Key Concepts

• The ValidatePlayerName function in the Game Server is the ultimate authority on whether a name is acceptable or not.
• IPlayerModelClientListenerCore.OnPlayerNameChanged is called on the game client whenever the player's name is changed.

Validating Names

Validation of names is performed by a single function, called ValidatePlayerName, in PlayerActorBase.cs and it is automatically run before updating a player's name from any source.

The Metaplay SDK contains a reference implementation that looks like this:

// Snippet from PlayerActorBase.cs
public static bool ValidatePlayerName(string name)
{
    // Validate that length of name is between 5 and 20 characters long.
    if (name.Length < 5 || name.Length > 20)
        return false;

    // Check that no control characters are inlcuded.
    foreach (char ch in name)
        if (Char.IsControl(ch))
            return false;

    // Filter out semi-colons to mitigate any attempts at sql-injection attacks.
    if (name.Contains(';'))
        return false;

    <!-- markdownlint-disable-next-line MPL006 -->
    // [todo] Add more validation steps here as necessary, each one
    // returning false if the name fails to pass.

    // All steps passed - The name is valid.
    return true;
}

Fun fact: the above implementation allows emojis in names, so in real life, you might want to do something more restricted depending on your game's character support 🕺🦄.

Good to know

Whether the name is changed by the player client or from the LiveOps Dashboard, the exact same validation function is used on the Game Server.

Informing Game Clients of Name Changes

When a player's name is changed, the OnPlayerNameChanged handler is called on the current IPlayerModelClientListenerCore. You can use this to react to name changes in your client code.

void IPlayerModelClientListenerCore.OnPlayerNameChanged(string newName)
{
    // Update UI with value in newName
}

Changing a Player's Name from the Client

To allow the player to change their own name from the client, you just need to fire off a PlayerChangeOwnNameRequest message to the server. The validation will happen on the server and the OnPlayerNameChanged will be called if the name change succeeded.

using Metaplay.Core.Player;
...
MetaplayClient.MessageDispatcher.SendMessage(new PlayerChangeOwnNameRequest(newName));