More client stuff

The original version of the Alter Aeon client was a modified version of PuTTY, one that autoconnected to AA on startup. This was created by a player named Andres, several years ago. A lot of people don't like this client, for a lot of reasons.

So about three years ago, I set about creating a gui client. Using QT, I managed to put something together that isn't terrible, but isn't great either. On the down side, the QT license requires source distribution, and I'm not entirely keen on that, at least not for what I'm trying to do.

Not that I'm against open source, it's just not for everyone. I'm trying to build a player community, not a code community. Think Skype, as opposed to Apache. I definitely recognize that open source has a place.

I would probably have been fine with the source distribution of the QT version were it not for one minor issue: the old version of the executable is 8 meg. With new libraries, that size balloons even more. The download size really turns me off.

So I've been looking at and experimenting with a couple of other toolkits. So far, I have Foxlib and wxLib as candidates. Wyvren espouses Foxlib, but in my short time working with it I'm starting to think that it's probably just not what I'm looking for. wxLib is currently on the hit list, and I should know if it fits the bill in a few days.

One thing I have learned is that I'm really calcified and I hate learning new things. Or rather, I hate learning toolkits. I just want to get my work done; having to spend three hours looking up why a resize function doesn't work (then discovering entirely by accident that windows are created with resizing disabled by default) does not make me happy. One of the reasons I'm abandoning Foxlib is the lack of documentation.

I pawned off the room mapping stuff to Locane. Hopefully he'll have something interesting done by the time I need it; I want to hook up the room coordinates to a mapping system in the client so players can more easily figure out where they are and what they're doing.