Author Topic: Darfix Portal  (Read 23351 times)

Antonine

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Re: Darfix Portal
« Reply #45: October 05, 2017, 02:23:15 PM »
The GM/mods/titans interface/toolset is what is used to do portal events.

But given that that toolset basically gives you god-like power over the entire game, there are very good reasons to restrict it to just two people.

Antonine

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Re: Darfix Portal
« Reply #46: October 05, 2017, 02:25:59 PM »
For instance, one portal event involved swapping the RCs from one city to another city and vice versa. There's no way to do that without the person who does the portal event having enough access to modify literally everything about a region.

So unless you absolutely trust someone to have the power to change your city to a desert, or similar, then you really don't want them in charge of portal events.

Anaris

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Re: Darfix Portal
« Reply #47: October 05, 2017, 02:26:52 PM »
The GM/mods/titans interface/toolset is what is used to do portal events.

But given that that toolset basically gives you god-like power over the entire game, there are very good reasons to restrict it to just two people.

To clarify:

The GM toolset (which has been used by the GMs running invasion factions on BT, and the GMs running the Zuma on Dwilight) is fairly limited. It allows only a little more power than a regular player has access to.

The Titan toolset is entirely structured around Titan cases. They have no other job or power beyond those.

The tools used to handle portal events are actually the admin tools that only Tom, Vita, and I have access to. They grant near-complete control over the game—which is a little redundant to say, when you're talking about the people who already have direct access to the game's code and it's database, and could edit either directly to achieve any result we wanted. The admin interface is just there to streamline common tasks. Like handling portal events.
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MTYL

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Re: Darfix Portal
« Reply #48: October 05, 2017, 11:22:45 PM »
How about supervised control? I have no idea how admin interface looks so I have no idea if it's doable, but it should be doable in most cases (altough overly complicated and work-intesive in a lot of cases):

Make senior and junior instance of user, say: admin and gm.

Admins can execute the stuff they do in admin panel, gms can submit the requests. Admins can later accept the requests and making the stuff go live.

Rationale - it's much less job to click "yes" and accept portal event than make portal event happen.


PS. This:

To clarify:

The GM toolset (which has been used by the GMs running invasion factions on BT, and the GMs running the Zuma on Dwilight) is fairly limited. It allows only a little more power than a regular player has access to.

The Titan toolset is entirely structured around Titan cases. They have no other job or power beyond those.

I was unaware. It's pretty cool. And it makes me wonder then why oh why is Vita the only Daimon guy... They should make more of Vitas, Vitas are fun.

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EDIT:

What do portal events do? They send a continent-wide message and create/update stuff in DB. You would need a mechanic to prepare sql statements and write them down in .txt, read from .txt and display it in friendly format and execute statements after admin's review. Another .txt for game messages. It's actually less complicated than I initially thought.

EDIT 2:

I'm assuming that battlemaster is PHP & SQL (mySQL, postgres etc.), I don't know why I keep assuming that.
« Last Edit: October 05, 2017, 11:29:46 PM by MTYL »
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Anaris

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Re: Darfix Portal
« Reply #49: October 06, 2017, 01:55:29 AM »
How about supervised control? I have no idea how admin interface looks so I have no idea if it's doable, but it should be doable in most cases (altough overly complicated and work-intesive in a lot of cases):

Make senior and junior instance of user, say: admin and gm.

Admins can execute the stuff they do in admin panel, gms can submit the requests. Admins can later accept the requests and making the stuff go live.

A few things:
1) Any system that devolved control from the admins who currently run it would necessarily restrict the possible elements of a portal event. Building any kind of restricted system would by its very nature put limits on the kinds of things the people operating it could do; as admins, we are effectively unfettered in our decisions of how to respond to portals.

2) It's not really worth the amount of effort it would require to make a sort of duplicate, dumbed-down admin interface with restrictions on it; it's particularly not worth the amount of effort required to make one that tries to take even a modest subset of the current admin functionality and make it something that could be proposed and accepted. There are several worlds of difference between a system that just straight-up modifies values in the database, and one that creates a highly complex request, stores it in the database, and at a later trigger, executes it.

3) At least 85% of what you suggest could be done by simply having someone who is not me or Vita come up with ideas (complete with RP text) for the resolution of a portal event, which they proposed to us, and we then said "yeah, sure," and sent the message and executed whatever admin commands were needed to perform the changes it called for.

Quote
What do portal events do? They send a continent-wide message and create/update stuff in DB. You would need a mechanic to prepare sql statements and write them down in .txt, read from .txt and display it in friendly format and execute statements after admin's review. Another .txt for game messages. It's actually less complicated than I initially thought.

We are doing our level best to avoid raw SQL these days. That's how BM's code worked for way too many years, but it's far too fraught with potential pitfalls. We use a DB-abstraction framework called Doctrine now, and it makes the code both much easier to keep secure, and much easier to understand and modify.

