[DGD] Game Design: Character Names

[Blain]

I've been debating on whether or not to allow a player to create a
character of a name which may not be unique.  This ties into mudlib design
because the lib needs to track characters a bit differently if they can be
non-unique.  The character name would  be unique for that specific player
account, however.

One method of handling this would be to identity a given character by an
internal 'system_identity', which is comprised of "name!account", where
account is the player's e-mail address or a custom login id which can
include numbers and must be unique.  The player's entire account would be
stored under a directory named for this account id, be it a userid or
e-mail.  I think I prefer using a userid so that a player can change e-mail
addresses at will without my lib having to rename the directory as often.
 The userid could also be changed, but would likely be changed far less
often than an e-mail address.  This concatenated system id would have to be
used for such functions as find_user/player/body/character/whatever().

To differentiate between characters in the game itself, players would know
others by their first and "last" names, with the style of a given last name
based on the culture of that character.  Some characters may use the town
they're from as a last name; some may use their father's name; some may use
a descriptor (tall, bald, etc.)  Also, players would probably not see the
names of other players until introduced or learned some other way.  A
player will likely be able to choose how they introduce themselves to
others, and perhaps even differ this based on the culture of the one they
are introducing themselves to.

--Blain