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CF: client image loadiing
I have been following the discussion onwhat image format to use,etc.
I may be misunderstanding something, but here is my 2 cents worth:
The most serious problem to a large extent is bandwidth, not cpu usage on
the client or server as has been mentioned previously. To this end, I
believe the most effective way to maintain the client/server setup is to
transfer the raw map data to the client, and have the client interpret
this with images supplied with the client. This has a number of
advantages:
1) No images (in any graphic format) are ever transmitted over the net,
only the raw text map data gets transfered.
2) This allows for a wide variety of clients, as it is all done client
side. I could write a text based client if such a scheme was enacted,
making it look alot like a morie/nethack game.
3) Related to 2, the users may personalise their map as much as as little
as desired. Editing graphic icons to suit their tastes.
It does have a disadvantage in that all the images would need to be on the
client. That problem could be alleviated by allowing the server to reuse
an image code (which would map to an image on the client) for a new
item/monster introduced to the game by a server. Eg, the server simple
tells the client that a borg is on the map, and that it should use image
number 37 (normaly for Ogres) as an example.
I have considered some of the issues relating to client-server of the
years and this does seem the best alternative to me.
Cheers,
-Robert
--Robert Brockway B.Sc. Email: robert@zen.humbug.org.au, robert@icc.net.au
r.brockway@uq.edu.au
WWW: http://www.humbug.org.au/~robert
President of HUMBUG (http://www.humbug.org.au)
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