[CF-Devel] combining multipart images

[Todd Mitchell]

It is true.  Actually this is exactly right.  But you don't want everyone to
be a developer.  The real reason behind a game is for people to play it, no?
Windows users are not so likely to contribute nearly as much as 'nix users
by way of coding, but you also want players.  People who play do contribute
to a game even if they never write one line of code or submit one
suggestion.  They are the user community.  The proportion of players to
developers should be fairly high.  But windows players are likely to
contribute maps and graphics if there are tools to allow them to do so (look
at Civ or Starcraft, or Doom).  Also windows players are more likely to play
on the main servers rather than run their own.  If there is no client for
these people, they will not make one, they will play something else.
I don't mind if the DX client breaks (it is already slightly broken since
the image caching was fixed), but it had a couple of things going for it
which made it really shine which make it a good example- it looked good, it
handled well, and it was easy to get and install.  Not easy to support
however, and DX has always been a pain in the butt (for me anyway) for some
reason.  I would offer to keep my server version compatible with the DX
client and link up to the metaserver until there was an alternative, but I
don't know if I have the bandwith (or the admin experience) to support a
large number of players.  MT should not be on the hook to produce another
flat client - the direction he is going indicates he is interested in
something else.  I am in above my head here when it comes to discussions on
SDL or GTK.   If the gtk client is the one developers prefer then it is
probably the most suitable since it has the most support.  Since the
existing linux client seems to be the most popular, it would make sense to
try to make it work for windows if this is possible.  There were also some
promising discussions about GTK2.
On related note - has anyone looked at wxWindows (
     
     http://www.wxwindows.org/
     
      )?   It reports to be an opensource crossplatform
gui library that supports gtk, windows and motif (also I checked -  PNG
support).  It suggests you can build windows binaries in a Linux development
environment  (also mac and motif?). I have no idea if it is suitable
however. I wish I could be more helpful, I am trying to get up to speed -
but I have a long way to go yet.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Rightnour" <
     
     root at garbled.net
     
     >
To: <
     
     crossfire-devel at lists.real-time.com
     
     >
Sent: Thursday, May 09, 2002 10:51 AM
Subject: Re: [CF-Devel] combining multipart images


>
     
     
     >
     
      On 09-May-02 Mark Wedel wrote:
     
     >
     
      >   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.
     
     >
     
     
     >
     
      Thats actually an interesting problem with the windows userbase.  Look at
     
     the
>
     
      difference in how the two communities grew up.  One grew along the lines
     
     of
>
     
      "shareware" and "freeware", the other along the lines of open source.  In
     
     the
>
     
      other side, I would bet that there is a much much greater percentage of
     
     unix
>
     
      users that are programmer/free-help-out types than windows user.  I'd say
     
     it's
>
     
      almost guaranteed that until you reach a sizeable critical mass of windows
     
     >
     
      players, you would get virtually none willing to develop.
     
     >
     
     
     >
     
      My point being, that if we break the DX client, and MT doesn't produce
     
     another
>
     
      working client for flat maps, we may just be SOL.
     
     >
     
     
     >
     
      ---
     
     >
     
      Tim Rightnour <
      
      root at garbled.net
      
      >
     
     >
     
      NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS 
      
      http://www.netbsd.org/
      
      
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      NetBSD supported hardware database:
     
     
     http://mail-index.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/hw.cgi
     
     
>
     
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