[CF-Devel] combining multipart images

Thu May 9 02:00:35 CDT 2002

Todd Mitchell wrote:

>

      Ya I was being a pain on purpose.  I actually have no problem personally 

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      running the linux client, but I do know 3 people who currently play a 

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      lot who would not, and 3

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      more people who have played a bit  who also would not use linux. That is 

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      6 to 1.  I also know at least 20 other people who would probably take a 

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      look (I'm working on

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      them) but again only if it was a) windows client, and b) easy to 

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      install. 26 to 1 then. These people are great gamers with not much 

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      interest in operating systems or in figuring out how to install software 

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      - they just like to play games.  One of my friends who is playing asked 

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      me about the Java MapEditor...you see where this goes. This is why I 

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      think that it would be a very great boon to the game to have a windows 

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      compatible client.

  But you bring up a point.  Apparantly you have 26 people that use windows. 
Yet none of them want to work on a client.

  In theory, this is a self regulating situation - if you have a sizable portion 
of users that are using windows (or whatever OS), you should figure that you 
might at least get a few that want to develope.

  It should be noted that what needs to be done isn't even to write an entire 
new client - it's just to take the SDL client (either the one from crossfire or 
CF:D) and make it compatible.

  As said, ideally, such a client would be a subdirectory (sdl) in the current 
client environment.  This means that as new features happen, it is much more 
likely for the client to get updated.

>

      I also think it would not be worthwhile to maintain a 

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      separate windows client - so I agree that the best thing would be a 

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      single cross-platform client (GTK, SDL whatever).  I agree so much that 

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      I think private windows clients would probably be a bad thing (I see the 

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      effort that Michael Toennies is putting into C:D that could be going 

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      into CF - not that that is wrong - that's the system, but it is still 

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      split effort).  Having a separate development for other platform clients 

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      almost guarantees that they

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      will always be either behind the main development stream and always be

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      holding things up, or they will go off somewhere, mutate or die.  There 

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      have been three win clients I know of, all out of date now, and this 

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      indicates to me that this approach does not work.

  Many of the past clients had the situation where the source was private.  So 
the only person that could keep it up to date was the original author, or 
whoever the code transferred to.  the SDL client that MT wrote was probably the 
first client that woudl work on windows that was open source.

  However, I know for myself, and probably most unix users, the SDL client was 
less functional.  I know the reason that I work on the GTK client is because 
that is the client I use.  I will tend to keep the x11 client up to date, simply 
because I used it for a while and am familiar enough with the code that keeping 
it up to date isn't that much a pain - that may chang in the future.

>

      I certainly don't want progress on the server to halt to support 

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      old clients, but this tough beans attitude towards a windows client 

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      is troublesome since it is alienating to a whole segment of players who 

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      have no alternative. (is there any idea how many people are using DX 

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      client?, MIDs poll shows it is 26% of their players, but I have no way 

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      to make an accurate prediction from that - is there a way to report on 

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      this from the metaserver?) The feeling I get from reading these forums 

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      is that a windows client is something people maybe don't want to have 

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      (or possibly have to deal with anyway).  It probably isn't planned that 

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      way, but it amounts to the same thing.  I know CF was a unix game, and 

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      if that is what it is to be then that's fine, but currently it isn't a 

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      unix only game.  I was, in my snarky way, making the point that you will 

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      loose these people to other games if they cannot play - likely they will 

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      not return.

  Or they will start work and make a client.  Crossfire of course was a unix 
game for a long time.  I don't have a problem with people making other clients, 
but if they are not supported by anyone, problems will obviously arise.

  If your using the DX client, you can give it a try and see how it deals with 
the big images - to be honest, I have no idea how it will perform.  Connect to 
tavern.santa-clara.ca.us (this is my private/test server).  I've converted the 
armor shop and potion shop to be one big image, and the server code has been 
modified to only send the lower right portion of it (this is only done for the 
map1 protocol command, which is what the dx client used I believe.  I believe 
the client from CF:D uses a variation of the map2 command, so you can't test 
against that).  Since there are instances of this shop in the main town, easy 
enough to create a character and see what it does.

  Also, work on this isn't completely done yet - for example, it only sends that 
if the bottom right is visible in the players map.  I need to do a little more 
work so that the image gets sent at the bottom right coordinate even if that 
piece isn't visible.  It's pretty easy to do that - I just haven't done it yet.

  I know the gtk client sort of works with this - if you step on the lower left 
of the store and then step off, it doesn't get redrawn properly.

  But that is what the issue really comes down to - if the DX client doesn't do 
it quite perfectly, but does it 'good enough', then probably no big deal.  The 
bigger issue that needs to be checked is the case where the big image gets sent 
in an out of view squares yet other pieces are viewable - think of the case of 
like a titan:

P...TTT
WWWWTTT
  ...TTT

  Where P is player, TTT is titan, and WWW is wall.  That bottom right one won't 
be visible, but enough of the titan is exposed to do real damage to the player, 
so it really needs to be drawn in the client.