Upcoming: Ban Suite
hi everyone, I've been working on a new thing for a while, it was just a pet project about a month ago but I've decided to devote all my free time into it as of recent and I really want to get it out as a personal goal.
what is it you ask?
Well as the title says: it's a ban suite, you may have heard of something called SourceBans before, it's pretty much similar however it's built with more functionality, simplicity, speed and security in mind. SourceBans is a good solution however not so much for games like GMod or any game that doesn't run sourcemod, this is where my ban suite comes into play. I plan on making this a really useful tool for server owners to manage their bans with. It will be purely a ban system, so no user group tampering unlike sourcebans. Not to mention it is built to be Steam agnostic, as long as the multiplayer game uses SteamID it will work. (it's also going to be super developer friendly with a nice CRUD API)
what is so good about it?
- It's FAST - heaviest page on a shitty setup with no caching currently runs at around ~400ms. Going to also make sure the official Lua addon is built with performance in mind.
- It's secure - So far if your server gets compromised your ban system is basically screwed as well because they can just straight up edit the database, however I have a solution for this. I won't go into details but it's big brain as fuck, making it ten times harder for a malicious user to delete all your records if your server gets compromised.
- It's sexy (at least I think so) - the theme is also pretty modifiable but there's no real theme system.
- It has global bans - it'll allow you to globally ban people and sync it across all servers (yours) using the ban suite.
- Duplicate IP detection - if people try to connect with duplicate ips on the same banned account it'll record those IPs and you can choose whether to ban duplicate ips or not.
- Built with simplicity in mind - with basically 0 files needing to be configured everything will be done on the website if possible.
- SteamID finder built in - crazy huh? haven't seen one of these before lmao
- Built in ban request and appeal system - super easy to use and informative ban request & appeal system will be added into the ban suite
- Attempt tracking - track how much times someone has tried to join while banned, also tracks their IPs just in-case they try to use a VPN to bypass bans
... and much much more
when will it release? / what are the plans?
I have no date, however I really want to have the front end done by at least the end of the month (it should be done sooner if I keep committing like I have been the past 2 days). Then the backend will most likely take most of the time to get done. Then finally after the web side of things is fully complete I'll probably hire a developer to make an official Lua addon for it so it works for GMod out of the box.
why hype up an upcoming project?
extra personal motivation to get the project done, that's really it honestly. not to mention I like sharing my work with people. I don't expect hyping it up to generate extra sales, it'll only sell if it's good, and that's the plan, to make it good.
Do keep in mind: this is still a personal project, if something like family or work comes up I won't prioritize it, but with the coronas out and about I'm stuck at home so really I have a lot of time on my hands. However I do intend to finish this as I really need to start finishing my projects full way through from now on.
Screenshots of a few pages that are done already
(of course these performance reports are not final and may change, but so far its pretty fast on a shitty setup - also please note this is all FRONT-END performance)
that's about it
yep, nothing more to say right now really apart from there is a discord I have up that I've constantly been posting about everything that's been added, you can find it here:
I'll post to this thread with progress updates and what not in the future. Though the discord will always have real time updates.
Constructive feedback is always welcome!
Thanks all.
I was debating if I should do this or not but people told me it would be a good idea to have instead of linking to like a forum post or something so appeals and requests will have a simple conversation system in them so the people who request a ban or appeal can have a conversation with admins about it.
early mockup:
(also I guess this can be in the POV of the user, I'm still debating on replicating pages to make admin actions in the admin area)
thanks
So far pretty much every page remaining for front-end creation is stuff I wanna make when I have the backend up so I think it's good to say the backend has now started. After that it's basically all done, then I get a lua developer to create a module for gmod, finally it goes on the store.
The last page I had to get done before backend as well:
(yes there are more statuses than awaiting user/admin replies, such as In progress, On hold, Needs Evidence, etc...)
The only thing I'm not happy with right now is the organization in the language files, but I mean it works just fine so I won't make a big deal about it right now because that would slow things down a bit.