[crossfire] Improved/redone client.

[Mark Wedel]

  I'm going to try and summarize the 20+ messages here.

19x19 map size:
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Didn't get many comments, but a few people expressed desire to be able to set 
this (either because of very small screens, or very large screens).  Now scaling 
of the images (-mapscale already supports this) could be done to compensate for 
this, but that doesn't look really great.  One thought is to at least set a 
minimum map size (must be set to 17x17 or something) so that map designers could 
know that a player can see 8 spaces away from them.  Yes, people playing on a 
25x25 display have an advantage, but so do those with faster connections, etc. 
I would also be inclined to require on display dimensions, so that the player is 
always in the center of the screen, not off by a tile.

making client fullscreen:
-------------------------
General consensus seems to be no on this point.  I don't think I saw anyone that 
actually said they would use full screen, and to me, that is a red flag right 
there (if no developer is using it, no one will find bugs, etc).  But more so, I 
think it is that in a linux environment, people are not expecting full screen 
apps.  Full screen could allow custom widgets, but some dislike expressed on 
that.  And I do think that is a valid point - being able to use GTK2 makes 
coding a lot simpler/faster.  There is a reason that the gtk clients have a lot 
more features/abilities than the X11 client, which isn't using any widgets and 
thus has to have the widgets it does have done by hand.


standardize on one client (gtk2):
---------------------------------
Generally OK, but gtk2 client would need to work better on low resolution 
displays.  At lease some people are still using 1024x768, which has more space 
issues.

My thought might be to make a different glade layout file for lower resolution, 
which also chooses some other defaults

Client ui improvements:
-----------------------
  - pop up window for inventory handling:  Mixed reviews on this one.  It could 
be that some sort of compromise/hybrid be done.  My thought: Have a pop up 
window for in town use, etc, which could present a lot more items or data than 
currently provided.  Within that, allow for some custom filters or favorite 
items, and have tabs (in the main window) for those, and have those in a smaller 
inventory area.  So while in a dungeon, you can easily get to the items you need 
(more easily in fact, because they would be the only thing in particular tabs), 
but in town, can do everything you need to do.  The look window would always be 
active like it is now (but when the popup is in use, maybe have that data 
replicated in the popup also to make it easier to access stuff)

  - add theme support: No real issues, as long as the ability to keep default 
theme is allowed (it would be).  My thought is to handle this like firefox and 
lots of other apps do - you can use the system theme, but it may have various 
custom themes which could make it appear more 'gamey'

  - display important info: Figuring out what is important is hard.  Generally, 
it seems that protections and skills (both) is important, general stats less so. 
  Maybe should investigate to see if we could display both of those in one tab. 
  Overall exp displayed should be added to the scrollbar stats window 
(sp/hp/grace/food), with the scrollbar representing percentage to next level.
For exp values, maybe in the 'compact' list, display the last 5 (or X, where X 
is not a really large number) of skills that have gained exp?  Thus, while in 
the dungeon, you'd see your combat skills in that window, and could track 
progress, and in town, you'd see your town based skills.  Range attack is also 
listed as an important to know item.

  Also suggested that within the protections themselves, that maybe they go 
red/green for some amount of time when they change, making it easier to see when 
a spell expires.  Could be used for all values that change.

  Text messages are always an issue.  Other than the space used, I don't think 
the way the gtk2 client does it now is bad.  I'm not sure that writing them over 
the map area would be useful - crossfire generates so many text messages, I 
think you'd always be bringing up the console to see what you missed, so having 
the console (text area) always up probably makes more sense.

  - improved help - should be done, now to just do it.

  - Improved key binding - should removed duplicate keybindings (or present 
warning).  Also, should have some method of different key binding profiles, so 
you could load up the mage vs fighter profile (or maybe the dungeon vs town 
profile).  If loading different keybindings can be done by a keybinding itself, 
this would be doable.  In addition, more data on how the keybindings work should 
be added.


  - background music should be added.

  - Better magic map handling (colored dots like cf+?)  I had also thought that 
instead of sending colors, maybe magic map should just send the actual face info 
for that space (uses more bandwidth, but could be used to fill in the map)

  - quick item/spell bar - click on item (or spell icon) and it activates. 
Doable, a bit more work as different items have different ways of being used 
(spell vs item mostly, but if you click on that staff, does that mean it should 
fire the staff, or just ready it?)

- less text, more icons: A lot of stuff in the stats pane (protections, skills) 
is displayed with text strings.  Using icons could be another way to pack more 
into the limited space (having a 16x16 icon representing 1 handed weapons woudl 
take like 10% of the space of 'one handed weapons').  Tooltips could be used to 
give more detailed information (hover over the icon and you get the skill name 
and anything else it knows about it).  It would perhaps take some training to 
get use to the icons, but just a thought.