26th May 2012 - Thieving and Server Management

For the past two days I have been working on implementing the Thieving skill, and some major server management tools.


Court:
If a player has broken the rules (committed a sin) and a investigation is required, an administrator may summon the suspect to the courts.

All members of staff present will be involved, and paid a small amount of coins according to how they contribute to the situation. After a formal introduction to the courts, accusation will be presented to the suspect, and they will have the chance to provide any evidence to prove their innocence, albeit from chat or trade logs, witnesses etc.

Witnesses will be summoned as and when, and asked to provide an alibi. Then, the members of staff present, will take a vote via the staff channel on whether they plead guilty, or not guilty. The majority vote will be the verdict (although in some circumstances I may over rule). If there's no evidence to support the accusation, then the suspect cannot, and will not, plead guilty.

My aim with this system is to take the players away from any distractions in the public world, formally interrogate them, and solve the situation. From past experiences, I have seen too many jumped-up moderators punish players from a hunch. Another player's word will never be enough. If it's not logged, then it can't be proven, and therefore the player should remain innocent until proven guilty.

This is my way of bestowing trust in my community. It may seem a bit much for some people, but I know it will save a lot of stress for players in the long run. Nothing is quite as worse as investing time in a server, making a few friends, a few enemies, and those enemies setting you up for something you didn't do.

Thieving:

Thieving was already implemented, but it didn't work. Every time you would pickpocket or steal from a stall, it would crash the server.

I re-wrote the Thieving system, removing the JScript implementation for the time being, and simply used switch statements and enums.

When you pickpocket a NPC, it auto thieves for 10 turns, and then stops. This is partly a mistake of not removing the getCycleCount (as Thieving was copied over from Mining), but I think it will add a certain element of ease to the skill, instead of rapid clicking. I'm going to see how the players like it on release, and run a poll for if it should stay or not.

Thieving stalls is pretty much the same system. Within time I plan to add more diversity, including thieving chests, and pick-locking into buildings and raiding the drawers/cupboards. Should be fun...

Server Management:

Server management plays a vital role in keeping your server under your control. Without certain precautions, players can easily succumb to account hacks and scams. In an attempt to control the way players are identified with their real accounts, I have implemented one of many to come systems, to help identify the real owners.

Apart from the court system, shown earlier, a recovery phrase command has been added. Players may use the command as many times as they want, and in the unfortunate event that their account has become compromised, they may submit an appeal. The earlier the phrase they provide, the better, and if they can provide all of them, then even better.

Players can add a recovery phrase to their accounts once a day, once a week, or whenever they feel like it. All phrases are logged and a record is kept for the entire life time of the account.

In Other News:

• Completely revamped the commands file;
• All commands removed for players except ::yell and ::phrase;
• All important aspects of the server are logged for administration purposes only. All private messages are still private:

• A bug that crashed the server when a player unequipped an item has been fixed;
• Players can no longer teleport out of the wilderness (level 1 - 50), including Death Ring;
• Trading NPCs rewritten - no longer crashes the server;

Coming next time: a video showing combat and clipped following, expansion on shops, monsters and monster drops, a new skill implemented, bone burying, bug fixes and more...

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