Re: [VANILLA-LIST:2994] continuum problem

[Trent Piepho <xyzzy@speakeasy.org>]

On Sat, 11 Mar 2000, Matthew Furrow wrote:
> 	I've been having a very odd problem with continuum that I think 
> started with the new update. (I haven't played for a few weeks, so 
> I'm not 100% positive, but I'm pretty sure.) Every time I raise my 
> shields, they'll appear for half a second and then they, and the 'S' 

This is probably my fault somehow.  I changed a bit of the way flags are sent. 
The server won't send a flags packet if your client should know about the
flags by another means, like SELF_8FLAGS or shortpackets 2.  I've tested this
with every client I could find, COW 2.02, COW 3.0, BRMH-2.2, Paradise 2.4,
Paradise 2000, Tedturnder 1.3.1, and even an ancient BRM-Hadley 1.4 binary
from July 1993, and I don't find any problems like this.

Are you using TCP or UDP?  Are you using short packets?  Are you using short
packets 2?  How about SELF_8FLAGS?  I can't find cow-lite binaries anywhere,
or the source code either.  I'd say this was a bug in cow-lite, and you should
just use a client that's not so ancient. 

What is the history of COW-lite anyway?  It seems a pretty dead client.  I
can't find much on it, and what I find doesn't always make sense.
On the netrek clue archive, it says:
	A client modified from the COW source code by Steve Sheldon
	specifically for Windows 3.1 users with some features added.

But I know that's wrong.  COW-lite for windoze was ported by Jonathan Shekter
sometime in '94, from COW-lite for unix version 1.2.  As I remember, it was
the first windoze client.  I had just started playing netrek when there was a
thread on RGN when he asked if it was ok to release it, because windoze users
might be too twinky to be allowed to play netrek.  

Steve, did you write COW-lite?  When?  From the name, I would guess that it
was based on COW, but had BEEP-lite added to it.  Who wrote BEEP-lite anyway,
and when?