[crossfire] jxclient

[Yann Chachkoff]

Le dimanche 5 août 2007, Kevin R. Bulgrien a écrit :
> $ java -version
> java version "1.6.0_02"
> Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_02-b05)
> Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 1.6.0_02-b05, mixed mode)
>
> Using run.sh, I get... disappointingly...
>
>   Warning ! True full-screen support is not available.
>
> The system is a dual core pentium d (3.6 GHz) x86_64 with 3 Gb RAM.
> The graphics card is a NVIDIA 7600 GT running a true nvidia driver
> compiled on this machine.
<snip>
>
True full-screen support and hardware acceleration should indeed be available 
on a platform similar to yours. The client basically relies on the JDK to 
detect if fullscreen is available or not for the given screen resolution.

Dual-screen *may* be the cause for that. It could also be that the required 
screen resolution (1024x768) is not available for a reason or another. Maybe 
try with various values for the -W (width), -H (height) parameters.

Indeed, if the Java2D software renderer is used instead of the 
hardware-accelerated one, the client will be rather slow. This is because it 
has to redraw its whole GUI, which is a costly operation. I'm not sure this 
can really be improved.

> So far I have not had it crash.  I've played a bit with it, though at
> 1280x1024 it is only using about 1024x800 or so for the display, so I
> need a magnifying glass to see in game text and inventory and the
> little buttons.  It's odd because the map graphics are in your face
> big compared to how I run the GTK clients.  Unfortunately I only have
> 17" monitors on this machine.
>
Yep - This is because the skin supplied for JXClient was made for 1024x768 
resolution. If that screen mode is not available, Java will emulate it by 
using the next closest one, but it means you'll get (1) a tiny GUI and (2) 
some glitches outside the 1024x768 area.

> The graphics work is beautiful, but I must be a geek... it kind of
> gets in the way, though to be fair, I'd have to see it using the full
> 1280x1024 to give it a reasonable evaluation, but I find it really
> hard to monitor HP, Grace, and Mana.  The small veins in the icons
> seem to take a lot of concentration to be able to monitor.  To me
> the fast pace of crossfire means you can't spend a lot of time looking
> to see how bad you're hurting or what you have left for mana/grace.
> Don't know if that stuff is skinnable and so might be able to be done
> differently to taste.  That dragon thing can about freak you out with
> a low-level character when you walk around a corner the right way ;-).
>
I agree. My tests showed that, although the interface was rather nice, it was 
not very successfull at being usable. There were too many elements visible by 
default, and many of those were not clear enough in the information provided. 
That's based on those findings that I suggested the design which is now in 
the wiki.

Good news is that, to some extend, jxclient is skinnable, so a lot of elements 
can be displayed in a different, and hopefully better, way. Gauges are indeed 
skinnable - the resistance ones and the HP/SP/Food/Mana ones are all using 
the same code, So making them clearer to see would probably be mostly a 
matter of changing the pictures used. Note that I believe that this interface 
would require more work than just changing a couple pictures, though.

> It will be interesting to see it mature...  I, and other people played
> the dxclient years ago because it had a bit of ambiance to it, and I've
> often been sorry it disappeared, so I can see jxclient going over well
> if performance improves, but the lag now would kill my character...
> literally... and I'd hate to think I had to buy better hardware to get
> it.
>
You won't need to (it works well on my Athlon64/3500+ with a 6600GT) :). It is 
hard to guess what may be causing your lack of acceleration support, though.

> Oh, the speed thing reminds me... Daimonin sort of caught my eye some
> time back, and I played it a while, though quit.  It was too slow.

> There's some talk about slowing Crossfire down, and I'm all about not
> dying before you can even press the word of recall hotkey, but here's
> my vote to not go that slow... though I haven't tried it in ages to
> be sure my impressions were up to date.
>
Notice that the talks to "slow down Crossfire" are about slowing the pace at 
which things happen, not the reaction time - it definitely wouldn't be fun to 
have a huge lag for each key pressed or action attempted. The slow-down talk 
was (if I'm correct) about reducing the speed of combats, for example (so 
fighting a big wizard would take, say, one minute, when it currently only 
takes ten seconds for you to smoke him - or him to smoke you, if you aren't 
fast enough :)).

>
> Wish list:  Scroll wheel support.
>
Indeed :) Not very hard to add for sure :).
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