Why hasn't Pueblo taken off? Simple answer - I takes skill that most story writters don't actually have to make graphics that doesn't look totally lame, so it is easier to not bother. This doesn't mean it was a bad idea, just that it is harder to do than producing pure text. Something like Eos' map though is actually easy to do, from the perspective of the mud, since it only replaced single letters with images. There is no need to design a special graphic for every room, just make several dozen small ones and overlay them on the world. This is imho really an iteresting idea, though like you I have no clue how the heck it works in the client with other things happening, unless it uses something similar to the text based games of the old BBS days, where only the 'visible' region was redrawn and then only those letters corresponding to the areas explored. This was quite common.
As for the use of a special font.. That would require actually supporting extra fonts, which is currently not an available option either, but it is quite similar to what appears to be happening with the images in this case. It is also very limited, in that it can only use one color. Oh, and good luck managing to create the font without shelling out a chunk of cash for the software to make it.
To cover your points nick:
Quote: Say you move around the map, does the image change? So if you scroll back, do you see the earlier maps before the move or where you are now?
I expect that the image changes, but I may be wrong. It is how most muds and the like handled it, only changing the part of the image that actually differed, unless a redraw of the whole thing was actually needed. This saved bandwidth, but is probably less of a concern now than it was before. However, it also means that Mushclient's non-support of positioning codes would kill it too.
Quote: Do I support GIF, PNG, JPG, BMP, TIF or what else?
Well.. Usually jpg, bmp and gif. Though png is a good idea too. The other formats will never be used anyway, even by other clients. Personally I wouldn't even include bmp, if for no other reason than because only idiots would use an uncompressed format.
Quote: Do graphics get downloaded on demand? From a HTTP proxy server if necessary?
If not available in the local cache, then yes they are FTPed on demand. Most sites provide a .zip or the like with most, if not all, of the needed images you can save into the cache to start with though.
Quote: What happens if you select some text with inline images and do a "copy"? Do they end up on the clipboard?
Yes, no, maybe... If the client uses the standard and slow RichText control, then this is likely a yes. Imbedded images is part of the RichText controls copy function. Imho, I would have it copy the link, so if posted as HTML it will still display the right image.
Quote: What if the image is too wide for your screen? Does it get resized?
Umm. I would say optional. There may be cases where a too big image is intentional, but it is not a good idea to use anything bigger than a few hundred pixels. I doubt most places would exceed a reasonable size, or that people would keep playing if they got hit by a 800x600 image a lot. I don't think anyone would scream to badly if some same limit was placed on it or images that didn't fit got resized.
Quote: Do we have horizontal scroll bars?
Probably not necessary.
Quote: What happens if I get a "bad" GIF image (eg. bad compression)? Mushclient crashes? lol Seriously, if some compressed file types are damaged, or even incorrectly named, then some decompression libraries for them have been known to buffer overflow. A concept I find totally stupid, since you would think they would have put something in to check that the decompression never attempts to exceed the actually data loaded...
Quote: What happens if the image isn't where the link says it is?
Take a page from most browsers and display an image that is sort of indented looking with a red box, with a white x, in it.
Quote: What happens if the image requires 32-bit colour and you have 256 colours (8-bit colour)?
Planing to write the entire graphics library for it yourself too? This is something the OS is 'supposed' to deal with. Admittedly it usually does a crappy job at it, but it is supposed to do the conversion itself anyway.
Quote: Do the images get cached? If so, where? What happens if the disk is full?
Yes. See above. If the disk gets close to full, you stop caching. However, this is Windows we are talking about here. If the disk space starts to gets that low, the OS will likely crash long before Mushclient needs to worry about telling you it is running out of space. ;) lol But in any case, I wouldn't allow caching to exceed some set size, just like browsers or anything else that caches data. Unless some mud went totally nuts, odds are this wouldn't be a big issue though.
In any case. This is one thing I suspect isn't going to happen anyway, unless someone else comes up with a output system that they can show Nick, which works and does the things Nick insists he just doesn't understand how to make work. Most importantly, one that does it reasonably fast. He would need to drastically rework the existing system anyway and it won't help him *or us* to complain about what it missing, if we have even less clue than he does how to make any of it work.
This is why, when I can, I try to describe how I think things could work in some detail or provide him with links to things that appear able to solve a percieved problem. He is only one person, not an entire staff dedicated to finding ways to add every thing we want. This means that we often get a better product, but it also means he can be obstanant, short sighted or even clueless about how to solve something. I don't see a whole lot of the rest of you actually suggesting actual solutions. If I had one for this, you can be sure I would be posting it. |