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L.C. - Mon Apr 02, 2007 9:27 pm
Post subject: Public Biller Blueprints & Plans Revealed

There is still a few months before the Public Biller goes down with VisFX.Net or I have to move it. Confess+ has offered me hosting on the condition that I get the Public Biller to grow (aka some zone's to connect to it and actually take advantage of it). While taking that into consideration, I decided I might aswell reveal the plans I had constructed with my coder (I believe we abandoned this due to lack of motivation, he was doing it for free after all

).

Well, I had always dreamed of having a portal for this Public Biller where people could create an account and submit their zone(s) for validation and registration, etc. Anyway, take a peak if you feel like it. If you are actually interested in wasting time fulfilling my plans, please let me know so that I could get together with you in some conversations and to stay in contact.

http://www.hlrse.net/Qwerty/PublicBiller-Plans.zip

PS. Those c-xxxxx commands in that one custom version of Catid's biller a ugly. Whether those are useful or not, those should be removed. I don't like them. I have a personal taste for the impression the SSC Biller makes on me.

There had always been two sides: SSC and non-SSC. The thing about non-SSC is that it isn't organized, like SSC is (despite if you think different). SSC is like "official," but there isn't exactly any standard, "official," global Public Biller for the non-SSC side. There may be now, but it seems more of a mess not having an SSC-like (and better) clone. I have always wanted to be there and provide something, and in this case of the Public Biller, just an ultimately professional, simple, and easy place to connect your zone(s) to.

Unbranded billers?
I do not mean "Catid" as a brand in anyway. Infact that name looks pretty good on the biller. Rather though, I prefer the title of this whole thing to be called just simply "Public Biller," while discussed how it is based off Catid's code. I've heard these expressions before: SST Biller, SSO Biller, SomeNetworks Biller. SSC Biller is usually referred to SSC Network, isn't it? Now this community need's something that is just quite ordinary and standard (like a neutral, unbiased object), possibly called the "Public Network" or "Public Biller" or whatever.

Sigh. *Slips back under covers into the shadows*

EDIT :: Public Network sounds best. Public Network is like the true Constitutional united States, while SSC is the Legal United States.

Samapico - Mon Apr 02, 2007 11:02 pm
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But it is actually a biller, so I vote for public biller

Cancer+ - Tue Apr 03, 2007 12:45 am
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So are you trying to take SSC off the map?

That would be interesting.

Doc Flabby - Tue Apr 03, 2007 4:37 am
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You may be interested when SkyBill is closer to being fully functional, as it will use a mysql (with support for other DB possibly) to authenticate players and servers. This will make creating a web-based administration system very easy.

However SkyBill will only support ASSS zones.

One request i have is all biller commands should be prefixed with "b" or other prefix (in the case of skybill i am probabbly going to use "sky" - "skylogin" for example)

As it causes problems in ASSS because for example ?info command is used by CatId's and ASSS.

Another feature i may experiment with latter is a TCP->UDP proxy

Cheese - Tue Apr 03, 2007 4:41 am
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see if u can throw in a biller to biller bridge,

somehow like chats going across networks, cross net pms, etc

L.C. - Tue Apr 03, 2007 7:40 am
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Quote:

So are you trying to take SSC off the map?

I guess that is what I am saying. There is no SSC-version for the non-SSC world. That is my problem. Where can people centralize and unite outside of SSC?

Animate Dreams - Wed Apr 04, 2007 12:31 am
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L.C. wrote:

Quote:

So are you trying to take SSC off the map?

I guess that is what I am saying. There is no SSC-version for the non-SSC world. That is my problem. Where can people centralize and unite outside of SSC?

SSForum

Cheese - Wed Apr 04, 2007 3:04 am
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Animate Dreams wrote:

[..]

SSForum

thats not a biller :\

L.C. - Wed Apr 04, 2007 7:46 am
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SSForum is not a non-SSC place while PoLiX is leading it and SSCentral. Those forums are strictly SSC only when it comes to the navbar and such. Not very friendly to the non-SSC. However, I think some things will change once he finishes the grand portal for SSCentral.

Maverick - Wed Apr 04, 2007 11:03 am
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SSForum is neutral to the whole SSC / Non-SSC question apart from the navbar. Really, any zone is welcome - there have been lots of Non-SSC zones at SSForum before.

