Car whitelist for server hosts

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Flamingosaurus
Posts: 4

Re-Volt Car whitelist for server hosts

Unread post by Flamingosaurus » Wed Oct 16, 2019 2:49 pm

How about car whitelists for RVGL server hosts? I think this could alleviate a lot of the confusion with I/O car classes and remove the need for us to yell at or kick people who pick illegal cars. Basically, it would prevent players from selecting cars that aren't whitelisted by the host, probably would need a little message for players that says "whitelisted cars" or something during car selection.
svito
Posts: 39

Re: Car whitelist for server hosts

Unread post by svito » Wed Oct 16, 2019 3:25 pm

Ayy, we can't even agree here game should support the client-server metadata part where server can tell what cars are to be in selection pool and only present those cars for selection.

If you would suggest adding more "UI garbage" to this proposal it will be killed instantly as a whole by keep-it-1999 circlejerk.
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Flamingosaurus
Posts: 4

Re: Car whitelist for server hosts

Unread post by Flamingosaurus » Thu Oct 17, 2019 1:45 am

Yeah, maybe forget the UI part :transcendence:
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URV
Administrator
Posts: 173
From: Europe 3

Re: Car whitelist for server hosts

Unread post by URV » Thu Oct 17, 2019 11:25 am

We already do this in a sorta hacky way (prebuilt folders version). You won't be able to tell at the car selection screen which cars you can choose, but if you see yourself donning a CHT tag in the lobby, then that car is not allowed (unless something else is triggering the CHT tag, such as dev mode or modified parameters).
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ZipperZbieracz
Posts: 306

Re: Car whitelist for server hosts

Unread post by ZipperZbieracz » Thu Oct 17, 2019 7:27 pm

After some thought I came to an idea to implement this, if this should ever be implemented. This would be an additional "external" feature, it would work by adding a carlistmulti.ini (or something like that) file in the profiles/player/ folder. The game would allow for the host and for the players joining him to play only the cars, which names (names in their parameters.txt or/and their cars/ folders names) are listed in every line of the .ini or .txt file. If no cars are listed, game would allow to play any car. 5 different cars are listed, everyone would be able to pick among 5 cars. The game would load the file once, every time at the game launch or something like that, then the host's game would restrict cars for other player joining the room. This would obviously allow for hosts to abuse it to allow to use only one or few specific cars. This would be also a bit of a hassle to put up, as all names would have to be copy-pasted in every new line and no desired cars should be omitted, but at least this would be functional and I think the most convenient, especially for the I/O folk.

The problem is how it would be seen in the car selection screen for players, I see 2 options for now:

– The cars that are not listed are simply not "picked" up from the car selection screen and are just omitted, allowing to navigate only among the listed cars and of course pick only them.

– The cars that are not listed are able to be "picked" up from the car selection screen while navigating it, but the cars that are not listed cause a blinking/flashing text "Locked", the same that appears for tracks that the player has not unlocked yet by beating championships and these cars would not be able to be "selected".

I don't know which option would be better, perhaps the second one, like 33/66. The first one could cause confusion "why cars can't be picked up?! Why the game skips them? What's broken?!", the second one makes it harder to compare and pick among the available cars, as players would have to switch between stock, DC and custom cars and all the cars in between that can't be selected, but would be very clear why it can't be selected and rather people should know what to drive.
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Huki
Developer
Posts: 397

Re: Car whitelist for server hosts

Unread post by Huki » Tue Nov 19, 2019 12:58 pm

ZipperZbieracz wrote: Thu Oct 17, 2019 7:27 pm After some thought I came to an idea to implement this, if this should ever be implemented.
I'm in favor of something like this. The host could launch the game with a -carlist parameter pointing to a carlist file, and only those cars would be selectable by players. Eg,

Code: Select all

./rvgl -carlist io_prugs  # looks for 'io_prugs.txt' in profiles folder
The real problem is that the carlist file will need to be communicated to all players in the session at startup, which could slow down the initial connection. It means the list should be kept reasonably small, say 50 cars or 1kB file size, or something like that.

Also referencing (#1122) since it's related.
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