Player accounts

[bonifarz]

When looking at the forums, the blog and the wiki, it is not all that clear how to register for a player account.

Ideally, this information could be shown in-game, maybe with a one-liner or tooltip on the profiles menu, right where the user name and password are to be entered. Another tab in the help menu could be the right place for some further info, such as the purpose of those player accounts (experimental lobby and voting for add-ons?).

Thanks for reading, and keep up the splendid work

EDIT: To register a new account, either go to the login menu or to the players tab of the options menu. Then hit the plus icon to add a new user profile and enter the necessary information to get an online account. If you have previously played with an offline account, don't worry, you can login with any of your local profiles.

[Arthur]

Good point, though so far there is not all that much incentive for players to get accounts. I guess if they want to compare the few achievements they can have with others...

As they're getting more useful I think we'll try to make accounts more visible indeed.

[bonifarz]

Hehe, I agree that sharing your "achievements" and online-status is not a must-have.

Though, this account feature is actually pretty well "visible", with that big login button on the main menu of the release version

In this sense, it makes sense to give players some more guidance. Maybe this topic is a good starting point for doing so.

[Arthur]

Well you can register an account in-game, so not that hard to figure out I think. But yeah writing this down somewhere might be a good idea nonetheless.

[bonifarz]

Ah, right, I just had to create a new player profile in order to register, that's why I missed this option. Fixing the story progress in the local config thereafter was easy enough. So, thanks for the clue, Arthur.

Thinking of future networking developments, the add-ons server and player accounts, another small feature comes to mind. Have you considered the option to upload ghost data? I guess so, as it should be relatively easy to implement. Parsing the data might even allow an online leader-board for time-trial. Though, this will certainly need some restrictions and a bit of moderation.

[Arthur]

Indeed, uploading ghost data is something we want to enable. Just need to find someone with time, motivation and skills to do it, alongside making ghost replay more precise and potentially polishing the UI a bit. Finishing it up, then adding uploading in other words.

[bonifarz]

Thanks again for your replies. Of course, tasks that may seem "relatively easy" at a first glance can need a lot of time and testing to get done. And I realize that the list of open issues and requests is indeed long enough to keep a small team busy for quite a while. But what matters is the great progress you have made with the game so far.

In case other players run into the same issue and do a forum search, I have edited my first post with some instructions.

[Arthur]

Well finishing the ghost feature should be reasonably easy, and the upload functionality as well, though it obviously would need some server side work too. Often what takes us quite a bit of time with new features is finding the right place to drop things in the UI. Most features should be discoverable without needing to look for instructions, and things can get a little crowded. But yeah, mainly we just need someone to actually do it - sadly I'm not a programmer so I can't help with it.

Thanks for writing some concise instructions! Perhaps we should find somewhere appropriate to put it in the wiki? Suggestions welcome.

[bonifarz]

As far as I can see, the faq seems a reasonable place, maybe right below
http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/FAQ ... nternet.3F
Question could be "How do I login?" or "How can I get an online account?"