Phantasmal Site > Setup > Administrator Privileges

Administrator Directories and Privileges

Since "wizard" may be a class in your MUD and "Immortal" may be an in-character thing too, we like to call them "Administrators". However, no matter what you call them, you'd like to be able to give them different levels of power. That's where those directories can help you.

An Implementor or Head Admin is probably going to need ultimate cosmic power in your MUD. You'll want to give him or her full access to all directories. To put it in Phantasmal's terms, you'll want to "%grant headadmin / full", which is how an existing head admin awards that power from the command line. If you give somebody that kind of power, the MUD will let them shut down or reboot the MUD. It'll let them create and destroy any object in the game. It'll let them crash the MUD in ways you can't repair. It'll let them delegate that power to anybody they feel like. About the only thing they can't do is alter the Kernel Library or other non-Phantasmal files on your machine. You'd better totally trust somebody before you give them this level of power.

A coder customizing Phantasmal for you (not just your game), or an admin that needs to debug it, will need write access to /usr/common. That will let them change the laws of physics in your MUD, the nature of objects, and the ways time and space are managed. This can cause ugly, ugly bugs and you should be careful who you give access to. You don't want to let anybody do this to your running MUD except your head Implementor. He should only use that access to fix serious bugs.

A high-ranking admin, a coder or a Head Builder will probably need full access to your game, but not necessarily to Phantasmal. That means you have some security against them, but they can still do anything they want to the player-visible bits. You'll want to give them at least write access to /usr/game, and maybe full access. Write access lets them put stuff there, while full access lets them delegate power to it. This will let them change the laws of physics on your MUD to some extent, and write very powerful scripts and functions, but they still can't alter any of the previously-mentioned stuff directly. This is also the access needed to add new rooms and areas to the MUD, and remove existing areas.

A new admin will automatically get full access (including delegation) to their own directory. This lets them build interesting things in isolation, but not to hook them up to your running MUD. A probationary builder needs this level of access, and probably no more. A normal builder will only need this level of access when Phantasmal is more polished, and the head builder can then hook their stuff up to the running MUD, or copy it over into game directories.