Re: [Freeciv-Dev] Sound support

[Alex Zepeda <garbanzo@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 19 Aug 1999, David Pfitzner wrote:

> Um, I'm a bit concerned about this... I think it's correct that
> the client _not_ load ruleset files, because eg the server could 
> be using some third-party modpack the client doesn't know about, 
> maybe containing completely different units.  Instead the server 
> should load the sounds data and send this information to clients.

I really hope that sound won't be implemented this way.  If the client
doesn't already know about a specific unit, what good would a sound for an
unknown unit do?  One of the things I rather like about freeciv is that it
doesn't have very demanding hardware requirements.  Right now I play
networked games over my 33.6 modem.  Sure, I'd love sound support, but
requiring the server to send the sounds to the client would waste massive
amounts of bandwidth as well as put a lot of strain on us mere mortals
with modems.

In fact, I'm sure it would/will run nicely on my Mac Quadra 650, a box
that struggles with basic web browsing (a Qt based client would sure make
this and a Win32 port a more probably reality, but I digress).

> A possible approach to avoid putting actual filenames for sounds 
> in the ruleset file, and allow flexibility for clients to use 
> alternate sounds, could be something like the tilespec stuff I'm 
> working on (see recent post).  But maybe I just have a one-track
> mind :-)

Well there's always something similar to what's been done with the tiles,
so that the names of the files stay consistant, but their contents can be
changed.

- alex