[Re: [CF-Devel] Future of Crossfire]

[DAVID DELBECQ]

dnh <
     
     dnh at hawthorn.csse.monash.edu.au
     
     > wrote:
Umm I tend to disagree with this.

Firstly, I honestly DON'T believe an 'iso' view version of crossfire, or
at least a version like the 'standard set'. I personally believe that with
a short month, Peterm and I have created a better, more congruent, set
that really does look great. The alternate set (which can be found on
crossfire.csua.ber....) may look easy to convert to iso but there is a
large problem and that is with the multitiled monsters. If we take on an
iso view major changes are going to have to be made, and IMHO it simply
isn't worth our time.. certainly if some wiz artists comes along AND MAKES
the new images I would be happy to see such ventures, but until we have
some real live artist walking about, that I can talk to and ask questions
about, I don't support this view.

------------------------------------>
You say you don't want iso because you don't have time to create iso monsters,
or at least convert. It's your right but don't forget we can parse a lot of
flat object (ground and so on) to iso esaily (just some deformation). What
concern monster, 1 square monsters can, at least for the moment, be parsed
like that (they look good for iso). What concern multiple square monsters, i
believe it's a problem but once again, we could for the begin of the
developpement, parse them as flat objects which stand up in the front square.
The critical point of this are walls, doors, exits, houses, sign and other
vertical objects.
What i think is you fear your set will go to trap because of iso before being
known. Well don't know for the moment how it could be possible when i see the
speed at which developpers are speaking before doing something interesting.
<------------------------------------

Secondly, you say our servers can't support uploading the images to the
clients? what do you think they already do? and what do you think is
already supported? if you add -usefile or something like that, it will
grab its images from a set of pngs, you don't need to get them from the
server. This is merely an implementation problem and I am sure Mark would
be willing to hear suggestions on a better way to do it ;).

------------------------------------>
I don't think you've understood what i meant. I said server use its processing
time to transfer files to other players. Even if the socket do most of the
job, i though transferring pictures to the client shouldn't be the work of the
server (and why should the server have pictures anyway???). The purpose of
this transfer is to keep a coherent set. Ok, but most servers use the same set
and i proposed to have a message during the server connection which gives
information on where to find an download these picture (could be local or on a
public ftp!)
<------------------------------------

2) We have been looking for someone to work on the linux client for a long
long time, Mark has done some excellent work, but the fact remains it is
not an interface heavy client. It is simple, it works and I personally
find it very useable. Some speed improvements and a few new options in the
preferences and I think we have an excellent client already. Most stuff
you find in clients today tends to be artists who have plenty of time, if
we have one.. then perhaps we could consider this.

Not only this, but we are constantly updating the server, I personally
have been involved in adding 10 or so spells, and I don't think I want to
consider having to fix the client everytime I add a new spell =\.

These are just a few thoughts, but they were eating at me, sometimes you
must remember that crossfire is not a commercial game, and we don't have
spare resources lieing about. While setting a high goal is fine, I think
we should set ones that we can achieve ourselves, realistically.

dnh

-------------

I didn't say the client was heavy (except perhaps for the directx one, but it
a directx problem). Let's say am a newbie player, i downloaded and lauched the
client. I connect to a server, create a player. Then, the server says to type
a lot of crappy things in the console. I want to cast spells, i have to type
thinks, bind blablabla.. then i can cast. Well am newbie, where on hell can i
find a list of commands. Help?? Yes this command work. What?! is this a telnet
game with a graphical board? Well i prefer to go away.
This could be good, for example to have a small, findable, button where you
can click to choose you spell. I would be very happy to have an interface
where keyboard is not used to type crazy things among the console (or at least
in some rare cases).





David Delbecq
     
     David.delbecq at usa.net
     
     

____________________________________________________________________
Get free email and a permanent address at 
     
     http://www.netaddress.com/?N=1