Progress has been advancing on Dream Daemon to the point where it's now possible to show some screenshots from the application as it stands right now, and with it, I can list a few of the new features that are bringing it into the 21st century. The new application uses tabs like the new pager does. The first tab will look pretty familiar:
On the World page, you can set up hosting options and start or stop your game just like you always could--but you can do a lot more than that. Dream Daemon didn't used to let you change hosting settings like privacy or security on the fly, even though Dream Seeker did. Now you can. You can also close hosting to new connections, and reopen it again, just like in Dream Seeker (via the orange X road sign). And although it doesn't show in this shot, the World menu includes a Reboot command.
Welcome to the Players page, or at least a rough mock-up I've got going so far. It's too sparse for my liking yet, since I intend this to be the real command center for game hosts. What it does have so far is a major improvement over what Dream Daemon had before. Before it could only tell you the number of users logged in; now you can see who is in your game, and who was in your game. (Players who have logged out appear in gray, and will show how long they were logged in.) Notice the icons next to the names; I get the world icon because I'm the host, and Tom has a smiley face because he's in some of my friends lists (more on those in a bit). It'll also show if anyone was kicked out via a ban.
Ban and Kick work just fine; a kick will ban someone only until the end of that session, unless you decide to change your mind and let them back in of course. You can also send messages to your players, which they'll see right in the game. (For expediency I'll add a shortcut so you can send server-wide announcements too.)
Here I introduce one of the new power features of Dream Daemon: host-based bans. These are more configurable and more powerful than pager bans, and will help with games that don't already have a good ban system built in (not to name any names...). Besides banning keys, you can also ban IP address ranges, although that isn't set up in the interface just yet. What you can do so far is manage multiple bans and even make them catch slippery users. It's easy to keep track of why you banned people, and you can send them a message if you like to tell them why they're banned.
If you're wondering what a sticky ban is, picture a ball of tar. A sticky ban will try to find players sneaking around your ban and ensnare any new keys or IP addresses. Although it's not foolproof (if only!), it's about as tough as a ban can get.
That brings us to our final page, the Friends page. You can set up different lists of friends, and by checking those lists you can restrict hosting to only certain people. This is a great way to run closed testing on a game or hold project meetings. Also, anyone on your friends lists will be immune to bans (as are you, the host), so if you have a beef with Danny's brother Jay, but Danny is your friend, you can sticky-ban Jay yet still let Danny come and go as he pleases.
This screen shot shows one list I created as a test, and for the sake of presentation I limited hosting to just those three people. Since Tom is on at least one of my friends lists, he gets a smiley face on the Players page.
I have a few more ideas in mind for DD before I'm done with it, and it needs some polishing up--things like keyboard accelerators and more tooltips. So far I'm happy with the project, and excited to start using it in earnest. Hopefully this will even give you some ideas on how you can make the most of your newfound freedom as a game host.
