Rich Allen wrote:
>
> How hard would it be to code in a system that limits a player to having
> only one character on the system at a time? Not just online, but on the MUD
> period. I suppose you could keep a list of e-mail addresses, and require an
> e-mail address as part of the character creation. (Maybe send the initial
> character password to that e-mail address to prevent bogus addresses being
> used.) But this doesn't get around individuals that have more than one
> e-mail address. Is there a better way?
The above combined with checking IP addresses or host names. Because of
dynamic IPs you cannot rely on a player having the same IP every time
they log in, but you can assume (with relative consistency) that no two
players will be able to log in from the same IP at the same time. By
checking every logged in IP whenever someone logs in under a new one you
can determine if that player is already in the game as a different
character.
A couple thigs to note, this is not foolproof, there are ways around it
and there are some occasions where two people may log in from the same
network under the same IP (IP masqurading), I would set up a list of
exceptions for this. it also still leaves open the possibility that
someone can get two characters in at once by bouncing one through a
server somewhere, but I doubt that a whole lot of MUDders know how to do
that.
By preventing players from logging in two characters at once like this
you can prevent them from being able to pass off equipment or money to
their alts, hence it would at least require the cooperation of another
player to artificially advance an alt (with money or eq).
Nothing is foolproof, but this at least get's somewhere in the vicinity
without putting too much of a burden on the player.
A note on the email part, make sure to make your tests case insensitive
or you will end up with people on AOL creating one character with the
address MYADDRESS@aol.com and another with myaddress@aol.com, another
with MyAdDrEsS@aol.com, etc (the AOL and many other email servers are
not case sensitive so this would work if your email checks are case
sensitive).
Regards, Peter
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