Comments on this weekend's flood of crossfire mail

["Rupert G. Goldie" <rgg@aaii.oz.au>]

Well it's good to see such a resurgence of interest in Crossfire ! Let's see if
I can summarise and gratuitously editorialise.

o we need a maintainer - Looks like Mark Wedel (master@rahul.net) is it.

o we need a new release - Everyone agrees that we need a new release to renew
interest in Crossfire, but we have a spread of views over what should be in the
new release. The main bone of contention seems to be over whether or not to 
make the client/server split right now. My feeling on the matter is that we 
should get 0.90.0 out the door as quickly as possible - just fold in some patches
which have already been tested and fix bugs. While we do that we _design_ the 
client/server interface. That way we at least get a version of Crossfire that 
people can play out quickly.

o client binaries - The topic of a client/server split brought the question of
authenication for clients. One option is to go the Netrek way and have binaries
available for lots of platforms. Editorial opinion - let's just forget it for 
now, there are already lots of ways to cheat.

o what the client should do - There is probably still plenty of discussion to go
on the details of what the client should be doing, but the main consenus is that
it should just be doing graphics. There are some strident calls for revamping
the interface, using Xaw, etc. This is probably a good time to do it. Go have
a look at the X code in crossfire if you're not convinced about using toolkits 8)

o we need a site - We do have an ftp site, but we don't have a machine with
accounts for people to develop from. I think we will have better control if Mark
acts as coordinator and collects patches from people, plus as Crossfire is an X
based game it will be a pain in the butt to debug remotely over slow links.

o maps - Hopefully with a new release we will see some new maps being created
(especially since crossedit is now so cool), but we will also face the task of
picking the good maps and fixing the poor ones.

o Crossfire is a great game - the volume of mail over the last few days shows 
how much people like Crossfire and want it to continue to develop. I hope we
can continue to make people waste valuable work and study time playing this 
game 8-)


Rupert
--
Rupert G. Goldie, Research Scientist                rgg@aaii.oz.au
Australian Artificial Intelligence Institute        
/\/\|| 1 Grattan Street, Melbourne, Australia