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Overview

Furthermore there will be different version of the main client depending on how you logged in. Here is a list of planned main client types:

• Player client (used when you control your character in the game - this is the most frequently used client)
• God client (used when you are a "god" but want to physically walk around in the world. A god client is like a player client augmented with some god-stuff...)
• Builder client (used when you are creating, deleting, and redefining objects objects in the world)
• Admin client (used for general administration, statistics, starting and stopping the server, spying on what the citizens of the world are doing, etc. This may be merged with the god client).
• Character creation client (used when you are creating a new character for yourself)
• ... probably some more specialized client types will be added as well....

Items 

Item selection

Clicking on an item with the left mousebutton will cause all other representations of that item to blink quickly (or something like that). That way the user can see in which other subclients that icon is represented. A text output client might display the word "George" which is the name of an item, so when the user clicks on this word all other words and icons in all other subclients will blink to illustrate that they, too, refer to George. Furthermore, that item will be "selected" which means that any operations specified will be carried out on the selected item.

Popup menus

All items provide a context-sensitive right-button menu which contains at least the following item: "properties" (opens a floating subclient displaying the properties of the item). If the object can be picked up, for example, a "get" option will also be available in the popup menu. This menu will also be present in the toolbar and be dynamically updated when new items are selected.

Drag and drop

All items are drag/drop enabled. Each subclient may decide what to do when an item is dropped on it. In general, when an item is dropped onto another item, that will be equivalent to a "put X in Y" command.  Some subclients might have specialized "drop zones" for certain actions, for example an "inventory" drop-zone where any item dragged in is added to the player's inventory.

Main client specifications

Player client

This is the client you use when you are controlling a character in the game. The layout will be approximately like this:



The menu bar contains menus for all possible operations. The button toolbar contains "shortcuts" to frequently performed operations, or operations that must be performed quickly (for example "flee"). This will include an inventory button which has dual purpose. When clicked it will produce a floating inventory window, and when an item is dragged to that button it will be added to the inventory. Or something like that.

The Text input area is a text component that allows the user to type actions. Most or all actions should be possible to perform using text when desired. See "action client" below for more details. The Text output area is where the system sends messages to the player. Most of these messages will be descriptions of events that occur in the world. Only events that cannot be described graphically should be displayed here. See "event client" below for more details.

General info is a general purpose panel that displays static information about the world relevant to the current context of the player. During outdoor travel it might include weather information, while in combat it would display the most important combat attributes, such as the player's HP...

Info about selected item is a general purpose property-panel. It show information about the currently selected item. The main difference between this and the general info panel is that the player controls what is displayed in this panel. See "property client" below for more details.

The Map view displays the character's current location and which other objects are nearby.

The player client will map some global keys as well, for certain frequently performed actions. So far now only one is specified:

• The numeric keypad are used as movement direction keys, ie regardless of which subclient currently has the focus the numpad keys will always control the character movement. If the user does not have a numeric keypad on his computer, he can use shift together with the normal arrow keys instead.

Client context

• Links to all subclients currently open
• What time the player logged in
• Server status (lag, etc)
• Operations for parsing a word and deciding which item it refers to. This is done by asking all the open subclients in turn. That way all subclients share a "dictionary" of terms. This includes the names of all actions and visible objects.

Subclients

Action client



This is where the user specifies, using text, which action to perform. Whenever ENTER is pressed, the last typed line will be executed. Queries can also be performed here, and may in some cases spawn external windows. The exact set of actions is not defined yet, but here are some examples:

• say hi
• smile
• emote pulls his hair in frustration (results in the event: "Fred pulls his hair in frustration")
• properties George (opens a property window displaying info about George)
The only output shown here is error messages when the input could not be parsed, or if the action could not be carried out at all. All text representing items will be colored differently than the rest of the text, since these can be dragged and clicked using the mouse.

In order to minimize unnecessary typing, a number of "smart" shortcuts will be available here. First of all, "frequently used" commands will have shortcut representations. "say", for example, might replaced by a simple ".", and "emote" might be replaced by a ":". Here is a list of other "shortcut" features (of which several are stolen from UNIX...):

• Pressing TAB will "complete" the current word being typed, if possible. That way you only need to type the first few letters of a word as long as it isn't ambigous. It will use the client context to find out which items or actions the word might possible refer to.
• All words are non-casesensitive
• If the command contains incomplete words when the user presses ENTER, the parser will attempt to automatically complete each incomplete word. If all words could be unambiguously resolved, the words will be completed and the action will be carried out. Thus TAB is not really necessary - it just shows the user how the parser will complete the word (a mistake might be fatal in certain cases...)
• The "up" and "down" keys can be used to recall previous actions and to move up and down the command history.
• All shortcut keys can be redefined and customized by the user.

Event client



This displays information from the system to the player, usually an event report (as in the screenshot above). As specified earlier, all words representing items will be highlighted in a different color, indicating that they can be manipulated with the mouse. This window does not accept text input.

Note that only events that aren't suitable for other mediums will be displayed here. If a sound file is available for a certain sound, for example, that will be used instead of describing the sound in the event window.

Property client

 

Above are two property clients - one for Weezy the Orc, showing his location and inventory, and one for the place represented by coordinate 6@6 in the Pub, and it's contents.

Property clients are very generic - each type of object provides it's own type of property client adapted to it's own needs. In fact, the server creates the property window on the fly. All the values in the property client are dynamically updated when the value changes. If input facilities are provided, the input is directed straight to the server. All icons and words representing items provide the usual set of item operations.

Map client (or Area client)



A map client shows the contents of a given place, and may be constrained to the field-of-view of a character (ie if it is dark most of the map will be dark as well). Normally this will take the form of a rectangular grid of items as shown above, but in some cases it may look different (for example if the character is inside a bag it might just show what other objects are inside the bag). When several items are located in the same square, only one will be shown (the "topmost", ie the one judged to be of most direct interest). Clicking on this item will select it. Clicking again on the square will instead select the actual square (in a player client the rest of the contents of the square will be visible in the property window). Each click will switch between selecting the item and the selecting the square containing the item.

That's it for now

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