It's not scripting necessarily which is the answer to this, though a more
powerful theme engine could be considered.  I will be looking into something
like this for the Netrek Unlimited client at a later time.  However, if you
go to fullscreen mode (or even if you don't) there may be some good way to
put some of your ship data into overlays at the corners of the screen - this
is how most games which have an active main game area deal with it.  The
trouble is that the ship status takes up relatively little area compared to
the message and status text itself.  Real screen area wins come by reducing
that.  Some of the text which is currently shown I consider optional.  If it
were me, the bits of text info I would show would be:

1. Team and personal messages mixed into a single stream
2. Condensed player listing, showing player number/team, kills, ship type,
and name.

The other windows (global chat, damage) and data (DI, rank) are not
generally used to make decisions about how to play the game so could
probably be safely removed as an option for the user.

To the 3D option, I really don't see using 3D to any good effect except
for... er... effects.  Changing the perspective adds nothing to the game, in
my opinion, and makes maneuvering and targeting less intuitive.  Netrek is
inherently 2D.  Using 3D to achieve cool effects provided by todays video
cards seems to make more sense.

I don't have a problem with allowing players to have multiple weapons
configurations like that.  However I wonder if a good player would use it at
all, and would it just make a newbie use more fuel than they might otherwise
use?

I think we've already discussed and come up with a solution for the
Metaserver issue.  We will be constructing a task tray applet, see previous
emails.

- Cliff

-----Original Message-----
From: netrek-dev-bounces at us.netrek.org
[mailto:netrek-dev-bounces at us.netrek.org] On Behalf Of Narcis
Sent: Friday, April 13, 2007 1:16 AM
To: netrek-dev at us.netrek.org
Subject: Re: [netrek-dev] netrek ideas

> This could allow for very nice large  
> readouts.

Or use widget/gadget/growl javascripting to achieve this.  
(alternative would be
to make the windows client a fullscreen app, as we are basically  
talking about optimizing
screen layout and available pixels.)


> * Add dogfight tactical mode which could be toggled on/off by 1  
> button, in
>   this mode the tactical screen would be greatly magnified as well  
> as the
>   ship graphics, this could allow for very richly detailed modern  
> ships
>   (could even use 3D models with textures applied and other OpenGL  
> effects)
>   and very exciting dogfigts.

MacTrek has a scaleable zoom (mouse wheel) which sort of does that,  
but i see
more "excitement" in switching to isometric or 3D view for dogfights.  
(butt torping
would become more difficult though :-)


>
> * Add alternate fire for phaser and torp. Some possible choices:
>   o Alternate fire torp produces two parallel torp streams: | |
>     each group of torps would be located on the far left and far right
>     area of the ship respectively
>   o Alternate fire phaser produces a rapid burst in quick  
> succession of
>     varying phaser strength such as short-long or long-short

Very nice idea, sort of full spread thingy.

> * Have metaserver be minimizable to the system tray:
>   - Play a sound when t mode is reached on a defined list of server(s)
>   - Mousing over the system tray icon will show:
>     o green (t in progress)
>     o yellow (t minus 1 to t minus 4)
>     o red (4 players or less)

again, widget/gadget seems more suitable for this task

> Zach

great ideas Zach!

cheers

Chris



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