William Balcerski wrote: >>Although this may seem like a scary idea, a reworked client could use >>one of the commonly-available, portable graphics engines, such as Ogre. >>In particular Ogre provides access to the full range of transformations >>available in 3D. While the game itself is not played in 3D, there are >>effects which could be implemented using such an engine (lighting, >>parallax starfields, etc.) >> >> >> >Gregory Hermann (spelling?) is working on netrek GL which uses Ogre I >believe, you can get it off the netrek sourceforge site. Not sure if it's >in a working state at the moment. But the screenshot of the 3d klingon >battlecruiser was quite nice. Of course, netrek is a 2d game so any 3d >stuff is gonna be..limited at best. Or just plain distracting. > > > Yes, I'd only use 3D in places where it makes sense. Mostly, for Netrek, I consider the Ogre engine useful for being able to set up nice rotations, scaling and compositing. The engine has a variety of useful tools for effects as well. >>The delay is inherent in the sound itself. The attack rate for the >>phaser sound is too low (i.e. the volume does not rise fast enough.) >>That is just my opinion though. >> >> >> >Well phaser sound is 1 second long and the phaser sound begins .01 seconds >into the sound file, reaching maximum volume at .15 seconds. Sound for >other people's phasers is shorter, at .6 seconds, with sound starting .03 >seconds into the file, reaching maximum volume at .09 seconds. Was it >other's phasers that you think was too delayed? I can chop .02 seconds >off the front. > > > I guess I expected a shorter rise to full volume. The mind is pretty good at detecting visual/audio synchronization and for some reason that particular sound bothers me. Just my opinion, I could be particularly sensitive to it :) >>occur.) The current 'rows of settings' with some being clickable, some >>being just informational does not fit any standard paradigm and looks >>clunky, even if it IS functional. >> >> >> >That would take a massive redesign, something I'm not really wanting to >do. I find it easy to use anyways. May not be pretty but it works better >now than it ever has in terms of options listed correctly, options >actually working as they supposed to, and the ability to save options. > > > I know it's a lot of work. This would be done in the context of a general client redesign. I don't think it's worth attempting to fix it within the current client. >>The client could do a check and if the screen resolution is less than >>the size needed to show the window with decorations, turn them off, but >>only in the case where there is not enough room. Alternately, the title >>bar could be left on by default, but a 'fullscreen' option presented >>which eliminates the decorations (and expands the window to the full >>screen size.) This is a more standard paradigm for removing window >>decorations, and may be less offensive to users. >> >> >> >I agree with Jimmy, less window border clutter, the better. As mentioned >earlier, resizing windows and having everything scale is quite a large >task, but a goal nonetheless. > > > Well, my reason is that the objective is to make the game approachable and sensible for new users. Users expect one of two user interfaces: windowed, where the game is displayed inside an OS-standard window; and fullscreen, where there is no border of any sort and the game takes up the whole screen. What Netrek does now is bizarre except to the initiated :) >>Tip of the day are great. Another thing to consider is creating a help >>file appropriate to the OS. Such a help file could include the newbie >>guide as well. Here I am specifically thinking of a windows help file >>or a web page which is launched in your default browser when you select >>'help.' >> >> >> >Ok, I think we actually do a good job on help. Hitting F1 brings up a >windows help file covering the client basics. The metaserver window links >to newbie guide, rec.games.netrek, netrek homepage, dogfight manual and >netrek faq. The netrek xp documentation in the docs folder is also up to >date. I'm really not sure what else to add help wise. > > > Oh, I didn't know that help was available from in game like that. My bad :) >>I don't know offhand, I'll have to go browse through the code - it's >>been a while since I made a CreateWindowEx() call as I've been doing >>embedded Linux programming for the past 5 years ;) >> >> >> >Patches welcome! The source is hosted on sourceforge as well. It can be >found at: >http://netrek.cvs.sourceforge.net/netrek/client/netrekxp/ > > > >>BTW, please take all of these suggestions in the best light. I'm not >>disparaging your efforts or questioning your judgement. These are my >>honest opinions on the subject. >> >> >> >Well thought out opinions are always welcome. >Bill > >_______________________________________________ >netrek-dev mailing list >netrek-dev at us.netrek.org >http://mailman.us.netrek.org/mailman/listinfo/netrek-dev > > > >