LEGO Universe & OS X Parental Controls Playing Nice Together
One of my boys favorite games to play is LEGO Universe. It is a MMOG in the LEGO games fashion that is really well done.
The problem is that I take advantage of OS X's Parental Controls, and, up until last night, they were forced to be on my account (which has admin rights) in order to be able to play the game. The app would attempt to communicate with various servers at start up to check for updates and, without knowing exactly what servers these were, I couldn't open up approval for them.
Enter Little Snitch, a firewall/privacy app which acts as a gateway between the apps on your computer & the internet. While running the app, any application which wants to tap into the internet must essentially 'ask approval' before being allowed online. The beauty is that this handy little app also reports what server/site the app is attempting to access.
I simply installed the trial (via http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch), launched LEGO Universe, and then noted what servers it was attempting to access. Armed with the new information, I opened those under "Website Restrictions" and the game was able to run under the "managed" accounts for the boys.
No need to go through all of these steps, if you're wanting the same. I've listed the URLs to add below. The program is a handy utiliy, though, if you're in need of such a thing.
Enjoy!
- services.lego.com (Needed to load)
- universe.lego.com (Needed to load)
- cache.legouniverse.com (Needed to load)
- lego.112.2o7.net (Analytics)
- login.lu1.mia.legouniverse.com (Handles login once in the game)
