[SUGGESTION] Tool to manage player ID keys

Post-split EDIT: This thread was split from the one the quoted message links to. Below, you'll find asyy's suggestion for a tool that manages player IDs to ease porting your ID to other xonotic installs.

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We may need some account system in xonstat first ... seeing as when you switch computers (or start xonotic from my windows boot ) xonstat thinks you are a different person ... thus your hard earned trophies will be gone D:

If you don't like being considered as two people, you should port your keys from one install to the other. It's something that you have control of, even though it's something to do manually because it's so variable from one OS to the other (location of data dir).

oh ... i just have to move the key ... thats seems easy ...

oh ... i just have to move the key ... thats seems easy ...

Yep. They are the files that start with key_0 in the parent of your personal data directory (so, ~/.xonotic/key_0* in Linux systems).

I have to agree with hutty on this one, asking the user to move a file out of some hidden directory (once again) is horrible qua usability. Maybe someone could write a little graphical application that allows the user to save a copy of the key file anywhere / load a key file from anywhere?

Maybe someone could write a little graphical application that allows the user to save a copy of the key file anywhere / load a key file from anywhere?

Maybe someone could write and maintain three little graphical applications (...)

FTFY

Just one actually, written in some cross platform toolkit (qt, java, python, whatever).... hey, maybe I could write this, hmm... :-)

(ETA: a few weeks to a few months - I'm not a too efficient coder :-P I'll write this in qt, make it work for linux and windows, mac probably later)

Welcome to the age of crossplatform Mr. Bougo
What it needs is:
1. A way to select the userdir, defaults to the default location per OS (e.g. ~/.xonotic/ for linux and %userprofile%\Saved Games\xonotic for Windows).
2. An "export key" button which then asks for the output file.
3. An "import key" button which then asks for the input file (put a "make backup of old key" checkbox next to it, default 1).
4. A small textbox giving basic instructions.
5. Confirmation dialogs ("Do you really want to replace the keyfile").

I mean with something like QT or Java you reach 99% of all players. Those who are tech savvy enough to run Xonotic on their C64 shouldn't need such a tool anyway.

^ it also needs:
6: a well designed interface.

maybe

7: synchronisation with cloud services like dropbox, ubuntu one, skydrive, etc.

maybe

7: synchronisation with cloud services like dropbox, ubuntu one, skydrive, etc.

Don't forget the mail client, too.

asyyy, Cyber Killer, point taken. Make sure to read fs.c from the darkplaces sources to get the idea of how the basedir userdir is picked. I don't think it's fully straightforward.

EDIT: not basedir, userdir.

Don't forget the mail client, too.

Haha! Good one! xd

7: synchronisation with cloud services like dropbox, ubuntu one, skydrive, etc.

This is not needed - you can easily sync the whole Xonotic data dir with cloud storage using the usual method of moving it to the sync dir and symlinking (junction in windows) to the original place.

BTW: Mr. Bougo - maybe you could split this topic so we can continue to talk about achievements ;-)
(plz delete this post after)

Done and done. Good suggestion.

I collect such people as long they keep their nicks and are not anonymous and the get togehter merged by Antibody at the moment.

I collect such people as long they keep their nicks and are not anonymous and the get togehter merged by Antibody at the moment.

That's not a solution in the long term, though.

Why don't we use the cross platform tools at our disposal? In this case, the game itself? Player Settings -> Export Key, which saves a file on a location that the user can find again. Then a button Player Settings -> Import to load the old file? Userdir problem solved, because the game will most likely already know where that is

I'm probably missing something

What neither of these solutions solve is the case where people have reinstalled their OS and installed Xonotic fresh. The old key is lost. Manual merging seems unavoidable there?

Great idea PinkBot!

I've said it before and it bears repeating here: XonStat is not going to have user accounts, ever. That's by design. We're going to have to live with the key system and develop workarounds for these types of things. FWIW I think PinkRobot's proposal is the best one here.

I would strongly encourage players to back up their data. This applies equally to games and other personal data, on Linux and Windows. If people lose their data for whatever reason, that is unfortunate, but we don't provide guarantees that you'll be merged.

Why don't we use the cross platform tools at our disposal? In this case, the game itself? Player Settings -> Export Key, which saves a file on a location that the user can find again. Then a button Player Settings -> Import to load the old file? Userdir problem solved, because the game will most likely already know where that is

I'm probably missing something

Except that currently, DP does no file access outside of its own directories, and there's no framework ready to use to implement file movement and such. I don't think it's reasonable to implement all this just to move a file from one directory to another.

What neither of these solutions solve is the case where people have reinstalled their OS and installed Xonotic fresh. The old key is lost. Manual merging seems unavoidable there?

You could say the same about all the settings, and also configuration for other software, documents etc. It's the owner's responsibility to backup and restore data they deem precious. If there's a feature to export keys, I think that's more than enough.

Except that currently, DP does no file access outside of its own directories, and there's no framework ready to use to implement file movement and such. I don't think it's reasonable to implement all this just to move a file from one directory to another.

Alright, so there is actually a point in creating a separate tool - I'll start this weekend. (Yeah - I'll finally get to post some screenshots in the 'screenshots of what you're doing' thread :-D )

Gl hf!

Except that currently, DP does no file access outside of its own directories, and there's no framework ready to use to implement file movement and such. I don't think it's reasonable to implement all this just to move a file from one directory to another.

Alright, so there is actually a point in creating a separate tool - I'll start this weekend. (Yeah - I'll finally get to post some screenshots in the 'screenshots of what you're doing' thread :-D )

Good luck Cyber Killer, would be awesome if you could pull it off.

That weekend didn't work out, but I'm finally on it!

Starting with the project site & documentation (as blueprints and milestones): https://launchpad.net/xonstatkeyimportexport

Anybody feel free to watch and help out if you want.

Would like to help, but I do only know a little bit of Python and I can't program yet.

I've seen your image CyberKiller: http://imageshack.us/f/820/ckdesktop20120631.png/

It looks easy to use and well laid out. I think it will be a great little tool to have.

In such a small project (I doubt if I'll break 50kB of code) there is usually no need for help with programming. But there are other tasks where help is much appreciated, like...

- project docs (I think I already done those, look in the blueprints section, see if I forgot anything), thx goes to asyyy for specifying this some posts above
- translations (coming later, planned for later project stages, I'll make this fast & easy to make, I promise ;-) )
- 2 functionalities need to set the Xonotic user directory based on the detected OS, I need to know how the game sets this (in version 0.6 as I'm targeting the last stable release, though I doubt this'll change over time) - relevant game code or at least some info directly from the dev team is needed to determine this - if you could get this info and put it in the relevant blueprints whiteboard (1 2) or just send it to me it would save me a good amount of time