Re: [Jcrossclient-devel] new to the project

[Jamie J. <but...@ho...>]

Before I dive into this: I've got a new problem.  I recently (a) was given a 
large amount of loot by a higher-level player and (b) bought an apartment in 
Scorn, and started unloading my goodies in it.  Partway through, something 
(evidently) happened and now the 1.4 client can't function with that 
character any more.  When I try to log into that character, the inventory 
window shows the correct inventory, but no other window gets updated.  I 
can't interact with the items in the inventory window.  Everything is normal 
with my other character, and I can create new chars fine.

This has been the same for several days now, and it's making it hard for me 
to continue playing my main character; I can use the other clients, but j 
client 1.3 and the GTK client both have some significant interface 
differences which are hard for me to adjust to.  I've restarted and even 
rebooted several times, so that isn't it.

Also, one small glitch I noticed: in a container-contents window, besides 
the inability to scroll, the right-click menus are often created far above 
the item.  Sometimes they are all the way off the screen.  If I "use the 
Force" I can still (blindly) access the commands on them by arrow keys and 
<enter> but I (obviously) can't mouse on what isn't on my screen.  :-o


Now on to a few replies:


>Most of the crossfire web stuff is dealt with by leaf, he maintains
>the main cf website and various other things around it. Best ways to
>contact him are either through the main cf mailing list, #crossfire on
>freenode, or the cfmb (forum.metalforge.net)

OK, thanks.


> > 2- The 1.3 and 1.4 clients both "run out of buffer space" (my wording 
>for my
> > impression of the problem) while playing.
> >
> > My workaround is to close the client and restart it.  This evidently 
>resets
> > whatever the problem is.
>
>I'm still not entirely sure what causes this, in any case, the text
>window code probably needs to be rewritten sooner or later to support
>coloured text

I'm pretty sure it's a byte-count issue, not anything related to *what* goes 
into the window.  Do you mean that a rewrite for any purpose will possibly 
cure the buffer-filling (or whatever) issue?


> > 4- Is there (or can there be) a way to resize the windows within the
> > applet??  I'd sure like to do that.  This would especially help when 
>trying
> > to read long chat messages.
>
>It's pretty complicated with AWT, I'll probably move to swing
>eventually, but don't really know it well enough yet to avoid
>substantial breakage for quite a minor gain (and I'm kinda hoping that
>everyone with standardise on SWT first anyway)

I did't know what any of those terms mean.  :-/  After some consultations 
with acronym decipherers, I guess your basic point is, it's not going to 
happen right now, but maybe later?


> > 6- Only the 1st and last Debug menu options appear enabled.  The other 3 
>do
> > nothing AFAICS.
>
>Debug mode only has an effect if you run from a text mode window, the
>other two are probably broken (the map code has had some substantial
>rewriting to it).

How do I "run from a text mode window"?  (And why would I?  They don't scare 
me!)

I'd really like to be able to do local redraws easily; as it is, I have to 
minimize and restore the app window to do this.


> > 7- Sometimes the map window, or other windows, can get desynched (or
> > something like that) and not show the current information.  Workaround 
>is
> > again to just restart the whole app.  Disconnect/reconnect might work 
>too,
> > but I've found that it sometimes won't where restart will, so I just 
>always
> > restart.  :-P
>
>I know there is an issue when the playerID changes, any map de-sync
>should fix itself on a map change though.

Sometimes switching players results in some/all of the windows not 
recognizing the change, but that wasn't what I was talking about.  I don't 
switch IDs very often.  But, what exactly do you mean by "map change"?  Any 
change at all to the map window contents?


> > 10- Pickup mode 7 picks up all coins while running, but when not 
>running, it
> > just picks up 1.  This may be a server issue, or maybe I just don't
> > understand the rules of pickup mode 7 yet.  (I haven't tried the other
> > modes.)  Also, it would be GREAT to be able to set up a detailed list of
> > items desired, but that is probably a purely server-side addition, and 
>may
> > never happen (tho I notice something like this is in the GTK client).  
>Oh
> > well, I can dream.  :-)
>
>pickupmode is server side, if there is an issue with the behaviour
>changing when running, then I don't see how it can be anything but a
>server issue. (although it certainly sounds quite weird).
>
>Are you thinking of the newpickupmode? This alllows setting categories
>of things to pickup, but not give too much detail. There is also the
>search-items command, which allows matching on substrings in item
>names at the cost of a substantial speed penalty.
>
>In principle newpickup mode can be used directly, by sending a long
>numeric string to the server, in practice, I need to get a working
>graphical interface to it.
>
>I'm hoping to get that last done in the next week, while I am on
>holiday, I normally seem to be more productive when I am hundreds of
>yards away from the next nearest person.

I haven't tried to use anything but pickup or pickupmode or pickup mode, 
whichever it is.  The pickup command I've been using is the one with the 0-7 
settings.

I'm really very frustrated right now with the 1.4 client's refusal to log me 
in to my main character.  :-(  Just spent about 15 minutes trying things in 
hopes that something would clear this problem, but it remains.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“The information in this film is something everybody has to know.”
--Nick Nolte, on Aaron Russo's "America: From Freedom to Fascism, Volume 
One" (www.freedomtofascism.com)