[Mauzen]

I somehow thought about the possibility to decrease the actually shown player count. This could be nice to exclude ceratin staff members from the count, e.g. admins, live mappers, testers, or anyone else who isnt actively participating in the game, especially people in spectator mode. There are small servers where 50% or more of the listed players arent playing at all, but are just connected for management stuff, which gives pretty misleading player counts.
I dont know how this could be achieved, nor do I plan to ever do it. Im just asking out of interest.
Would this be allowed, following samps terms? (and leave aside all those "this could be abused" arguments, stick to facts, not speculations)


A pretty useless question, as I already know the official answer: No.

Quote:

(g) You may not artificially increase your player count or provide false info to the SA-MP query mechanism.

I like shyster tricks though.
Decreasing the player count isnt increasing it. And "false info"? Think this way: spectators arent players, they arent playing, and dont get in touch with any of the real players. In some cases they dont even passively affect the actual players, when theyre working on a distinct part of the server. So excluding them from the player count technically wouldnt be false info.

[HeLiOn_PrImE]

I don't think it's possible, and I think it shouldn't be.
We should see the actual number of people that are connected to the server, people who we can interact with. The staff is part of that.
If you want further details to be displayed, you can display them in the map field, for instance, or gamemode.
I know NPC's don't obey the rule, but they made actors to lower their use.

[Abagail]

You can probably achieve this with networking functions, Kurta999 could probably do it

[Dairyll]

I believe the "Players" column on the SA-MP client is just a reference of how many users are connected to the server. They probably used that term since it's a game. I wouldn't mind seeing an "Observers/Spectators" feature though or something like you posted (Mauzen). It'd also be useful if the list could also state how many "Players" are actually idle, tabbed, etc.

[Abagail]

Actually, an even better implementation of such a system especially with the new dialog types with columns is to simply allow the server to disable the TAB menu so we can show our own dialog(preferably on a per-player basis).

[Gazzy]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Abagail Actually, an even better implementation of such a system especially with the new dialog types with columns is to simply allow the server to disable the TAB menu so we can show our own dialog(preferably on a per-player basis).

Agreed. This would be good to separate faction members, family members, admins, VIPs etc.

[Marricio]

This could be a disaster for hosts that offer services with different prices for each player slot. I also believe this is convenient only for certain types of server. It could be a pretty good feature to have, but for developers it could turn into an headache, MAX_PLAYERS would have an indefinite value, and each playerid would be pretty fucked up. I bet many plugins would have to get updated too.

I guess the time and work it takes to achieve a certain compatibility with this feature is way more than the slight impact and improvement it would be. In case if its even possible

[Mauzen]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marricio This could be a disaster for hosts that offer services with different prices for each player slot. I also believe this is convenient only for certain types of server. It could be a pretty good feature to have, but for developers it could turn into an headache, MAX_PLAYERS would have an indefinite value, and each playerid would be pretty fucked up. I bet many plugins would have to get updated too. I guess the time and work it takes to achieve a certain compatibility with this feature is way more than the slight impact and improvement it would be. In case if its even possible

Not really. Its only about the server queries. The script itself or plugins wouldnt be affected in any way. All players keep their ID, maxplayers isnt affected.
Has been done before a while ago, just the other way round, adding fake players. This led to a huge wave of forum bans and server blacklistings though.