Packaging issues aside, I've made a few updates to the client. The lines in the screen represent "Wormholes", which are basically routes between star systems. Currently, only the Risk ruleset uses this feature, so lines won't display anywhere else, such as on the demo1.thousandparsec.net server which usually runs Minisec.
I've also tweaked the "Information" window to show more useful information such as the planetary resources (I tested it with the "Armies" resource in Risk). In general, I'm trying to locate more crashes by testing the client with different systems and python-ogre builds. OgreAL has been a little problematic, and it's one of the things which I am trying to get working with the linux python-ogre deb file.
My main concern about the client is the performance on older hardware. Mithro informed me that even the login screen runs at a crawl on his laptop, which is probably due to the large textures used in the skybox (1024x1024). I guess a solution to this would be to offer a lower-resolution skybox thats selectable from the options menu.
I've started my industrial attachment, so I'm pretty much limited to weekends. Nevertheless, I'll be continuing to update the client, and when tp04 support has been added content management will be a lot more elegant, allowing "media" tags which mean no more hardcoded graphics. Another thing I'm looking forward to is more battlexml support in the servers. On my end, I also hope to include some shaders to give game objects a more realistic look, but there are still many things to work out before I have time for that.
P.S. If you zoom in on the pictures it kinda looks like those old VGA games.
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