[crossfire] 2.0 release, was Re: Code restructuring

[Mark Wedel]

Andrew Fuchs wrote:

> On the community side, we need to encourage player interaction, both
> in and out of the game.  One way to boost in game interaction would be
> bolstering the player economy.  However, that will probably not be
> done in time for cf2.0.  For the community out of game, make it easier
> to find resources like the forums, and the wiki.

  Some of this could be done by including notes/links to that in the client 
itself (perhaps in the about tab).  I think most servers may report that info in 
the motd, but a lot of other info is also displayed at login time, so may not be 
obvious to everyone (one of those things that when you get shown a bunch of info 
at one time, becomes more common to just ignore it.)

  There is also nothing preventing server admins from changing the motd so that 
it doesn't contain that information.


>  Additionally, make
> it easier to join irc channels, possibly by putting a java applet
> somewhere. 

  Not 100% sure about that - presumably most everyone playing will have some irc 
client available - we should probably make it more obvious (again) on pointing 
out that the irc channel exists.

  I personally don't think we want to write/maintain our own irc interface. 
There might be libraries to make it pretty easy, in which case doing it may not 
be that hard.  But in that case, it should be a pretty specific interface (only 
connect to the crossfire channel, etc - don't get things too complicated by 
implementing a complete irc client).  If a person is serious about using irc, 
they should be able (or probably already have) a fully featured irc client.


> Another thing that could be done to aid the community,
> both in-game and outside of the game, would be to setup a method to
> connect to servers, just for the purpose of chatting with people who
> are playing (oldsocketmode uses food iirc).

  IMO, oldsocketmode should just go away - part of the code cleanup.

  But a simple change for this would be if your on a savebed and not regaining 
sp/grace/hp, you don't use food.  I don't think that would hurt balance and 
people could be logged in and never eat a bite but still take in conversations, 
etc.  If you want to go out and trade items, whatever, then you would use some food.



>  Another topic of
> communication between players, would be the inter-server chat
> discussed a while ago.

  I think that falls into a major project - not as simple as one might thing - 
this needs to be properly thought out in many ways.

> 
>