Knights and Merchants.net Forum

Nice bug findings

@Andreus: Both fixed, thank you I also found and fixed a number of other bugs in the map editor.

r5593 released. LOTS of bug fixes in this one and a few new features like lobby bans and shift+hotkey to link to a hotkey group.
http://code.google.com/p/castlesand/downloads/list

Lobby bans! Omg, that's wonderful. How does it work? Ban an IP for several minutes? If so, do users get banned from all the servers? I.e., if someone gets banned from a Nizgard lobby, will they be unable to join any Nizgard servers?

It only bans from the current lobby (the room on the server). The ban is done by IP and lasts until the room/lobby becomes empty. The bans are not at all permanent, I've tried to make this clear from the text it shows in-game. It's just intended to be a stronger version of kick, where the player can't rejoin your specific lobby (kick is kept for friendly occasions like AFK friends). It's not designed so you can make a blacklist of players you hate or anything

Any way the host could see the IP (or even better, the host adress, or the real country flag of said person) of the one being banned? Cause a banhammer ain't gonna help much if someone can just restart his router quickly. Still it gives more time to those that are being trolled, so it's a wonderful addition I guess

No IP, bad idea.

Besides, it might change like you said after restarting a router.

You can easily log in 2 min with a different ip via a fast vpn.

It's really sad if anyone even does that.

Just ban by MAC, not IP.

Oh but one moment. What you think about a "vote for ban" function. Like 25% of the players in zhe lobby have to agree for zhe permanent ban. Otherwise I think that some HOSTS could turn to trollers or abuse the ban function, by banning for nothing (they would use ban instead of kick for everything)Xd

On a sidenote: MACs can be changed too.

Well thats clear i think :p Thats why I said you can troll still if you want xd

Temporally ip bans is good, and nothing should be changed. Only the epic troll will restart router and lose his time to do that stupid thing other players will just change room. Maybe after ban you cant change your nick for 10 mins.

You can easily change your nick outside of the game, so that won't work, at least not with the current "settings" or whatever. Also, you can never use time as a deterrent to trolling, because trolls don't care if they've lost time since they're having fun while trolling.

MAC addresses are used in the Ethernet protocol, not IP. We don't have an Ethernet connection between clients and server, we have an IP connection. Ethernet only works on local networks when the computers are directly connected by hubs or switches (not routers). On the internet nobody knows your MAC address, because it's only used within your local connection at home (between your PC and your router). Beyond that it's IP. Imagine if every server you connected to got your MAC address, then they would always know exactly who you are and tracking cookies wouldn't be needed right? Read the Wikipedia pages for MAC address, IP and Ethernet for more information.

This banning system is not designed to stop trolling. If someone can be bothered restarting their modem or using a proxy to change IP then yes they could get back into your lobby after a few minutes. However, by that time the lobby will probably be full or the game started. What I wanted this system to achieve is preventing situations like this:
A guy joined our lobby swearing constantly and calling me (I was using the name Lewin) a noob and a d***head and stuff. No matter what people said to him he wouldn't stop. We kicked him but he just rejoined after 1 second. There was nothing we could do to get him out of the lobby and let anybody else join, so in the end we started with him, and after calling me a few more names he quit leaving us playing 3vs4. If we had this banning system we could have stopped him rejoining our lobby as soon as we kicked him. Even if he had changed his IP after a few minutes, we would have probably found someone else to play with by then.

Of course this doesn't solve all trolling issues but it makes kick work for more than 1 second. Long term if we want to have ban lists and stuff we'd need an accounts system, so it takes some effort to make an account (email address and confirmation) and you can permanently ban other player's accounts. But of course this is a massive amount of work and I don't really think it will be happening in the near future.