[crossfire] GTK2-v2 Client new layout defined (gtk-v1)

[Andreas Kirschbaum]

Kevin R. Bulgrien wrote:
> Yeah... whatever... at least GTK clients are easily built. I'd try
> this so-called super awesome, non-geekified jxclient if I had a clue
> where to get a jar or how to build it, but maybe it is too good for
> the playing masses and we couldn't handle it? And for crying out loud,
> it doesn't even get honorable mention on the Crossfire web site.

There is a simple reason it is not advertised on the web site: the
client is still in development. You are able to connect to a server and
actually play the game, but some gui elements do not yet work (click on
an element and nothing happens), and error handling is almost absent
(failure to connect to server, or have the connection break ==> client
just exits). Also, it still runs quite slowly on machines without
hardware accelerated graphics operations -- in fact, currently you
basically cannot play on such machines...

That said, I do not yet consider jxclient to be in a state to be
released as a pre-compiled client intended to be run by "normal"
players. Therefore I currently do neither advertise it nor provide
pre-compiled binaries.


> I pulled down ant (87 MB with deps), and still didn't have a clue
> where to go from there.

Thanks for pointing out this issue. I've now added a few lines to the
README file about how to compile the client. Basically: run "ant" in the
jxclient directory. This creates the file jxclient.jar. Run this file as
"java -jar jxclient.jar".


> For now, I'll stick with using a geeky client rather than none at all.

Better yet: figure out how to make it work, then fix the documentation;)
Or at least file a bug report so somebody else can fix it. Just
declining and not telling anything does not enable us to fix issues...


> What's with java projects anyway? Gridarta doesn't release jars, I
> don't see one for jxclient. You have to get them off-project. I guess
> if you're not in, you're out.

For Gridarta it is for the same reason: the project has started from the
sources of both the Crossfire and the Daimonin Java map editors. They
did share a common code base but have been developed separately for
quite a while. Gridarta's goal was to merge both code bases to bundle
the development resources of both projects, effectively helping both
projects.

We decided not to officially release binaries for Gridarta because we
thought the editors might be (very) unstable during the merging process.
Until today, the merging is still in progress (see
http://gridarta.sourceforge.net/dev/mergeStats).

To the off-site download place: It was introduced because some people
couldn't compile the editor. (In fact, I did compile Gridarta for eracc.
He then figured that it could be helpful for other to get at the
pre-compiled editor as well, so he hade it available on his site.)

As far as I know, currently all people who are (semi-)actively using the
editor can compile it from the sources. Now, creating a new release
takes me at least 30 minutes. Therefore I prefer spending this time into
code improvements. That means I update the pre-compiled binary only very
infrequently (less than once per month, almost always only when somebody
complains that it is way outdated...)


That said, even though we do not yet provide pre-compiled binaries for
jxclient or Gridarta, feedback is always highly welcome. Both feedback
about what needs to be improved/changed/implemented to make the
application actually useful, and feedback about bugs/crashes/etc. Even
feedback that you just use it without problems is useful (since it might
accelerate further development ;)).