[Openmortal-discuss] Calling all OpenMortal developers

[UPi <up...@ap...>]

Hi everyone!

I am planning to release OpenMortal 0.8 in a month or so. Focus of this
release will be on MortalNet: I plan to enhance the usefulness of network
gaming.

Presently there are two problems with network play:

1. There are not enough people on MortalNet. Actually, there are many
users popping in, seeing noone present, and leaving unhappy.

2. The network lag is usually too high for people who are geographically
far, slowing the game down to a crawl.

I intend to work on issue #1 by making the following changes:

* After two players connect, they don't leave MortalNet, but are marked as
"In-Game". After the match they automatically return to the MortalNet
screen. This way, a player on MortalNet can see if there are people
playing and wait for them to finish.

* "Away" mode: The user can log off into "away" mode. This closes or hides
the OpenMortal window, until someone challenges the user. Upon a
challenge, OpenMortal will pop up a dialog or menu, allowing the user to
accept the challenge. While hidden, OM can run in the background, shown
only on the taskbar as an icon.

As for gameplay over laggy connection, I am open to suggestions.

Bye,
UPi.