[MUD-Dev] Blending graphics with text

[u1391470]

First off, let me thank everyone for their replies. It has given me a lot
to think about.

Now, some responses and a few more questions.

The client is written in Java, version 1.2. So hopefully, if Sun's JRE
(actually, I think they changed the name, but I forget to what) works
properly on your machine, so too would the client. I was extremely careful
not to use and OS specific calls (such as System.out, etc.).

Even though we currently do check for term type for output, we mostly do
this for the maps. I hadn't considered doing it for all output, but this
is a good idea. Thanks Chris.

Everyone who brought up the point about graphics not really being able to
replace text was right. :) While we do have different graphics for most
mobs, it is doubtful that we will ever be able to get images for
everything. Perhaps adding text beside the images would work. What we are
really going for is having our graphics window as the main user interface.
The text window would still be used for speach, etc, but most of the basic
information should be gained from the images. More detailed information
about the room/object would be supplied by text.

I am somewhat hesitant to replace text with voice, mainly because most
players like to log their sessions. If text information was replaced with
sound, would this still be possible?

Now, on a slightly tangential topic. The way the mud is moving, I think
that it would be easier to perform many of the functions if it were
written in C++ rather than C (we are using Circle as our base, I don't
recall which version off the top of my head). Of course, rewriting the
entire code would be a little too time consuming. Another coder had
suggested writting wrapper classes for all our code. Basically, write a
class Player, which would contain the player_data structure and have
procedures that would call any relevant functions. Has anyone done this?
Do you think it would be wortwhile to do?

The main reason for this is that the server is performing a lot of math
dealing with distances between objects/players/locations. As such, we end
up with 3 or 4 different versions of each function. I'm sure we could cut
this down. 

As well, we have a database of objects and mobs. All other objects/mobs
come from this database. So, every longsword is a copy (with
modifications, of course) of our database longsword. Things such as damage
dice, and attack type can't be changed. Again, with inheritance,
it is simpler to ensure that objects retain the required properties.

Thanks again for the help,

Arun Narayanan
E-Mail: u1391470 at csi.uottawa.ca






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