All of the player stats need to be saved server side. By default, UT2004RPG used to save to the ini file. Is that what we want, or do we want to be able to save to some other sort of database file? I think this needs discussion by the people who have admin'd servers.
 

I think there should be an extra abstraction layer allowing upgrades of RPG (assuming it consists of some core RPG and add ons adding all kinds of abilities) without ever having to edit the player database INI file. 

BattleMode wrote:

I think there should be an extra abstraction layer allowing upgrades of RPG (assuming it consists of some core RPG and add ons adding all kinds of abilities) without ever having to edit the player database INI file. 

It would be very useful. However, there are lots of occasions where you want to replace one ability with another one, or change the costs or requirements of abilities, that could make this quite difficult. 

But I have very limited experience running a server, and I was quite happy hacking the ini file. Sites with thousands of players will have different requirements. 

So instead of using actual abilities in the user database you use descriptions referring to them. You store the translation of those descriptions to the actual abilities in a separate (much smaller) INI file. If you decide to make an ability more expensive (which means everyone having the ability will have to lose it) you simply rename the description. The RPG core will discover the description is no longer valid and removes it from all the players automatically. Those who want to can buy the ability again. This would also allow you to change requirements (which abilities are needed to buy other ones) without having to edit the user database. This would also allow you to replace a class by a different one without having to rename references to that class in the user database.