It's also possible to get this to work with mini login, but can be a bit of effort on the server admin's part (you).
You will have to keep all the IP's of all your clients correct in the data base. That is, if your client IP changes (and 99.9% of everyone on residentual internet service will have a IP that changes, called a dynamic IP) you will have to update the data base with the new IP before the client can log in.
This isn't as bad as it may sound, but will require you to keep up with it. If you have a few friends (say 3-5) it's not bad. It would take you just a couple minutes as most to update all of the IP's (not likely that all of them would change every day either).
Here's what I currently do for my players.
I have them get a domain name from
www.no-ip.com.
I have them run the no-ip.com dynamic update client on their computers all the time. This keeps their domain name current with whatever IP address they have.
When I am near my server every day I will ping all of my clients domain names to see if their IP address has changed.
example:
I am near the server and want to update client IP info.
I open a command prompt and ping each client by typing: ping playername.no-ip.info
This returns an IP address that I use to check against what is in the data base.
Now, playername can be whatever your client chooses to use at no-ip.com. It's completely up to them. It could be dumbass.no-ip.info or whatever they want.
Also, playername.no-ip.INFO can be be playername.no-ip.ORG or a large list of other things for the last part depending on what your clients choose to use at no-ip.com.
Basically, you just ping their domain name and check their IP for them. They don't have to contact you and you don't have to contact them. It's all done on your end.
I am working on getting an application made that will do all of this automatically for me as it may sound lengthy and complicated when reality it isn't.
What I haven't figured out how to beat yet is multiple clients connecting from behind the same router. They all show up as using the same IP address.
-BFC
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