[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#12099) Prune unnecessary server messages

["Christian Knoke" <chrisk@xxxxxxxxx>]

<URL: http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=12099 >

On Fri, Feb 04, 2005 at 06:36:08AM -0800, Per I. Mathisen wrote:
> On Fri, 4 Feb 2005, Christian Knoke wrote:
> > to address the problems of too many messages, you should not ripe out
> > anything you don't find usefull.
> 
> It is the most obvious way of doing that. I believe all other ways are
> ugly hacks. Convince me that I am wrong, please.

I'll try.

First of all, I'm with you that the current message system has big
drawbacks; esp. with new gtk2 client I would wish to see it gone.

And note, that messages should be translated client side. This long time
TODO has vanished from the list. :(

> As a policy, _we should never push information on a player unless it is
> important_. Unimportant information the player should seek out (pull in)
> on his own.

That is not so easy. Any moving enemy unit in sight is a push event, and at
least I have problems, to follow them all in an online game, when the map is
jumping down and forth.

Remember Civ2? Everything came in as a popup. It was annoying. The current
message system is a real improvement compared with.

What comes to mind from time to time is a speech synthesizing system that
announces all important messages.

Yes, I only want to read the messages that are important to me. Problem is,
the server will never know for sure which ones these are.

What stands again a well-designed options dialog that allows me to filter to
my like?

Better ways to present the information is always welcome.

'scrolling back' means for me to check events in previous turns that help me
distingiush some bad luck from bugs.

Christian

-- 
Christian Knoke            * * *            http://cknoke.de
* * * * * * * * *  Ceterum censeo Microsoft esse dividendum.