Too many clients (was Re: [CF-Devel] sdl client)

[Tim Rightnour]

On 22-Oct-01 Mark Wedel wrote:
>
     
       In the sdl client thread, it was mentioned that the number of clients makes
     
     >
     
      it
     
     >
     
      such that some changes to the protocol or server were not done because of the
     
     >
     
      effort.
     
     
So.. recently.. while writing the attack messages, it was proposed to me that I
should write the messages on the client end and have the server call them with
a smaller bandwidth message.  I didn't even consider this because I'm simply
not going to hack N clients to do it.  (there are other fundamental problems
with it too.. but I'm ignoring those for the purposes of your query)

Now.. that being said..  I realisticly see three major problems:

1) The Xlib client is somewhat unmaintained because virtually nobody knows
Xlib/XT/XAW anymore.. and those of us that do, know better than to admit it.

2) The gtk client has a hideous memory leak:
root    24366  0.3  4.9 13860 25840 ??  Ss   26Sep01 96:53.29 /usr/X11R6/bin/X
(that gets to around 70 megs before the whole X server becomes useless)

3) The SDL client, from listening to the discussion, may not in fact be fast,
unless I have special hardware/GL/linux/flying monkeys/etc. I'd try it out, but
not until it supports flat play.

IMHO.. All I require is that it runs reasonably fast, and works on 8bit and
24bit displays.  I don't have modern graphics hardware really.. and not
everyone does.  Basically.. I just want to be able to play the game, on my
systems.  If I can't run the client on NetBSD because of some exotic GL crap,
then I'm going to be upset.  (just like if the Xlib map editor goes away I'm
going to be displeased)

Updating 2 clients will suck.. but it will suck less than updating 7.

---
Tim Rightnour <
     
     root at garbled.net
     
     >
NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS 
     
     http://www.netbsd.org/
     
     
NetBSD supported hardware database: 
     
     http://mail-index.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/hw.cgi