[Freeciv-Dev] Re: client/server authentication (PR#1767)

["Mike Kaufman" <kaufman@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, Mar 27, 2003 at 12:18:40PM -0800, ue80@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> 
> > 4. a global observer (currently using create_dead, maybe using something
> >    slightly different in the future)
> 
> /dead was only a kludge :-)

frankly, I don't understand why players allow this. There seems to me a
massive potential for abuse when an observer can see the whole game. This
doesn't bother you? I know if I were playing, I damn well wouldn't want
some anonymous person looking over everyone's shoulder (but people seem to
like it, so we should probably put in the ability).

> 0. Players with only chatlinelevel change to it.
> 1. People who wants to watch or multiconnect to other players have to
> "connect" to them.
> 2. Players chose the nations or chose global observation.

I don't understand this (0 especially). please give me details.

> Looks very complicated for me, why not a button with "spectate" or
> something like that instead of doing that before? (chosing nation -1)
> All players who chose nation -1 will automatically be global spectator.

where would this button be? where would nation -1 be? In the races dialog?
One problem is that observing with a dead player (or equivalent) requires a
separate player slot, observing an individual does not. Once you get a
client to the races dialog, you're almost past the point of no return.

> quakeworld had 
> > set spectator 1
> > connect IP

I don't know about setting observer before connect, since you want
connections to be able to restrict who observes who, or if you can observe
at all.

having given this some thought, how about: all connections that log in are
attached to a player slot automatically. If noone does anything, then
everybody will play on start. A connection may:

1. do nothing to play
2. use /observe to observe a player, he is then unattached to the player
   slot he originally was assigned.
3. use /multiconnect to attach to another player, he is then unattached to
   the player slot he originally was assigned.
4. use /watch to observe the game globally (currently this would be
   accomplished by unattaching from his original player slot, creating a
   dead player if one hasn't been created yet, and then observing that dead
   player).
5. use /unattach to unattach from the player slot you were origially
   assigned. the connection becomes a bare connection, not participating in
   the game.
(6). use /attach, if you previously /unattached yourself, to get back into
     the game.

I like this. It's fairly simple and all initial actions require one
command. (auto_attach will join the dodo) Per? If everyone can live with
this, I'll code up auth2-3e.diff with this framework in mind.

-mike