A while back, I discussed an issue with door mechanisms in the game, arguing that door commands should come from controllers rather than relying on passive options.
Some suggested, “just add an option on the door”—a seemingly simple solution. However, this approach misses a key point that experience often reveals but theoretical development overlooks.
A general rule states that interaction should be restricted to entities that belong to the user, according to permissions settings. In practice, this means only players and thralls belonging to the player or their clan can interact with the door. This works well when buildings only contain these specific entities.
Years ago, while developing a mod to allow thralls to walk around freely, I encountered this exact issue and had to consider solutions. Under the existing system paradigm, there’s no way to permanently solve the problems related to door interactions. The system either needs to recognize ownership and allow interactions based on that or block them entirely. Patching won’t resolve this; the system itself requires a fundamental change.
From experience, patching this system to allow specific interactions means that every single variant of interaction must be manually defined to either open or deny access. Effective control would see this as a specific door state, not a passive response, which is the approach similar to networking, where doors are set to “closed unless explicitly allowed” rather than “open unless disallowed,” to prevent unauthorized access.
Present approach might appear effective, for example, by enabling players to set doors to allow or deny access to their thrall NPCs. But is the issue truly resolved? Not quite.
Imagine a tavern near the building; patron NPCs entering the area might open doors unintentionally. Likewise, any other “walk-around” features could inadvertently enable door access until a new rule is implemented to counteract it.
The only effective solution—tried and tested over thousands of years—is a lock-and-key mechanism: simple, elegant, and effective, even in virtual environments. It was even what we actually had.
