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shadowfyr · 08-15-2007, 08:44 PM

Yeah, that's another point. lol As for ANSI art.. Kind of miss some of that from the days of games like Tradewars 2002, but most clients can't correctly support it, the fonts available often won't, even with unicode, being in 99% of cases a non-fixed width, which you need for ANSI art, and its damn hard to get certain things like "blink" to work correctly, along with text positioning, etc., which you kind of have to support, to do decent art (especially if you plan on any sort of animation). Not impossible, just not easy at all.

As for all the talk of Java.. First off, MS Javascript "looks" like java as far as most sights are concerned, but that is about like trying to code VB applications in BASICA, from a DOS 1.0 disk. Your going to pull your hair out making a "working" client that will run on Java and Javascript. That means that at some point they will either a) have to have installed the real thing, or b) install it, and your imho better off downloading a more controllable, less limited, and *smaller*, when you include Java, stand alone client, than rely on one that sits in a browser, has to be downloaded itself when ever you use it (its not going to stay in the cache forever), and may have security holes related to the browser itself. The average user wouldn't know any better of course, but the average user still can't fracking figure out that opening unknown email attachments will get them infected with viruses.

Now, one solution would be to employ something like a few MMOs do for their game data, "Download as you play, or download now." Start with a simple stub, something that is small, downloads fast, isn't much bigger than MS Telnet, then, as they play, have it patch in additional features, until you have a complete client. Set up a custom file server, so that it only uses "idle" time, when the user isn't typing commands. Have any transfer in progress suspend "if" they type one. Its almost silly to even think about it, but for someone on dialup, waiting 10 seconds to load the stub and start playing is going to be nicer than waiting 5-6 minutes to install a client. For someone on broadband.. Stop fracking complaining. It would take you longer to type a complaint about using 3rd. party clients than it would to download one. lol

08-15-2007, 08:44 PM	#16
shadowfyr Senior Member Join Date: Oct 2002 Posts: 310	Re: A player's perspective Yeah, that's another point. lol As for ANSI art.. Kind of miss some of that from the days of games like Tradewars 2002, but most clients can't correctly support it, the fonts available often won't, even with unicode, being in 99% of cases a non-fixed width, which you need for ANSI art, and its damn hard to get certain things like "blink" to work correctly, along with text positioning, etc., which you kind of have to support, to do decent art (especially if you plan on any sort of animation). Not impossible, just not easy at all. As for all the talk of Java.. First off, MS Javascript "looks" like java as far as most sights are concerned, but that is about like trying to code VB applications in BASICA, from a DOS 1.0 disk. Your going to pull your hair out making a "working" client that will run on Java and Javascript. That means that at some point they will either a) have to have installed the real thing, or b) install it, and your imho better off downloading a more controllable, less limited, and smaller, when you include Java, stand alone client, than rely on one that sits in a browser, has to be downloaded itself when ever you use it (its not going to stay in the cache forever), and may have security holes related to the browser itself. The average user wouldn't know any better of course, but the average user still can't fracking figure out that opening unknown email attachments will get them infected with viruses. Now, one solution would be to employ something like a few MMOs do for their game data, "Download as you play, or download now." Start with a simple stub, something that is small, downloads fast, isn't much bigger than MS Telnet, then, as they play, have it patch in additional features, until you have a complete client. Set up a custom file server, so that it only uses "idle" time, when the user isn't typing commands. Have any transfer in progress suspend "if" they type one. Its almost silly to even think about it, but for someone on dialup, waiting 10 seconds to load the stub and start playing is going to be nicer than waiting 5-6 minutes to install a client. For someone on broadband.. Stop fracking complaining. It would take you longer to type a complaint about using 3rd. party clients than it would to download one. lol