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ASSS Questions - Biller Protocol & Squad

Hakaku - Wed Dec 23, 2009 4:12 am
Post subject: Biller Protocol & Squad
Something I noticed while working with the TCP Billing Protocol is that ASSS holds on to a player's squad regardless of whether or not it has changed since first logging in. The problem with this is that when a player changes squads, he or she will continue to receive squad messages from the squad that they initially entered the zone in. Is this by design?
Dr Brain - Wed Dec 23, 2009 10:25 am
Post subject:
I seem to recall subgame doing a similar thing. Subgame forces you to relogin to see any squad changes in the F2 player list. That may or may not update squad messages, as I never experimented with that.
Doc Flabby - Wed Dec 23, 2009 12:47 pm
Post subject:
This is by design, because there is not "squad changed packet" You only receive your squad name when you login to continuum (its in the login response packet i think), so you have to log off and log on to see the changes.
Hakaku - Wed Dec 23, 2009 1:33 pm
Post subject:
Well I'm aware that Continuum doesn't update the squad name in the player list after it's been changed, but then, should ASSS really be accomodating this? If you're online and someone kicks you off their squad, technically you're still going to remain on that squad until you log off the server. If a specific zone does a lot of squad-oriented events, I can only see this as being problematic, unless you track teams and members separately, which kind of defeats the purpose.
Mine GO BOOM - Fri Dec 25, 2009 11:53 pm
Post subject:
Hakaku wrote:
If a specific zone does a lot of squad-oriented events, I can only see this as being problematic, unless you track teams and members separately, which kind of defeats the purpose.

The whole squad system isn't that well designed, because they originally figured it wouldn't be something that changes that often. So instead of building an extension to the protocol for billing servers to update zones when a person's squad changes, and then the zones updating everyone else for something that is rare to happen, they just figured to do the "reboot" mentality that was very common at the time (just try and update Windows 98 without rebooting).

If you are really having a problem with someone and need them out quickly, just get a moderator in the zone to kick them.
Hakaku - Sat Dec 26, 2009 1:38 am
Post subject:
Hmm. On the topic of billing protocol and ASSS, why does ASSS cut off usernames before sending them to the biller? I noticed that while I could login without a problem using a username of 23 characters on Subgame, ASSS forced my username to be trimmed down to 18 characters, which prompted a new registration form, though it could potentially block some users from logging in since it may impede on a different player's account.
CypherJF - Sat Dec 26, 2009 8:22 pm
Post subject:
Hakaku wrote:
Hmm. On the topic of billing protocol and ASSS, why does ASSS cut off usernames before sending them to the biller? I noticed that while I could login without a problem using a username of 23 characters on Subgame, ASSS forced my username to be trimmed down to 18 characters, which prompted a new registration form, though it could potentially block some users from logging in since it may impede on a different player's account.


I had noticed this issue - inconsistent limitations on userid's back when I was programming plugins for Mervbot (see http://cypherjf.sscentral.com/articles/bots-as-clients/) ... Game clients only kept the first 18 or so characters; while the protocol itself allowed 23. This obviously was an issue for anyone who is trying to perform lookups based on player names. Granted, most user id's do not have the same first 18 characters, but there is a possibility of it happening. It's probably a *good* thing the limitation is there to keep things consistent; but, obviously with subgame accepting 23 it's not an ideal scenario.
Hakaku - Tue Dec 29, 2009 6:20 pm
Post subject:
Hm, well I won't worry too much about that. But are there length limits on other stuff, such as passwords? I wouldn't want to allow someone to set themselves a password longer than is even possible. What about squad names?
CypherJF - Wed Dec 30, 2009 12:19 am
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If I recall correctly, someone should double check this, but password and squad names should all be no more than 23 characters.

The VIE biller protocol can support longer username/passwords; but the 23 limit came into play between client and subgame; not, subgame and biller.

Some of these numbers may be off by +/-1 due to whether or not null characters were needed in the field (can't recall off the top of my head).
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