User clicks "settings" and the menu appears on top of all windows. When user clicks for another window (ie. general) while the menu is open could it automatically transform more transparent or even close.

-g

Faster startup?

Currently client starts up in 51seconds, imho that is quite long. I have prots,rounds and spellnames trigs active. I wonder will it get slower if more trigs are being applied. No other major applications runnin at the same time.

-g

As soon as we adapt JRE 1.6 compiled client (currently compiled for 1.5), we'll have many improvements to this. Sadly, series 1.5 Java VM patches just keep coming and coming.. When we released version 1.30 it was actually a version for 1.6/6 Java, but nobody actually seemed to have that yet :/

This is actually a bug related to JRE 1.5 which has been fixed in our internal test versions (menus staying open.)

Heya,

First I'd like to say I love the work that's been done so far.

At first I found the combat window difficult but after a while I realised I don't really need to pay much attention to it and put it to the side.
I especially love the ability to write scripts in a proper language.

If there were two things I would like changed it would be:
- The PrintText command to have fonts and colours
- When the map window is closed the look command to go to the general window, not cause the map window to open again.

Keep up the good work,
Askan

I would like to see these at BatClient:
- Optional map and fight window (aka, when you close them, they stay closed and map/look and fights print in main window)
- Option to toggle no_clear_on_input on/off (aka, zMud style, when you type something, you can just press enter to input it again)

BatClient is cool.

I'll take the optionality into thought. We've been facing some usability problems with this Map vs. Generic (vs. Battle) view in terms of playability. (If someone has an idea how to make this work better with the *current* setup, I'd love to hear the suggestions regarding this.)

You could do this by arrow up+enter, but is this something that should absolutely be possible to be done by enter-only too?


Thank you for the comments.

I've recently started using the client and think it's great.

These items may already be possible and I may have not found how to utilize them yet:

Have the news window automatically close or go to the back when news is exited.

Have the ability to right click on a channel and "spawn to window".

At the moment I only use one command line, it seems that if my mouse pointer wanders to on of the different windows (say the map) that the cursor from my command entry line also dissapears. Until i'm over the main window again (my mouse tends to wander when i sit back and get comfy:) ).

I've had a short play about with 1.3, I will be exploring further.

First of all I want to say that, although I still use tinyfuge at the moment, I like the bat client a lot. I intend to transition to the bat client at some point. However, there are a few things holding me back at the mo. My requests here are just regarding what I'd really like to see to make the client more usable for myself and are not meant as general criticism of the client.

My largest problem is with the limited fonts.

I use a fairly moderate 1024x768 resolution on a 19" screen. Yet the default fonts, used for the help windows, are really pretty small. With a higher resolution they would be tiny.

The command line font is fixed.

The actual selection of fonts for windows that can have their fonts changed is a bit of a pain as well, a nice list but the fonts don't really compare to those available in my plain old xterms (and from putty).

Is there a way in which the fonts available can be adjusted?


The generic window is still a bit special. How does one bring back the generic window after it has been closed?

Please could there be some documented way of customizing the filtering of mud output into different windows. If this were available, there would be no need for a special generic window, that window could just be defined by a particular set of filters (a default set for any generic window).

Actually, I had an idea which I have mentioned before about the different windows.

Now that the command line can be detached from particular windows, it is possible to have a single main command line always visible. Perhaps it could be possible to specify which windows should be automatically brought to the front (top) whenever new output is sent to the window.

If you could do this, it would be possible to configure the battle and map windows to become active only when they are required. Probably, a smaller generic window could always be in view and less used windows would have to be brought into view manually.


Although I haven't yet played with the scripting, Askan's suggestion regarding more functionality when printing text seems like a very good idea. If customization of fonts, and other gui functionality won't be available via gui dialogues, it would be very nice to have it available via scripts. Maybe this is already the case, if so, perhaps some better documentation would be helpful (I say this partially because the external links from the help menus don't seem to do anything on my computer).

A few more things:

1) Please could triggers and scripts be run when text is sent as well as received.

2) There does not appear to be any way for a script executed from a trigger, macro or command line (i.e. the run method) to insert text back into the main (non window) specific stream, could this be added? Or is there another way (apart from playing with the trigger method) to generate text that can be picked up by other triggers?

3) Please could we have some better documentation for scripting interfaces. There is not a lot to explanation about how scripts are actually called (when exactly*) and also what the various interface methods actually do in detail.

* e.g. if I have two trigger() methods, which runs first?



Some minor points:

Could the command line history not be cyclical (so you can down key back the the last command easily) and, when using the history, could any current line of input (not yet sent) be retained in the history.

Can we have a way to send the topmost window (frame) back to the bottom so that frames underneath can be uncovered.

The logging is not very good (on windows at least).

Basically the problem is that there are no end of line characters, meaning all the text is on one line.

Fixing that would be great.

Cheers,
Askan

[Q]: Have the news window automatically close or go to the back when news is exited.
[A]: Minor, but has been put onto the backlog.

[Q]: Have the ability to right click on a channel and "spawn to window".
[A]: Already exists: right click on channel tab and choose detach.

[Q]: At the moment I only use one command line, it seems that if my mouse pointer wanders to on of the different windows (say the map) that the cursor from my command entry line also dissapears.
[A]: This is on the the backlog, linked to an other 'feature'.

[Q]: About fonts?
[A]: There should be quite a number (20+) of fonts available, right click on the window tabs / windows themselves to get to choose type, size etc. Adding fonts can be done through your operating system.

[Q]: The generic window is still a bit special. How does one bring back the generic window after it has been closed?
[A]: This was added to v1.40, Settings->Add window->New Generic window, is the easiest way to do this.

[Q]: Please could there be some documented way of customizing the filtering of mud output into different windows
[A]: This has already been thought of, but - perhaps later, right now we need to fix some bugs and concentrate on new additions to the client.

[Q]: Can we have a way to send the topmost window (frame) back to the bottom so that frames underneath can be uncovered
[A]: This is already on the backlog, however the first coming implementation may not be "the last and best".

[Q]: Scripting issues?
[A]: Investigating these.

[Q]: Interfaces documentation?
[A]: Has been renewed for v1.40

[Q]: Basically the problem is that there are no end of line characters, meaning all the text is on one line.
[A]: Thank you, didn't notice this before. Has been put on the backlog.