OK, Im a GM on a game that has close to 60 players at any one time. (and, miraculously, it is not a DBZ game, but an actually good game).
Anyways, the Host was a long-trusted Admin. However, due to abuse of powers, he was given a warning. Rather than take the warning in good-stead, he banned the owner of the game.
The owner then MSNd me and told me a text string to be said in the say box. It would activate code-red mode, and transfer all HGM powers to me and remove GM powers from everyone online. It will also wipe the chat screen and logs and display a "Code Red" announcement.
Personally, I think this last-resort measure is definitely a good idea. It enabled us to throw the rebellious host out of power and set up a new server. Even if said host does delete the ban files and host the server again, he will not have any GM powers, nor will it appear on the hub.
ID:152242
 Aug 5 2007, 1:47 pm
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Well, he was host for over a year before that happened. And the GM stuff (most of it anyways) arent assigned by a var, but a verb given out. So, even if he does edit the GM var, all that would enable him to do is use a few verbal commands (which only lets him reboot, shut down server, repop, and announce) All the real administrative stuff arent connected to any of the vars but are independently assigned with the owners "Give Powers" verb.
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Jamesburrow wrote:
Well, he was host for over a year before that happened. And the GM stuff (most of it anyways) arent assigned by a var, but a verb given out. So, even if he does edit the GM var, all that would enable him to do is use a few verbal commands (which only lets him reboot, shut down server, repop, and announce) All the real administrative stuff arent connected to any of the vars but are independently assigned with the owners "Give Powers" verb. Nothing stopping a knowledgeable host from editing more than their "GM var". Any decent savefile editor would happily allow them to give themselves extra verbs, assuming he knows what they are. Only solution to that is to encrypt the savefiles. I'd say the best security for something like this would be to have "invitation only" access to hosting. So the host can only be the host if an external source says so. Then the owner can add the host to that list and remove them as they please. My personal favorite solution to this problem, though, is to just make single-player games. | |
Cool idea, but I don't see why the owner didn't program himself to not be bannable..People on teams should program a little safety snippet like that incase their source gets leaked(even if its their fault x.x) so that they can easily annoy wannabe programmers for fun..
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Every decent programmer knows enough to add in that failsafe, lol. Unfortunately, that failsafe doesnt do to much good if the owner is pager banned and all the alternate keys that were coded in are too. (like I said, once trustworthy host who knew about the game, not anymore)
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Jamesburrow wrote:
Every decent programmer knows enough to add in that failsafe, lol. Unfortunately, that failsafe doesnt do to much good if the owner is pager banned and all the alternate keys that were coded in are too. (like I said, once trustworthy host who knew about the game, not anymore) Hmm, then I guess that was even better..Now I might have to think of a way to combat that, even though the games I make nowadays don't require more than a single gm now.. | |
In most of my games that I work on, that require someone else to host I usually have a check that runs every so often. It reads a .txt file from a external website and then checking if their key is listed there. If it isn't it would close the world and also make it so he couldn't host by overriding OpenPort().
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Like I said, a special text string for use in such dire emergencies as that.
That way, in the event there is no way around the pager ban, you can still tell the text string to a well trusted colleague, who can go in and revert the crises. | |
Jamesburrow wrote:
you can still tell the text string to a well trusted colleague, who can go in and revert the crises. Isn't this how the whole issues started in the first place? | |
Point, but the matter is, the host is taken down, and the string can then be changed for the new server. So really, it doesnt even have to be someone who is well-trusted really, but just someone you can trust enough to forcefully shut down the current server and remove all GM verbs from everyone on that server.
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That could have been avoided if the owner knew he shouldn't give the ban verb to anyone but himself.
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*points to other posts on the thread*
He was pager banned, not in-game banned. But, besides that, what do you expect, for GM to not be able to solve issues? | |
-_-
He is... if banned in-game. But being banned in-game and being pager banned are two totally different things, and there is no way to prevent a pager ban. *wishes people would pay attention* | |
Thats probly one of the WORST solutions I ever heard...
One of the better ones would be to enable it to where you can add something to your game so that even if pager banned you can still access it, but even thats not the perfect solution =/ Like I said, have a text string that will allow someone other than yourself to take control if you need them to... and, if you know what your doing, you can even overwrite the host files with a bunch of random 1s and 0s. Of course, most smart hosts will have a back-up anyway, but it will still annoy them, lol. | |
Jamesburrow wrote:
there is no way to prevent a pager ban. Actually there is a way. world | |
From what I heard, it no longer works for 4.0; hosts have absolute power :( [however, I did not confirm this yet]
Just set up a world.Topic() with an initiate shutdown/wipe/making a file to perm. shutdown the game so you can call it using world.Export() from another server | |
I, personally, just like to avoid all of that and just overwrite world.isBanned().
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unless he edits the savefile responsible for handing out those powers and adds himself to the list.
If you're going to have a host, at least screen the guy so you know he's stable. And if all else fails, do it yourself. ;)
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