Re: Misc notes/thoughts.

["Michael B. Martin" <martinm@mbmartin.bevc.blacksburg.va.us>]

> 	I was thinking of Tcl/Tk, which has also been recently ported to
> WinDoze, and the Mac.  Does Java have a working interpreter on these
> platforms, or are they in the works?
> 
> 						-Kris Bosland
> 						 krisb@seattleu.edu

Hmm, Java is pretty new, and I don't think they have many (any?)
stand-alone interpreters yet for non-Sun platforms, especially for
Mac/MS-Windows.  Sun's Web site should have the definitive answer on
this.  Netscape 2.0 (including the latest beta, I think) is supposed
to have support for Java apps, but I don't know exactly what that
means.  On the other hand, Tcl has been around a long time and, as you
say, has been widely ported, so it might be a good first choice (do it
in Tcl/Tk and then maybe Java later).  I suggested Java because it
sounds like it's rather similar to C/C++ (thus potentially less
porting work).

Someone (sorry, I'm too busy at the moment to look up the
reference--you know who you are) asked about whether communication
bandwidth or memory requirements was a higher priority.  If people
want to play using modems, I think the former is definitely the higher
priority.  Even a "fast" 28.8k modem can't sustain a full 4KB/s
(uncompressed), which isn't much bandwidth.  Also, I think it's
reasonable to expect players to have, say, 4MB of RAM on their
(client) machine reserved for crossfire.  That should be plenty.

-Michael