Quote
I'm assuming that battlemaster is PHP & SQL (mySQL, postgres etc.), I don't know why I keep assuming that.

Well, I don't know why either, but it's true. PHP & MySQL.
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"The only thing you can't trade for your heart's desire...is your heart." "You are what you do.  Choose again, and change." "One of these days, someone's gonna plug you, and you're going to die saying, 'What did I say? What did I say?'"  ~ Miles Naismith Vorkosigan

Chenier

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Re: Darfix Portal
« Reply #50: October 06, 2017, 02:24:22 AM »
What about just removing the portal books? At least where there's no invasion? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm under the impression they rarely lead to much. Remove yourselves the trouble while removing the expectations.
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MTYL

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Re: Darfix Portal
« Reply #51: October 06, 2017, 04:59:32 AM »
Like I said, I have no idea how admin panel works right now. I assumed it's something tailor made given BM's age. I assumed it's something decade old given the BM's age and I extrapolated from there.

I think you're right though. After giving it a second thought.
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Re: Darfix Portal
« Reply #52: October 06, 2017, 07:40:05 AM »
I think the quickest solution is to get rid of currently opened portals and to just remove all the portal stones from the item pool. Even when Vita was around, half the time he dropped monsters and for the other half he gave out items.

Wimpie

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Re: Darfix Portal
« Reply #53: October 06, 2017, 09:19:16 AM »
3) At least 85% of what you suggest could be done by simply having someone who is not me or Vita come up with ideas (complete with RP text) for the resolution of a portal event, which they proposed to us, and we then said "yeah, sure," and sent the message and executed whatever admin commands were needed to perform the changes it called for.

To come up with ideas, one would need all the RP that's being done in and around this Portal. As a supporting Dev, I don't have that kind of access to the live server. As a player involved in a portal happening, I'm quite biased and still do not have all information (what if I'm not in the region anymore when someone is roleplaying about the beam of light?).

Hence at this moment, only you and Vita are the persons who can gather all information about portal stones being used and thus are the only ones who can make an informed decision on how to respond to it.

I'm slightly interested in the suggestions that was made to deal with current portal events & strip them for the future, so they can no longer be used. Except for the fact that you probably still need them on BT for the invasion..
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Zakky

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Re: Darfix Portal
« Reply #54: October 06, 2017, 09:54:39 AM »
Scrap the invasion too. It has gone on for long enough. Monsters are pretty much the next invasion at this point.

Wimpie

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Re: Darfix Portal
« Reply #55: October 06, 2017, 10:02:57 AM »
Scrap the invasion too. It has gone on for long enough. Monsters are pretty much the next invasion at this point.

Haha. Have been saying that for months now. But it's coming to an end. We can't just abruptly stop it of course (well, *I* can't do anything), which I understand.

I think the realms are ready to rip themselves apart anyway. We don't need Daimons to have a goal anymore  :P
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Re: Darfix Portal
« Reply #56: October 06, 2017, 10:07:03 AM »
Scrap the invasion too. It has gone on for long enough. Monsters are pretty much the next invasion at this point.

You mean end this one abruptly and ruin what he has planned or what other players have planned and invested time in?
Or do you mean scrap the invasions on Beluaterra altogether?
Allthough i do hope Beluaterra will have good period of time without daimons once this invasion ends.
Perhaps trigger the next invasion by a declining amount of battles, let the daimons come once the island starts to get boring.

As for waiting for Vita, I geuss we just have to be patient, give the guy a break for now.
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MTYL

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Re: Darfix Portal
« Reply #57: October 06, 2017, 12:06:59 PM »
You mean end this one abruptly and ruin what he has planned or what other players have planned and invested time in?
Or do you mean scrap the invasions on Beluaterra altogether?

Oh dear, I hope none of the above! I'm a year old player give or take, I never had the full daimon/invasion experience start-to-end. There's a bunch of new people who hadn't had one either and from what I heat it's sort of quintessence of BM's appeal. No formal system will ever be as fluid and limitless as someone's free, unhindered creative action, no player's guided storyline or RP thread will ever have as much impact on the gameworld as something reflected in mechanics. Invasions and GMs taking action from what I hear are the beautiful marriage of the two, or at least were at their best.
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Chenier

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Re: Darfix Portal
« Reply #58: October 06, 2017, 06:38:55 PM »
Does every portal resolution require access to the live server, though? I understand some of the things that were done in the past totally do, but I reckon that probably GMs could give some of them a more modest resolution?
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Zakky

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Re: Darfix Portal
« Reply #59: October 06, 2017, 09:29:29 PM »
Does every portal resolution require access to the live server, though? I understand some of the things that were done in the past totally do, but I reckon that probably GMs could give some of them a more modest resolution?

Yes? How else are they going to send portal event RPs? How else are they going to change things to make the RP come true?