Configuring the Login System

  • [config]

There are several things you can configure about character logins.

Connect Screen

To configure the Connect Screen:

  1. Go to the Web Portal’s Admin screen.
  2. Select ‘Connect Screen’.

The connect screen can contain all the usual MUSH formatting codes (including color!), but you don’t need to put in %r for linebreaks or %b for spaces. The game will respect what’s in the file as it appears.

Terms of Service

By default, the game will present a Terms of Service file to new users. You can disable this by setting use_terms_of_service, as explained below.

To configure the Terms of Service:

  1. Go to the Web Portal’s Admin screen.
  2. Select ‘Terms of Service’.

The TOS can contain all the usual MUSH formatting codes, but you don’t need to put in %r for linebreaks. The game will respect what’s in the file.

Other Configuration

To configure the rest of the Login plugin:

  1. Select Admin -> Setup.
  2. Edit login.yml

allow_creation and creation_not_allowed_message

The default behavior allows players to create their characters right from the login screen. You might want to disable this if you have a roster-only game or require email registration or an invitation.

To disable character creation from the login screen:

  • Set allow_creation to false.
  • Optionally set a message about your game’s registration policy in creation_not_allowed_message. If no message is set, players will just see a generic message.

allow_web_registration

By default, players can create characters from the Web Portal. If you wish to lock this down, you can set allow_web_registration to false. If you allow web registration, be sure to configure Recapta to prevent bots, as explained below.

portal_requires_registration

Set this to true if you want to require people to log in before they can access the Web Portal at all. Often coupled with allow_web_registration to require people to create a character from the game itself instead of registering on the Web Portal.

Disabling Logins

During development, maintenance, or other special times, you might want to disable player logins.

The quickest and broadest way to do that is the disable_nonadmin_logins option. Set it to true and only admins can log in.

If you want more fine-grained control, you can use the Roles System to control which roles have the ‘login’ permission. By default, this permission is assigned to the ‘everyone’ role, meaning all characters can log in. During development, you may want to remove it from everyone and add it only to ancillary staff like builders or wiki developers.

The login_not_allowed_message is shown whenever people can’t log in.

Disabling Guests

The system looks for characters with the role set in guest_role when finding a guest character. If you don’t want to allow guests, set that role to blank. You can also optionally set guest_disabled_message to explain why guests are disabled.

use_terms_of_service

You can disable the terms of service completely by setting use_terms_of_service to false.

activity_cron

This cron job controls when the login activity tracker is updated. By default it’s hourly. You shouldn’t change this.

blacklist_cron

This cron job controls how often the site blacklist is updated. By default it’s bi-monthly. You shouldn’t need to change this.

notice_cleanup_cron and notice_timeout_days

This cron job controls how often the old notifications are cleared out. By default it’s monthly. You shouldn’t need to change this. You can also configure how long old notifications are kept before they’re deleted.

random_guest_selection

By default, guests are assigned in alphabetical order, so Guest-1 logs on first, then Guest-2, etc. Changing this setting to ‘true’ causes them to be assigned in random order. You might want this if you change your guest names to something else, like “Blue-Guest”, “Red-Guest”, etc.

boot_timeout_seconds

Controls how long someone is in timeout after being booted. This is meant as a short deterrent to discourage trolls, and is not meant as a long-term penalty. Remember that in the default configuration, all approved players are allowed to boot (to protect each other from disruptive guests/newbies), so you probably don’t want to make it more than a few minutes.