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

["Carl Edman" <>]

From: Jason Fosback <>
> All this talk of transmitting pixmaps and maps and items and ... is
> all   well and good, but I'd also like to consider the possibility of
> having a   "smart" client.  A client that has its own pixmaps (or
> tiffs, or picts, or   .bmp's) could just receive placement of an
> item, and the client could   display it.

That is definitly possible under the protocol I proposed a few days  
ago.  A client which has its own bitmaps (or which doesn't need bitmaps  
because it runs under curses or because it is a robot client) just uses  
the names given in the MAP/ITEM commands and never requests the  
transmission of the bitmaps from the server via REQUEST/TRANSMIT.   
That's all -- no magic.

> The worries about cheating, I think, are unfounded.  It would be easy
> to   cheat, no matter how you implement the client/server
> architecture.  Carl   has already mentioned the possibility of
> "robot" clients that cruise   around picking things up.  Your average
> user wouldn't be able to do this   type of thing, and probably
> wouldn't care to. 


A robot client is IMHO not a cheat.  It can do nothing which you can't  
do by hand.  Admittedly, it may decide what to do faster than you, but  
it can't run any faster, hit any harder, carry more or see more than  
you can.  A client-side LOS client is a different matter entirely.  It  
actually gives the player capabilities which can not even theoretically  
be matched by any honest client.

	Carl Edman