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Making /linkto command available for players

PostPosted: Sun Apr 21, 2019 12:58 pm
by Chacal
I just spent a few hours exploring Elodea with my 9-year-old son and it was frustrating.
The Age is great but there are places where a player can get stuck or fall in lava and panic link, so I spent most of my time waiting for my son to come back to me. It didn't help that this particular Age is complex (split into several Ages), and that the /jump and /link commands aren't working. Every time he had to walk all the way back to my position.

What we really needed was the /linkto command, so that he could get back to me quickly.

I'm wondering if there's any reason anymore why this command requires admin access. It is a valuable tool for exploring with friends, and I don't see how it could be abused, or why it would matter anyway, because there aren't so many times the shard has many visitors, and they're all good-natured fans.

So in short, can Diafero or anyone else remove the admin restriction from this command? I'm presuming this can't be done client-side.

Re: Making /linkto command available for players

PostPosted: Tue Apr 23, 2019 10:05 am
by Sirius
The problem is that since this command can link to people's private Ages, it would also be extremely useful to potential harassers. There are nearly zero of those people on DI, but I guess the admins didn't want to take chances at the time...

Making it accessible to normal users would be easy. Although ideally this command should only be available to people who friend'ed each other. I'm not sure how one would implement this restriction however. It seems I can't even access the Offline-KI's repo to check the sources anymore, either...

Alternatively, it might be possible to allow "warping" to another player (assuming he's in the same Age). This would be much safer than giving free linking to everyone. If necessary I may be able to do this modification myself and sent it to Diafero (although I'd need access to the source code first).

I was about to reply to an email from Diafero, so I'm going to mention it to him, see what he thinks about it (assuming he's not too busy with real life stuff...).

Re: Making /linkto command available for players

PostPosted: Tue Apr 23, 2019 5:59 pm
by Chacal
Good idea. There's actually an existing command for that: /linkhere.
I didn't consider it at first because I was wary of potential harassers, but I think the risk is minimal.
A reasonable restriction for these commands would be simply that the two players should be in the same Age already.

Re: Making /linkto command available for players

PostPosted: Tue Apr 23, 2019 6:40 pm
by Deledrius
Yet another place where some kind of formal Explorer Group feature would be of great help.

Re: Making /linkto command available for players

PostPosted: Wed Apr 24, 2019 9:43 am
by Chacal
Quite right. I've never heard of this idea before but it seems obvious now that you mention it.

Re: Making /linkto command available for players

PostPosted: Sat Apr 27, 2019 5:27 am
by diafero
What we really needed was the /linkto command, so that he could get back to me quickly.

/linkto will just get you into the same age as someone else, but you will appear at the default link-in point. It won't help with walking all the way to whereever that person is. All the Elodea ages are available in the Nexus, so one can just link to the right age oneself. So, I don't think /linkto will help much.

There's actually an existing command for that: /linkhere.

/linkhere will link someone else to the age you are in, not sure what that has to do with what Sirius proposed? While /linkto "just" lets you enter other people's private ages, /linkhere lets you literally abduct other players into the age you are in. I don't think we should ever allow that for non-admins (it really only exists for admins because waaaay back we used it as part of a story that we ran).

it might be possible to allow "warping" to another player (assuming he's in the same Age). This would be much safer than giving free linking to everyone.

So that would be a variant of /spawn or /goto that takes a player name? That sounds reasonable IMO. In fact, the existing /warp command can already do that, but it is way more powerful: "/warp PlayerName" will warp you to that player. So, yeah, a version of /warp that can only warp yourself sounds like a reasonable addition. It might even be /warp, but with a check to make sure you don't use this on other people? That will be a bit hard to realize with the current structure of the code though. Maybe it is easier to add this to /goto or make a new command.

However, I think this command should be disabled in ages where the authors explicitly requested that cheat commands like /spawn are not available. For Elodea, Dulcamara asked me to disable such commands. Before we allow warping to other people in her ages, I'd like her consent that we remove the no-cheating restriction from the Elodea ages.

If necessary I may be able to do this modification myself and sent it to Diafero (although I'd need access to the source code first).

The code is available at https://gitlab.com/diafero/offline-ki.

Re: Making /linkto command available for players

PostPosted: Sat Apr 27, 2019 9:08 am
by Dulcamara
Only after closer inspection did I realize that this topic is theme around Elodea ages. Sorry for my ignorance.
Yes, Diafero is right, that at the beginning I asked to block my Ages for commands like jump, spawn etc.
I think it's a pity if an explorer are running fast through the ages with commands like these and you do not even have to bother solving a puzzle.
Even I have to go through the entire age i after an update to control it and have not the opportunity to work with spawn or similar commands.
This is also for me sometimes very annoying, because the Ages are not really tiny.
But I also think it's a pity that players lose their joy to play when they constantly fall out of the age and have to start all over from the beginning.
So what can we do?
I would suggest to remove the no-cheating restriction from the Elodea ages if that is a help for players.
Not for Alabaster in the moment, becouse the ages are to new. In addition, there is no lava in Alabaster in which you can accidentally fall :lol:

I hope that the players are so reasonable and honor the years of hard work on the ages Ages.

A request: Do not look behind every wall, and post afterwards pictures of dismembered Ages.

Re: Making /linkto command available for players

PostPosted: Sat Apr 27, 2019 11:26 am
by Sirius
Personally I think we shouldn't be that extreme and keep Dulcamara's Ages locked (players aren't all reasonable :P ), but allow teleporting to another player in the same Age. This way people can't cheat the whole Age, but can at least choose to meet with another player further ahead if they want. I think it would benefit other Ages too. What do you all think ?

diafero wrote:In fact, the existing /warp command can already do that, but it is way more powerful: "/warp PlayerName" will warp you to that player. So, yeah, a version of /warp that can only warp yourself sounds like a reasonable addition. It might even be /warp, but with a check to make sure you don't use this on other people? That will be a bit hard to realize with the current structure of the code though. Maybe it is easier to add this to /goto or make a new command.

Ah yes, I missed it because the command is quite convoluted. I think I'll just make a simpler version in xUserKIBase when I have some time... Something like /warpto or /join.
Thanks for the link to the sources, too. I was still trying to access the older repo on Gitorious.

(Originally Cyan intended for players to be able to save links to any location in any Age. That would have been better than being limited to the journey clothes in my opinion...)

Re: Making /linkto command available for players

PostPosted: Sat Apr 27, 2019 12:04 pm
by Chacal
Wow, this is a great idea. We only need a quick way to warp to another player in the same Age.
Thanks to you both for this discussion!

And thanks Dulcamera for your Ages. Chacal and his son will have a look at Alabaster.

Re: Making /linkto command available for players

PostPosted: Sun Apr 28, 2019 3:48 am
by diafero
I would suggest to remove the no-cheating restriction from the Elodea ages if that is a help for players.
Not for Alabaster in the moment, becouse the ages are to new. In addition, there is no lava in Alabaster in which you can accidentally fall :lol:

I hope that the players are so reasonable and honor the years of hard work on the ages Ages.

A request: Do not look behind every wall, and post afterwards pictures of dismembered Ages.

Thanks a lot. I am sure players will be responsible about this.
I have lifted the no-cheating restriction for the Elodea ages.

Personally I think we shouldn't be that extreme and keep Dulcamara's Ages locked (players aren't all reasonable :P ), but allow teleporting to another player in the same Age. This way people can't cheat the whole Age, but can at least choose to meet with another player further ahead if they want. I think it would benefit other Ages too. What do you all think ?


You are basically saying that /warpto should not be considered cheating? Hm. I don't know how age writers feel about that.