##

## Guest accounts

###### Andrew Kirmse/ 25 January 1996

Client side

Players can log in to a guest account in two ways. First, the setting "Guest=1" can appear in the [Miscellaneous] section of the meridian.ini file. In this case, the client attempts to log in immediately after the title screen; the login dialog does not appear. Second, the user can type "guest" as his account name, with any password.

When a player tries to log in as a guest, the client picks a server number uniformly at random from the closed interval given by the "ServerLow" and "ServerHigh" entries in the [Miscellaneous] section of the meridian.ini file. If the server responds that the login is allowed, the player continues to log in and create his character as usual. If, however, the server responds that the login is not allowed (for example, if there are too many guests on the server), the client picks another server number and tries again. In either case, the server can include as part of its response a new closed interval of server numbers, which replace the "ServerLow" and "ServerHigh" values in the client's ini file. This is how we can dynamically change the servers we use for guest accounts.

In addition to the above scheme, the client keeps track of the last server number it connected to, and attempts to log in to that server first. The purpose of this is to have guests reconnect to the same server if they lose connection for some reason.

While the client is attempting to log in as a guest, a small dialog displays a message and a progress bar. The progress bar counts the number of attempted logins; the client stops trying after 20 logins and displays a message that all servers are full.

Server side

Three keys in the [Guest] section of the blakserv.cfg file control guest logins. The "Max" key specifies the number of simultaneous guest logins that the server accepts. The "ServerMin" and "ServerMax" keys give the range of server numbers the client should try to contact for guest logins (these correspond to the client's "ServerLow and ServerHigh" numbers above). The server's default values for this section look as follows:

  `[Guest]`
  `Max 30`
  `ServerMin 55`
  `ServerHigh 58`

These settings can be changed dynamically with the "set config" administrator command. Any changes should be saved by also issuing the "save config" command.

When a server encounters a login with the account name "guest", it attempts to assign the login to the first available guest account. At present (1/25/97), there are no guest accounts on the commercial servers, so these need to be created---at least as many accounts as the "Max" setting in the blakserv.cfg file. These accounts are created with the "create account guest" administrator mode command.

Game play

Guests log in to a special section of the game world that is not connected with the area containing paying customers. In character creation, they do not have a choice of spells or skills; they always start with the fireball spell and the slash skill.

Guests cannot broadcast, or "tell" to anyone outside the guest area. They cannot send or receive mail. When a guest dies, he is restored to the place he first appeared upon login. There is no way out from the guest area to the outside world.

Updating guest clients

Guest clients should be updated as rarely as possible, since guest installations may circulate long after we distribute them. However, whenever we update the commercial customers, guest customers will probably always need at least a small update. The files that guests need should be collected in a separate package, and this package must be marked in the server's packages.txt file by adding 32 to the package type number. This signals the client that it needs to download the package even if it is logging in as a guest.