L.C. - Fri Apr 06, 2007 12:59 am
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Cremy has volunteered to help out.

I will spill some of my new thoughts.

For the web-based part of the biller, the registration form that pops up upon entry to a zone connected to SSC could be used to our advantage, if Dr. Flabby is willing to share some information. I believe he did claim a while back that he knew how to do that and more, just did not want to share it for the sake of possible exploits and such.

The client-based registration form and a web-based registration form could be available for a player to register from. Both would be connected with the databases very well.

Players would be able to login from the web-based part of the biller to have a GUI-styled control over their account. They might have more flexibility over ?messages (and ?message of course), changing their password, deleting their account, changing profile information, etc. It makes perfect sense to take advantage of both web and client based registration forms in this case.

Anybody have any clue onto getting rid of the "Not connected to central biller" message so that it will not scare away newbies?

Doc Flabby - Fri Apr 06, 2007 5:31 am
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L.C. wrote:

For the web-based part of the biller, the registration form that pops up upon entry to a zone connected to SSC could be used to our advantage, if Dr. Flabby is willing to share some information. I believe he did claim a while back that he knew how to do that and more, just did not want to share it for the sake of possible exploits and such.

Anybody have any clue onto getting rid of the "Not connected to central biller" message so that it will not scare away newbies?

The packet needed to make registration form appear is already documented, you can even do it with the TCPBilling protocol.

I recommend having a look at some of the source in asss, Alot of the hard work is already done. asss-1.4.3/src/packets/billing.h

The stuff I won't talk about is not related to this. I have heard a rumour has it death+ has a biller that does not display the non-SSC biller message. How much truth in that I don't know.

Maverick - Fri Apr 06, 2007 6:16 am
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Creemy? heh good luck with that

K' - Fri Apr 06, 2007 7:19 am
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You will fail.

Confess - Fri Apr 06, 2007 2:26 pm
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doc, 100%, but he wont share anything.

Best way to go about it is to ask teh people that helped him, of which I wont release names to as Im not entirely sure if they did.

Cheese - Sat Apr 07, 2007 1:16 am
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L.C. wrote:

Anybody have any clue onto getting rid of the "Not connected to central biller" message so that it will not scare away newbies?

hard-coded into the client $$$

Animate Dreams - Mon Apr 09, 2007 11:51 am
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Cheese wrote:

[..]

hard-coded into the client $$$

There is obviously something SSC biller uses to identify itself as the biller, any other biller could easily implement this. It's figuring out how it identifies itself that's the hard part.

phong - Fri Apr 13, 2007 4:49 pm
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The "not connected to ssc biller" is hard coded into continuum, and since priitk has the user rights for continuum, the only way to get around is to write a brand new client which a few people are doing.

Or take the more unlikely way, have priitk remove it from the next version of continuum.. if there ever will be one.

I can also help with hosting issues if it becomes a problem but I run linux only.

CypherJF - Fri Apr 13, 2007 5:21 pm
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Or figure out which packet toggles the warning.

Confess - Fri Apr 13, 2007 6:25 pm
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From what ive gathered from several people that have attempted to find out how..as suspected, it is hardcoded into both the server and the client.

Basically, from the sounds of it (dont take my word for it):
Server connects to biller.
Biller says 'im ssc'.
Server says Ok.
Client Connets.
Server sends the SSC Packet
Client says 'cool, you're SSC'
Client joins.

L.C. - Fri Apr 13, 2007 6:34 pm
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Do you suppose some people in the Scene and/or elite reverse-engineering groups may be able to lead to some advancements regarding stuff like this if someone were able to find one of these great reverse-engineers?

Animate Dreams - Sat Apr 14, 2007 8:44 pm
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People are already looking for it in another thread, I think, and they make it sound like it's not going to be a huge ordeal. I personally don't think they should do that until SSC either goes down/becomes too crappy to be the main biller(don't see it happening for a while). I mean, it's there for a reason. I like to know whether the zones I'm going to are actually part of the SSC biller or not, otherwise they can easily steal my password. I'm also guessing that if the biller was coded right, it wouldn't even ask me if I wanted to create a new name or not, it would just take my password and write it down somewhere. This is really just a bad idea all around, that kind of information really shouldn't be available to the public. Although, I'm hoping that if any zone actually did that with their biller, they'd be banned from the directory servers.