EL Stickers and Art

As you will see to the right (and larger in the page footer) you can now get some awnsome© EL art made by yours truly. Ent and Roja have given approval for me to make EL themed bumperstickers and such. I have a lot more in already made and just need to post them. The prices are very modest so you can rest assured that I am not making this a full time job. I hope you enjoy (and buy tons of) the stickers.

Magic Switch

I totally need to add a magic switch to the EL client.

Trade All

Elandor(RIVA) suggested a "TradeAll" button similar to the "DropAll" and "StoreAll". It is an interesting idea. There is no room in the interface right now to support it, but, I suppose I could have either of the other 2 buttons switch to a TradeAll while in trade. The buttons are useless as you cannot drop or store while in trade mode anyway. I think that i would be better to toggle the DropAll in this case. Thoughts?

Quick8 Resolution

So, a while back, Gampa posted a screenshot in the EL forums which clearly showed the additional 2 quick-use and quick-spell slots. Ent saw it and, having forgotten that he gave permission for it, got rather upset. But, he said we could keep it as long as that was added to the official client.

The problem is that I moved all the slots up, covering the old EL logo. The new EL logo is, IMNHSO, very cool now. Nice work Roja. Anyway, Ent wanted things so that the logo would show up. Well, with the side stats bar (the colored stats bars were my patch BTW) activated there is not enough room. Even in the official client if you play at 640x480 you lose the stats bar.

Now we will have a new skill, engineering, which makes the stats bar a wee bit larger, and covers the 6 quick slots when at 800x600. Rather ugly. So, 0ctane submitted the patch to make the stats go away if you are at 800x600 or less. If things stay that way, there will be plenty of room for 8 instead of 6 slots. Unfortunately I play at 800x600 on my laptop, so I can code and do other things at the same time (I afk harvest a lot, the useful stuff though). Just using math:

logo+clock+compass: (64x64)*3y = 192
10 stats + 1 OA = 11 stats bars * 15y per bar = 165
default quickbar_y_len = 6 * 30 + 1 => 181
room for digital clock: 18
which totals 556 pixels.
quick8 quickbar_y_len = 8 * 30 + 1 => 241
which totals 616 pixels

To figure out why the original 6 slots has issues at 800x600 with the new skill, one needs to look at gl_init.c. 800x600 is actually 780x550. In fact, all the resolutions (EXCEPT 640x480 and 1600x1200) take a little off the top and sides. I need to tweak that gl_init.c to test if 800x600 will work...

Maybe I should add a toggle for the logo to make more room...

On an aside, it would be really slick if the client used SDL_ListModes to get available resolutions instead of hard coding it...

Edit: lol. ttlanhil just provided this patch

elc hud.c,1.166,1.167
Modified Files: hud.c
Log Message: allow statsbars in hud at 800x600 if there's no digital clock

Update soon

An update to EL will be occurring soon. Entropy already added the engineering books. The CVS client already has the new skill slot in it. I have started reworking my patches so that they will work on the new version.

Unfortunately, my main windows machine is down, so I will have to dual boot my linux laptop and hopefully get it to compile correctly for windows. Then I need to convince 0ctane to make a patched Mac client...

Future Possibilities

Under the "future" tag I will be storing suggestions for improvements to the client. Under the "nowayjose" I will put items that are not going to make it into the client.

Here are some of the pending ideas:

• Copy email address to buffer (like the copy web address)
• Have a mana bar right below health bar on your character
• Toggle viewing guild tags
• Toggle show ONLY guild tags
• harvest/attack range ring/visual indicator
• mute just local chat toggle button. Still see ig,gm,pm,channel chat
• exp countdown to see how much exp is needed to level more than just one skill (Cassius)
• coordinates on compass hover (Cassius)
  
• visual toggles for autoopen and other features
• visual indicator for afk/harvesting in case you miss a harv event
• Windows installer: I used to have one but it was a pain to maintain.
• Alt-F12 for quick #beam me
• F4 for quick #storage
• move toward target if out of range (Kedan)
• move toward a location if it is blocked (a patch exists for this in berlios right now)
• sortable knowledge window
• Window docking to the sides
• better fonts when they are teenytiny
• make the autobag open not work if you are mapwalking
• autoreconnect [on grue,...] (apparently Piper had a feature like this)
  

No Way Jose:

• death locator. "that's one of the reasons EF got shacked" - Entropy
• autopickup: we had it for a while, but a combo of old el and server code made Ent hate me for it.
• %gotoxy: too easy to macro (which is illegal)
• quick-manu: the formulas change too often and the info is in the encyclopedia anyway
• built-in calculator: use /Trader calc 1+1
• drop counter: too complicated, though I could hook it with the kill counters I suppose...
  

The Feature List

I added the current feature list to the side bar. "Awnage only" features are ones that are approved for the client but not general release. "Features Submitted" refer to items that are in the Awnage client and I have sent in to developer.berlios.de for inclusion in the official client. Not all of them have been accepted into it though.

For archive purposes, here is the list:

Features (Awnage Only)
* Auto Open Bag (CTRL- to toggle)
* Auto Open Storage (just click on a storage NPC, closes dialogue)
* Coords to Channel (CTRL-click on compass)
* Hover side stats for exp left
* Max pitch: to lower your viewing angle
* Max zoom: to get a bigger picture
* Min pitch: to raise your viewing angle
* Quick 8 use/cast
* Repeat Last Action (for NPC interaction)
* Rivan only lock
* Small inventory window
* Store All
* Guild channel chat a slightly different color
* Custom armor pack

Features (Submitted)
* Attack, magic highlights
* Icons row scaling
* Rearrange spells (Shift-R/L click)
* Toggle analog clock
* True SitLock
* Chatlog rotation

And the features that I submitted as patches that are now in the official client:

* Side Stats progess bars
* Keeping Manu/Buddy/Inv/Storage window open while on map or in console
* F6 transparency of clock and compass

Pure Awnage

I will endeavor to post changes to the Rivan Warriors EL client here, so as not to clog up our forums, but also so that other guilds can see the progress.

Old Names

There is a long tradition of naming software releases bizarre names. I think it is fun. Here is a list of the historical names of past Awnage Clients:

Version 0.20070216 Back to the Basics
Version 0.2007011x Taxing the Ghrae CELs
Version 0.20070112 Grubbing for Change
Version 0.20070104 TheCowsCameHome
Version 0.20061214 X3 Flare
Version 0.20061025 Misty Morning
Version 0.20060720 World Jump Day
Version 0.20060703 Independence
Version 0.20060505 A New Garden
Version 0.20060502 Anne's Birthday
- version numbering scheme change -
Version 0.95 The New Hotness
Version 0.90 Lonely Soldier Boy

Obviously each title is carefully chosen from the recesses of my brain.