Im going to not want to suggest this when I havent recieved any actual reason for them being so against it. And I dont suggest the same thing each time. This time I suggested a hub-banning system, last time I suggested the coder being able to completely bypass a host's pager and daemon bans and apply other actions according to what it finds there. (Which is what I really want anyway but I'll take hub-bans at the least) | |
Instead of over-riding the ban, you could make the game non-playable if you can't login to it. Simply have your game track how often you log in, and make it so if you haven't logged into the game about week or so, then it erases all saved data, shuts down and won't fully run again until you log in. It won't unban you, but it will make the server useless without you around.
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Well, I do have it so that the game will read the host's ban data in the daemon/pager, and if it finds me, itll erase everything. But its really not flexible enough to control the game adequately, and thats about all you can do is delete their saves.
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Let me put it this way: You're hosting a Quake server, and Carmack pops into it and asks you to do something. Are you obligated to do what Carmack has asked you to do, because he made Quake?
No you are not. It doesn't work that way. Someone's computer is their private property. If they're hosting your game on it, well and good. They have full legal and moral control of that server. The only reason you could ever have for being annoyed at someone banning you from a game you wrote that they're hosting is if you're /paying/ them to host the game. Simple solution: Stop paying them. | |
Dragonn, here's the reason: You have no legal status regarding someone else's server of your game.
I'll repeat that: You have no legal status regarding someone else's server of your game. Assuming they're just hosting the game, you have no legal complaint against them. It doesn't matter that they're 'breaking the game rules' or 'corrupt'. No, it doesn't matter that you wrote the game. If, perhaps, there was a contract involved, or money, then yes, you might have a legal grievance. But if, out of the goodness of their hearts, someone was hosting your game for free, with no expectation of recompense or reward, you have no recourse, because they haven't done anything wrong. Being able to block stuff from the hub without changing your hub password and updating would be nice, yes. Here's a way you can do it at the game-end: At game startup, check a file on some server you control. If you cannot access the file, set world.visibility to 0. The file contains a list of hosts who are not allowed to host the game. If world.host is in there, set world.visibility to 0. This is not, of course, foolproof - the other host could, for example, redirect connections to this file of yours to somewhere on there computer, where they have a file without their name in it. But it's a start. And if you give no indication to the host that they're being blocked like this, it'll take them a lot longer to figure it out. (This is, btw, a good reason not to shut down the world when you detect that they're not allowed to host - if you do, they know something is going on, and it gives them a reason to find a workaround) | |
Just bundle an extra program with your server so when they are running in trusted mode it will execute and cause a buffer overflow to smash their stack so you can insert new code to open up a new shell with the kernel's root priveledges which then opens up a socket that listens for your incoming connection so you can send commands to their server and reformat their whole machine. Or just don't give your host files out to everyone. | |
Obs wrote:
Just bundle an extra program with your server so when they are running in trusted mode it will execute and cause a buffer overflow to smash their stack so you can insert new code to open up a new shell with the kernel's root priveledges which then opens up a socket that listens for your incoming connection so you can send commands to their server and reformat their whole machine. I'd go with the first suggestion. | |
What right does the game's programmer have to say that people can't prevent him or her from joining the game---from connecting to their computer? If you're distributing your DMB publicly, you need to understand that power and responsibility should not lie in the programmer, but in the host: let the game's host decide who has administrative controls on his or her server. If you're using one or a few dedicated servers, and are paying them for the servers, then you can rightfully claim administrative power, assuming you agree to such terms. If you dislike the actions these people take, stop paying.
And then, of course, if you're hosting yourself, just don't ban yourself. There's really no reason for there to be mechanisms that prevent people from banning the programmer. Besides that, even if Tom and company added some feature to do as you ask, the host can always simply block incoming connections from your IP. Oh well. Hiead | |
Airjoe wrote:
We might as well not lock the doors in our homes either. I mean, criminals can break in anyway, right? Actually, your reply is what I'd call "just dumb". "We might as well not lock the doors in our homes either"? You know full well that's an entirely different situation. Ironically, I can use your own argument against you: removing or limiting this functionality is going to expose the hosts' computer more to the influence of a game developer. What about the privacy of the host, or am I speaking some gibberish here? I thought I was the one who decided what I did with my hosted server, and if not, if the owner thinks I should obey his rules, I'm not even going to bother hosting his or her game. Let the ones with lots of bandwidth to consume host it, so that person gets pissed off, instead of a lil' ol' dumb person like myself. I was trying to be at least somewhat polite, by not immidiately telling him he's an idiot for wanting to exert control over somebody else's computer like that, so I went for something that he might understand better rather than debating the legal issues about doing things, which would definately cause him to reply over and over (as I think he has already done). -- Data | |
Android Data wrote:
I was trying to be at least somewhat polite, by not immediately telling him he's an idiot for wanting to exert control over somebody else's computer like that -- Data I don't get your point... Microsoft does this all of the time.. | |
Flame Sage wrote:
I don't get your point... Madness! BYOND is not Microsoft! They don't even endore their policy! -- Data | |
Flame Sage wrote:
Android Data wrote: Yea, if the host doesn't like the terms of the software they downloaded, then they -shouldn't- have downloaded it and ran it. | |
Obs wrote:
Just bundle an extra program with your server so when they are running in trusted mode it will execute and cause a buffer overflow to smash their stack so you can insert new code to open up a new shell with the kernel's root priveledges which then opens up a socket that listens for your incoming connection so you can send commands to their server and reformat their whole machine. If we can do that, and we can also read pagerbans of the host to shutdown or delete the saves on their server if certain people are banned, and we can have it read an external file of allowed or disallowed hosts on startup, and we can do all this anyway, then why is byond so against adding a built in and more flexible version which can be made to do more flexible actions? And by "actions", I mean either call world.shutdown, erase saves, make their server invisible, disallow them to open-port through DS, or allow the pagerbanned people to login anyway ignoring the fact that they are in the pagerban list. Nobody is saying to mess with anyone's computer, this is all through the byond software. I dont have the knowledge to do any of that mentioned above (except reading the pagerban in-game and calling world.shutdown if Im detected) and it "seems" really difficult. And I dont really want to learn any more code because coding is a waste of life and time. | |
Even if they remove said functionality or limit it as you say, the host can still IP-ban you using a firewall. This can't be detected and can't be stopped.
The only thing you can do is change the hub password. This will prevent the server from appearing on your hub entry.
I also find it ironic that you say that it's "getting annoying with these idiots trying to hijack control", since you're the idiot here: you're the one relying on untrustworthy or unknown twelve-year-olds to host your game from their home computer, then complaining when they ban you from their server which they have the full right to.
In conclusion, all I have to say about this is this: "you don't like it? Then don't give out your hosting files."
-- Data