[Freeciv-Dev] Re: rfc on allowconnect

[Reinier Post <rp@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Jul 09, 2002 at 10:07:53AM +0200, Raimar Falke wrote:

> > What is the perfect setup? We rename
> > 
> > FROM                        TO      WHY
> > player              ->      nation  remove player/nation duality

Well, a player is a nation at runtime: a player has additional attributes
(leader name).  The name 'nation' can be reserved for what you pick when
the game starts.  There must be a name for the instantiated nation at runtime,
and 'player' is misleading but it's used in this meaning in most of the code.

> > connection  ->      player  intuitive name for (authenticated) user

A connection is a relation between a player (a human being or AI personality)
and an instantiated nation.

> I would leave the connection. It is a low level thing. But I would add
> a "user". A user has:
>  - exactly one connection (at runtime)
>  - belongs to one nation (at runtime)
>  - has some stats for ranking
>  - has a password

Stats only if ranking is guaranteed to be available and reliable.
A users also has a name.  A connection already has a name, namely the name
as which the user first connected.  However, this name cannot be taken
to identify a user (in your sense), as long as authentication is not imposed
for all users in all Freeciv games.  So there should probably be a provision
for unauthenticated, unranked ('guest') users.  (It's the same on ICS.)
 
> So for civserver.freeciv.org we need a persistent store of the users
> data.

There is one, except that the disk tends to overflow, but this is not
a solution for any Freeciv server anywhere.

[...]

> > Since the above will break ranking (no usernames), we should also add
> > authentication to civserver.freeciv.org by using the username field in the
> > connection dialog, adding a password dialog, and have the server
> > authenticate the user/pass combo against civserver.freeciv.org. This
> > should of course be optional. Users that don't authenticate won't have a
> > username and won't be ranked on civserver.freeciv.org.

Looks good.

> > And yes, the above will be a real nightmare to implement. I think the
> > first step would be the simplification of cmdlevel. And then the rest must
> > be done in one giant patch. I can do it but probably not for 1.14.0 and I
> > will need help on the pregame dialog from some GUI people.
> 
>       Raimar

Simplification of cmdlevel?  I think the 'cmdlevel first' feature must be
simplified, but I can't see how to do away with the levels.

-- 
Reinier