PW how to disable player access to debug UI?

NightbladeCH

Evenin folks, my apologies if this isnt the correct place or if this has been answered previously. I run a PW and we just discovered this debug menu and are currently trying to disable player access to it. Ive tried adding DebugMode=0 to nwn.ini as well as setting visability = false in the settings.tml file. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks yall.

Daz

Hi! While players can access the debug UI, none of the things listed in it can affect your server in any way unless the player knows the DM password or is a DM.

[Network/ResMan/GUI/Steam] all show clientside things.
[NWScript] needs the player to be a DM.
[DM] needs the player to know the DM password.

[DebugMode] can only be toggled by a DM
[renderaabb/rendertpn] are for tileset debugging and provide no real use for a player and does not affect your server.

Sherincall

To add to what Daz said, the design of NWN is such that the server tells the client (player) what things are where and suggests how they should be rendered. The client is then free to display the information it got from the server in whatever way it chooses. The client then sends input commands ("go here", "attack that guy", "cast this spell") to the server, and server will validate (can this player cast that spell?) and then execute them.

Put another way, you never and any control over how things are drawn on the user's screen. All you do is provide the defaults. Once the user goes into the debug menu, or starts messing with haks/nwsync on their machine, they can change your big evil dragon to look like a pink pony, and can make your carefully placed hidden tiny placeable be huge and glowing.
This is because you already told them the placeable is there. If you want to hide something from them, the only way is to never tell them about it at all (e.g. don't create the plc until needed).

For the debug menu in particular, the nwserver.exe will automatically validate the DM/NWScript/DebugMode commands for you, and unless the player knows the DM password they can't do anything to cheat in that way.

NightbladeCH

ok, thanks yall! I appreciate the time taken to help us with this issue. We were rather worried players could run rampent and troll the server xD

AngryMushroom

Thank you both for the response! We were wrapping our heads around that as it was a new feature, and we are just getting a mod back up and running. Again thank you for the response that clears up alot of things.