Unified account with many characters

From: Torgny Bjers (artovil@arcanerealms.org)
Date: 12/08/02


Hello folks,

I have been sketching on a system for our CircleMUD which will allow players
to have one login account with multiple characters.  I thought I'd run this
by the list since I am having some problems with actually planning the
system code-wise, and perhaps somebody has done something like this before,
and perhaps they even have code tidbits to share.

What I have decided so far:
Make the unified accounts a configure option, that way the administrator can
chose if he wants the original CircleMUD system or the new unified account
system when he configures the package.

I have added a struct to the descriptor: account.  This is similar to the
character struct, although it contains less information, and a simple list
of the characters that the account contains.  I leave the character struct
on the descriptor, and then when the player choses a character, that is
simply loaded the normal way into the character struct on the descriptor, it
seemed like the most logical way to go.

I have added a define, CIRCLE_UNIFIED_ACCOUNTS, which I use to optionally
compile certain information, such as the new struct, various behavior
related to descriptors in comm.c, some macros, and other information that
use the new struct and the macros.

What stumps me is how to actually integrate this seamlessly in Circle's
existing code.  Interpreter.c holds the menus, and that will be file mostly
modified.  How should this be done?  Inline with #ifdef and such?  Or
somehow use a new C file for the unified account interpreter?  Any help
appreciated.

If you see any immediate flaws in what I proposed, have suggestions, or just
think the idea plain sucks, or if you think this is a cool idea and perhaps
want something like this for your own CircleMUD, please let me know.  Right
now it will be coded for a CircleMUD bpl21, but it's going to be upgraded to
3.1 before long, and as of now, most saving and loading uses MySQL, which
can easily be altered to the ASCII pfiles and such with little fuss.

Warm Regards,
Torgny Bjers

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