I’m creating a serious roleplay game based around the concept of character development. I’ve created a custom roleplay name system where the player will pick a first & last name for their character when they first play the game. The name (along with other stuff such as age, race, nationality etc) are saved to a DataStore and appear wherever a name would appear in real life, such as on a driver license, uniform (Fire Department bunker uniforms, Police Department name badges).
I’ve got a couple issues:
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Players want to be able to input their own names rather than pick from a list. The list also presents the issue of finite name combinations and, as I’ve seen in my previous games, these combinations run out quite quickly, leaving players struggling to get into the game.
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Names are filtered in game chat. This makes it really hard to get into the roleplay aspect. For example, if a police officer stops someone and tries to identify themselves, what should be “Hello, I’m Officer O’Brien” turns into “Hello, I’m Officer #########.” This problem has put custom names off the table until now.
I’ve considered making it so that players can input their own names (the game is whitelisted with an audience made up solely of 15+ year olds) and leaving the field unfiltered - however, an administrator has to approve of the player’s name before it appears anywhere in game. I’m concerned that this would get my game deleted because of unfiltered text input.
Obviously I can’t disable the filter as that would lead to instant moderation action, as well as the fact I’d like to keep swear words filtered.
What’s the best way to get around these filters script-wise without getting banned? Is there a way to override the default chat filter to whitelist words?