[Freeciv-Dev] Re: Documentation, Usability and Development

["Per I. Mathisen" <Per.Inge.Mathisen@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 29 Nov 2001, Petr Baudis wrote:
> only-on-server is a pit full of lions. only-on-client breaks modpacks.
> what about choice (both server and client side) whether use only client-local
> sounds or [let client] download missing sounds from server (let's compare
> versions by hashes and store version near to each sound). this way i can
> even imagine downloading of tilesets etc. if client/server don't want it,
> it can always just disallow it.

IMHO, I think I solved this pretty nicely in the (unfinished) sound patch
I wrote way back then. I had sounds in the client, of course, but matched
to generic sound tags supplied by the server. Each sound tag had an
alternative, so that if that specific client didn't have the "modpack X
client version" installed, it could still play sounds, but only
approximately the right ones.

That meant that server-side modpacks could change sounds, but clients
could also change sounds irrespective of what rulets used on the server.

The client would have rulesets like this:
+[files]
+b_apollo =     "civ2/cheers3.wav"
+b_asmith =     "civ2/stkmarkt.wav"
+b_colossus =   "civ2/fanfare1.wav"
+b_copernicus = "civ2/fanfare8.wav"
+b_cure =       "civ2/cheers2.wav"
+b_darwins =    "civ2/fanfare2.wav"
+b_eiffel =     "civ2/drumc0.wav"

The server would use ruleset data like this:
+[sound]
+move    ="u_moveunit"          ; sound of a unit moving
+fail    ="u_wrongmove"         ; sound of unit moving into something
+focus   ="u_focusunit"         ; sound of unit getting focus
+move_alt ="u_moveunit"         ; alternate sounds
+fail_alt ="u_wrongmove"
+focus_alt="u_focusunit"

For those interested in this, I've put the patch out on
http://www.idi.ntnu.no/~permath/sound4.patch

Solved the problem of non-existent-sound-for-freeciv also: It would supply
a ready made ruleset for using sounds from your copy of Civ2 :)

Yours,
Per

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