Re: A quick draft of a preliminary proposal for a possible version of the crossfire protocol

[philb@cats.ucsc.edu]

--->[From Carl Edman]

    The client is only _required_ to keep the information on the couple  
    dozen squares which are in current view (though good clients will want  
    to keep more around as a form of automatic map drawing).
    

This I disagree with.
You can get HUGE piles of artifacts (10-30 items deep) on each square.
The client should only be required to know what is on "top".
Otherwise, you add a whole lot of mostly useless information being
transmitted across the wire, which will never be used.

If the player is _really_ interested in all the items on a square, the
"EXAMINE" comand should be used on that square.
(and after all, this is more realistic.. you should have to use a turn or
 two going through a large pile of stuff)

    Personally, I'd love to see as much as humanly feasible of these  
    interface decisions to go into the client.  For example, a client may  
    have several 'pickup' lists (some hardcoded, others added by the user)  
    which cause it to e.g. automatically pick up (i.e. send MOVE commands  
    for) anything called 'diamonds', 'rubies', 'pearls' and 'platinum  
    coins'.

This sounds quite good. But it still will have to send a "PICKUP" command
to the server.


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philb@cats.ucsc.edu philb@soda.berkeley.edu