[MUD-Dev] Web vs. Java client

[Mark 'Kamikaze' Hughes]

Wed, Oct 15, 2003 at 03:43:28PM -0700 in
<123b01c3936d$c048ca20$841351d1 at artemis>, Christopher Allen
<ChristopherA at skotos.net> spake:

> If you are serious about client side text sitting on a web page
> where the client can change the web page behind it, we'd be
> willing to share both Alice and Zealous (the Mozilla client.) From
> the server perspective, they use the same protocol.

Well, thanks, but unfortunately, that's just trading one
big-download client with shifting capabilities for another: now the
user's required to download Mozilla, rather than the Java plug-in
for their browser of choice.  Great, if you're one of the 5 people
in the world who actively use Mozilla, but the people who don't like
installing software are going to be even less happy with installing
a new web browser to play a game, than installing the Java plug-in.

Oh, well.  I've got a basic Java applet client working now.  Since
I'm using the plug-in, it's working consistently on my Linux box and
on Windoze, and presumably the MacOS X JVM isn't as broken as the
MacOS 9- ones were.

Once I get the client further along, I'll document it decently and
release it as freeware or possibly open source, so nobody else has
to go through this.

I wouldn't turn a blind eye to wish-lists of capabilities; I'm not
promising I'll do everything anyone requests, but I'll look at it.

The current display capabilities are:

  -- Display text in a scrolling text area.

  -- Change color and font to draw future text in.

  -- Play a sound file from a URL (AU, WAV, MIDI, I know work,
  haven't tried MP3 or OGG or anything like that).

  -- Show an image from a URL at a given coordinate in the image
  panel (above the text area).  Right now I'm using absolute
  positions and expecting at least 800x600, but may add a checkmenu
  to scale images and positions to your window size.

  -- Clear the image panel.

The handshake includes a version check, so anyone who downloads and
installs the client will still stay in sync with people who use the
web page applet every time.

I'm not concerned about client-side scripting right now.  From what
I've seen, it's mostly used to cause grief.  The client's in the
hands of the enemy, sure, and a dedicated griefer can still modify
the client, but it puts one obstacle in their way.  Is there a
legitimate use for it?

--
 <a href="http://kuoi.asui.uidaho.edu/~kamikaze/"> Mark Hughes </a>
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