It seems bestow was made to not allow invalid commands to be bestowed in FUSS. This breaks a number of things, because Smaug is suppose to allow invalid commands to bestow "permissions" such as "protoflag" to let the Imm remove the prototype flag. .........................
-Zeno McDohl,
Owner of Bleached InuYasha Galaxy (BIYG)
Project CR: coming soon
Want to learn Smaug building? Smaug Institute

Will look as I have time. Life's a bit hectic at the moment, with the new kitten. Mom can't seem to produce milk, so we're stuck hand feeding it. =/

[Edit:] because obviously I can't spell anything correctly today. .........................
Owner/Coder                                                                    Coder
Malevolent Whispers                                                        Star Wars: The Sith Wars
{Development Phase - Not accepting players}                {Open Alpha - Players welcome, but with frequent changes to core systems.}
IMC2 Contact: Kayle@MW                                                IMC2 Contact: Kayle@SWTSW

Wouldn't that be mset <character> flags prototype rather than bestow <character> prototype anyway?
or, if you're really talking about permissions, couldn't that be handled in cset? .........................
                                              -=Conner=-

Administrator/Coder                                                          Primary SysOp
Land of Legends                                                                The Castle's Dungeon BBS
                           
telnet://tcdbbs.zapto.org:4000                                          telnet://tcdbbs.zapto.org:23

You used to be able to allow certain people to be able to remove and add proto flags without having to use cset. And it was just bestow <char> protoflag. gave them the same ability as being over the level for cset. .........................
Owner/Coder                                                                    Coder
Malevolent Whispers                                                        Star Wars: The Sith Wars
{Development Phase - Not accepting players}                {Open Alpha - Players welcome, but with frequent changes to core systems.}
IMC2 Contact: Kayle@MW                                                IMC2 Contact: Kayle@SWTSW

mset prototype flag? That's for mobs, isn't it? This is for PCs. .........................
-Zeno McDohl,
Owner of Bleached InuYasha Galaxy (BIYG)
Project CR: coming soon
Want to learn Smaug building? Smaug Institute

Hmm, guess I've not had enough hirelings that needed to be exceptioned in the past to have realized you could do that one. I suppose I can see the usefulness of it if you've got a staff like RoD had, or Zeno's building school, but for most of us it's more practical the way bestow is now, isn't it?


Why, yes it is. And that's why I included my second sentence:

.........................
                                              -=Conner=-

Administrator/Coder                                                          Primary SysOp
Land of Legends                                                                The Castle's Dungeon BBS
                           
telnet://tcdbbs.zapto.org:4000                                          telnet://tcdbbs.zapto.org:23

But cset changes the proto perms for everyone. Bestow is meant for individuals, especially that bestow ability. .........................
-Zeno McDohl,
Owner of Bleached InuYasha Galaxy (BIYG)
Project CR: coming soon
Want to learn Smaug building? Smaug Institute

Like I said, Zeno, for most of us, who don't have sufficient numbers of immortals to need exceptions, the way bestow works now is more practical. In your case, particularly at the building school, I suppose the other way would be more useful. :shrug: .........................
                                              -=Conner=-

Administrator/Coder                                                          Primary SysOp
Land of Legends                                                                The Castle's Dungeon BBS
                           
telnet://tcdbbs.zapto.org:4000                                          telnet://tcdbbs.zapto.org:23

What is impractical about not allowing bad commands to be bestowed? It seems to me that letting it do so would greatly help some people, and change basically nothing for others. .........................
David Haley
Head Coder, Legends of the Darkstone
BabbleMUD Project
http://david.the-haleys.org

Why, David, precisely my point, it's only impractical to allow bad commands to be bestowed.


Has anyone bothered to skim through the forums here to see why this was changed to the way it currently is rather than just throwing in their two cents years later about why we shouldn't have changed it to the way it is? .........................
                                              -=Conner=-

Administrator/Coder                                                          Primary SysOp
Land of Legends                                                                The Castle's Dungeon BBS
                           
telnet://tcdbbs.zapto.org:4000                                          telnet://tcdbbs.zapto.org:23

Err, yes, right, I got that you think it's impractical, but I was asking why it's so impractical. You sound  a little angry about this discussion and I'm not sure why...

