ACCURATE character deletion module?

[Liberty Valance]

Hey everyone... does anyone know of any sort of plugin, NWNX or otherwise (although hopefully NWNX, because that variety seems to be better-documented, more stable, and would be less work for me!) that can accurately delete character files from in-game? For example, a character called "E of the Prismatic Tower" walks up to my character deletion NPC, and wants his character deleted. Now, for whatever reason, he's got about six characters with the same or similar names, and his server vault looks like this:

eoftheprismatic1.bic
eoftheprismatic2.bic
eoftheprismatic3.bic
eoftheprismatic4.bic
eoftheprismatic5.bic
eoftheprismatict.bic

... the current thingy I'm using just "guesses" by looking at the character's name... which inevitably leads to "eoftheprismatict.bic" being deleted, even if he's currently logged in with "eoftheprismatic1.bic". This of course leads to much wailing on their part and suffering on my part. Does someone have something out there that searches all character files in a user's vault, and matches not only the name (as stored within the file), but maybe some stats as well or something? Is this even possible? Help!
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A Persistent World West2 | APWW2 Forums
Wirehead Studios

[Papillon]

Just an idea: you could ExportSingleCharacter the player and then call a NWNX plugin that deletes the most current file.
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Papillon

[Makzimia De Graf]

We actually implemented a script which checks for dupe names and stops the player from using them. We also made a script about to go into place, that stops players from having more than one account per CD key
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Makzimia De Graf

DM/Creator Island of Fredian
fredian.game-host.org:5123
Forums at http://castille.us/fredian/Forums

[Liberty Valance]

[Makzimia De Graf]

Liberty the person to REALLY talk to is my head dev, and I am trying to get him on here when he has some time. I am the creator etc of IoF, but he and my wife are our gurus.
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Makzimia De Graf

DM/Creator Island of Fredian
fredian.game-host.org:5123
Forums at http://castille.us/fredian/Forums

[Papillon]

[Blacksting]

I have written a 100% accurate PC deleter but I have not released it. How it works:

NWNX code gets the last file written (which thankfully is always the last character logged on from that player.) That file name is sent back through NWNX and placed as a local variable on a non-droppable item in PC inventory on login (if it doesn't exist already.) Wala.... the EXACT filename of the PC is stored for use. Because I was lazy, however, I just added it to the nwnx_functions.dll along with the file delete code. This is why I did not release it being that it was trampling on an existing module.

In game I use the LetoScript.dll to open up each bic and extract the real names from the files and list them along side the bic filename (along with a number.) The players themselves can type (since I use the Talus chat sniffer) deletechar::# and wala once again... bic deleted (also its backed up too somewhere else in case they make a mistake... and we all know THAT never happens )

As with work that has been evolving over time the above scenario requires several integrated components... Talus, Leto, and the NWNX additions. If people are interested in the ENTIRE thing I can probably package it up.

[Xildjian]

[Xildjian]

[dragonsong]

A trick demux came up with is proactive association. It works on the assumption that all new characters have a blank Tag. When a PC connects, use GetTag(), and when the result is blank, run a routine that identifies that character's file, and either stores the file name as the character's Tag, or matches them up in your *SQL database (by storing a Primary Key in the Tag, instead).

demux used LetoScript's <vault:> function to scan through all the files in the player's directory to find the one with a blank tag, and hence matched character to file name.

This only works as a proactive solution, though, since an existing playerbase has blank Tags in every file. You could, however, still write an external script that "catches up" and sets Tags / SQL.

The system was also meant as a useful foundation for LetoScript in general, as it works specifically on files, so it always needs a filename.
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- dragonsong

[princewally]

http://www3.sympatico.ca/vlmcgill/msvadmin/msvadmin.zip

This is a good external program that deletes characters based on inactivity. It also allows you to set a maximum number of characters per player.


I've also heard about servers using a NPC deleter to set the deity to "DeleteMe" or something similar and using a windows script to delete anything with that text string in the bic file.