Website questions

[matsumo itsu offline]

I'm trying to make a text based rpg and was wondering if you guys knew anything that might be able to help me in this quest. I am wanting to have a home for each person which will display their stats, like health, strength, energy, and each individual stat. I do not want to have to create each individual page for each individual character. I am using XAMPP for my server. If anyone is able to help it'd be appreciated and if you are interested you'll be invited into the alpha.

[TheLQ offline]

Pull the stats from the database? Have a page that views the current user's stats. You can also dual purpose it by adding some parameter in the URL to view other's info. Differentiate users by UID

[matsumo itsu offline]

Well the first thing is I have to have a way for them to register without me having to manually add them (which is how it's set up atm which is rather annoying.). I'm currently trying to use bravenet for my login scripts and I'm ready to dump them already.

[TheLQ offline]

Well the first thing is I have to have a way for them to register without me having to manually add them (which is how it's set up atm which is rather annoying.). I'm currently trying to use bravenet for my login scripts and I'm ready to dump them already.

There are frameworks for this kind of stuff, but rolling your own is always good. In basic terms you have a "user" table with the following columns:

• Id
• Name
• Email
• Full name (if you collect this)
• Hashed Password. Some notes with this:
  • DO NOT STORE PLAINTEXT PASSWORDS. You will become the next casualty on the internet having their entire database dumped with everyone's passwords. Don't be this website
  • Use salts. A salt is essentially a large prefix or suffix that makes the password stored in the database much larger, making it more difficult to crack. Salts alone however do not work well as people can generate tables if they compromise the salt, which compromises all your users. A better option is per user salts + a global salt or "pepper". Eg you can take the SHA512 hash of something random (the random is important, do not use system time, use the most secure random function your language offers), store it in the database next to the user. Then make a very large pepper and store it either in the code or (better) in a configuration file. Then when you calculate the final hash its "salt|password|pepper". If your pepper is 64 characters and the salt is 64 characters, this makes what was a 10 character password for example and makes it 138. 10 is crackable with enough time. 138 characters isn't crackable before the universe explodes.
  • Use a secure hashing algorithm. Your looking for length, complexity, and secure. MD5 doesn't have this and is crackable. I'm a fan of SHA512 just because it generates an enormous hash. However there are other options like bcrypt, PBKDF2, and scrypt. Language support is iffy, so check that first.
  • Another thing you can do is hash the hash. This makes things more secure since if people manage to crack the hash, they then have to crack it again and again and again. I know phpBB3 hashes it around 500 times, but your probably safe with 100. Don't want to take down the server when you have a rush of people logging in close to the same time
  • Do not use this as your only source of information, google around and see what others think. One place to look: http://security.stackexchange.com/quest ... -passwords and http://security.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/hash
• Other user specific info that you need
• Some kind of activation key for when you send them an activation email
• Whether the account is enabled or disabled (could also have in a separate table for logging purposes, new row for when account is activated and disabled)
• Whether the account is banned or other "bad" mode (probably would want in another table, but this is the quick and dirty way

This is just a small list, but gets the idea across. I really want you to focus on the passwords though

[TheLQ offline]

Forgot to add how to use that.... oops.

Essentially you have a registration page where the user types in their info (and has a captcha). When they hit submit, all the stuff in the table is calculated and an email is sent. They must click the activation link which corresponds to their id and their activation key. When they do that their account goes from disabled to enabled. Also you need to remove the activation key to prevent it from being used more than once.

[matsumo itsu offline]

Alright I'll remember all of this I thank you for all the help you are putting into this even though to you it's probably basic.

[matsumo itsu offline]

LQ once I get this up are you wanting to try for the Alpha?

[xiaozanghou offline]

You're prolly long gone, but is there a reason you want to roll your own instead of trying to build off a MUD like Smaug or something?

Ah, the good old days of LyokoMUSH...

[matsumo itsu offline]

Dislike the limitations and/or price. if you know a decent one that's free and can make a game similar to the one found at theninja-rpg.com or hogwartslive.com than I'd be more than grateful for you showing me to it.

Now for the time saver of clicking links, they are both text based rpg, theninja-rpg has energy bars which I will need for my site.

[TheLQ offline]

Dislike the limitations and/or price. if you know a decent one that's free and can make a game similar to the one found at theninja-rpg.com or hogwartslive.com than I'd be more than grateful for you showing me to it.

Now for the time saver of clicking links, they are both text based rpg, theninja-rpg has energy bars which I will need for my site.

I doubt your going to find many frameworks for writing a text based RPG. Thats not exactly common

[matsumo itsu offline]

That's why I'm trying to make my own set up, it's a rather painful and annoying process, than again I more or less put the project on hold temporarily (in other words down until I feel like dealing with any form of coding again), but when I left it, it was almost to the point where I wanted it.