Basically, the way that it is now is broken for some purposes, but AFAICT letting bestow work with missing commands is only mildly annoying the one or two times you would bestow with a typo and have to remove the bestow before correcting the mistake. (That's just one extra step...) .........................
David Haley
Head Coder, Legends of the Darkstone
BabbleMUD Project
http://david.the-haleys.org

I'm actually pretty sure I know where this happened, and I'm fairly certain it was a small oversight in a fix that we had to put in. .........................
Owner/Coder                                                                    Coder
Malevolent Whispers                                                        Star Wars: The Sith Wars
{Development Phase - Not accepting players}                {Open Alpha - Players welcome, but with frequent changes to core systems.}
IMC2 Contact: Kayle@MW                                                IMC2 Contact: Kayle@SWTSW

It seems to me that it might just be easier to re-grant the protoflag exception in do_bestow rather than break the code again by allowing random invalid commands to get bestowed. .........................
PDNS-Admin | Top MUD Sites | Arthmoor MUD Hosting Services | The Truth About Medievia: A Saga of Code Theft.

"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." -- George Orwell, 1984

Seconded! .........................
                                              -=Conner=-

Administrator/Coder                                                          Primary SysOp
Land of Legends                                                                The Castle's Dungeon BBS
                           
telnet://tcdbbs.zapto.org:4000                                          telnet://tcdbbs.zapto.org:23

That's fine as long as all the other special bestowments cases are considered as well. .........................
-Zeno McDohl,
Owner of Bleached InuYasha Galaxy (BIYG)
Project CR: coming soon
Want to learn Smaug building? Smaug Institute

Do you remember what they were? .........................
Owner/Coder                                                                    Coder
Malevolent Whispers                                                        Star Wars: The Sith Wars
{Development Phase - Not accepting players}                {Open Alpha - Players welcome, but with frequent changes to core systems.}
IMC2 Contact: Kayle@MW                                                IMC2 Contact: Kayle@SWTSW

The original bestow command never had any checks in it for exceptions, and I've checked against Smaug 1.8b - the most current official release. There's no verification at all of any input sent to that command once you get past seeing if they want to clear the whole list or just see the list of commands a user is bestowed with. That's very likely why it was given a more robust security model. You could randomly bestow "suckme" as a command and the MUD would accept it. I fail to see any purpose in restoring that kind of functionality.

Which leaves the actual checks against bestowments scattered all over hell in the code. So someone would need to find every last exception the devs backdoored into the code and either write up a patch for it or at least report on what they all are. .........................
PDNS-Admin | Top MUD Sites | Arthmoor MUD Hosting Services | The Truth About Medievia: A Saga of Code Theft.

"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." -- George Orwell, 1984

It seems that the current situation is broken no matter how you look at it. I'm still somewhat mystified why it's so utterly terrible to expect admins to use bestow with a modicum of attention, but hey. Anyhow, it seems pretty clear that to fix this, there are only so many options: (a) bestow needs to allow any command, and admins must be trusted to be intelligent about it; (b) bestow needs to check against a list of exceptions, in which case all of those must be found; (c) the exceptions that used bestow for non-commands need to handle the exception in some other fashion. Frankly, (a) seems like the easiest option and has basically no loss to it, but I guess only two people here think that. .........................
David Haley
Head Coder, Legends of the Darkstone
BabbleMUD Project
http://david.the-haleys.org

I'll take a look through the code and see if I can come up with a list of exceptions. .........................
Owner/Coder                                                                    Coder
Malevolent Whispers                                                        Star Wars: The Sith Wars
{Development Phase - Not accepting players}                {Open Alpha - Players welcome, but with frequent changes to core systems.}
IMC2 Contact: Kayle@MW                                                IMC2 Contact: Kayle@SWTSW

Just to toss a suggestion in the hat...

It might be wise to write up a small document, describing all the "special cases" that bestow has and consider if it's possible to fold those into proper commands.  At the very least, that would document them so people know what's possible now.  At the best, you'd see a pattern that would allow you to make them not be special cases by adding a few new commands.
.........................