Message alerts.

[Jfloyd]

When I'm playing, I have an extremly difficult time managing my conversations.
A flashing alert would be nice when ever a new message is posted and that window isnt open :3

[hitoshirenu]

Seconded.

[jorb]

Thirded.

[Jfloyd]

Thirded.

Jorb, I'm honored by you acceptance of my idea. *Pulls out the whip* Code, Jorb, Code!

[jorb]

Thirded.

Jorb, I'm honored by you acceptance of my idea. *Pulls out the whip* Code, Jorb, Code!

Trust me, you don't want me coding anything more advanced than "Hello World".

[Jfloyd]

Wheres Loftar! *Cracks the whip* Loftar, crank out those "Hello World" Apps!

[loftar]

Doing chat alerts would entail two things;
1) a sound for a aural alert; and
2) graphics and UI work for a flashing alert.

As you may or may not have noticed, the game is kinda short on sounds. It isn't easy to get them. As for UI work, it is -- *pauses for emphasis* -- boring. It is true that a good UI matters a lot, but there's really nothing I hate coding as much. I could easily be sent on a long rant on why GUIs aren't worth all the effort put into them*, but I'll spare you. Anyone up for a command-line driven client? :)

Honestly; if someone would commit for perpetual coding on the client, relieving me of it, I would not at all be hostile to the idea. Being able to actually hire someone for that would be my greatest incentive for trying to squeeze a profit out of Haven.

* It should be mentioned, in relation to that, that my interaction with a computer is more or less exclusively keyboard only in all aspects other than Haven. I code in EMACS and vi, I use LaTeX for writing documents, I've installed the Vimperator plugin for Firefox, I use the StumpWM window manager (tiling, doesn't use the mouse for anything at all, and has a special keyboard shortcut for banishing the mouse cursor to the corner of the screen), and I do all other miscellaneous tasks with a normal Unix shell. My mouse malfunctioned not too long ago, and it took about a week before it bothered me enough to fix it.

[theTrav]

SOLD!!! SOLD LIKE A MO FO!!!

I'm a java coder and I'd be more than happy to work on the UI for you. I'm in another time zone is probably the only drawback (GMT+10) and have full time work commitments and fortnightly role play commitments (typically 3pm to 3am second and 4th Saturdays)

To be 100% honest I already decompiled the client and had a poke around (haven't compiled my own client yet, JAD gets confused by a couple of things in there plus I don't want to cause you any extra grief in hunting bugs).

If you've got a SVN/CVS/git repo I can connect to I'll start right away. If you're happy to publish the server's public API I'm sure we could even get an open source project together to build the UI, then you'd have lots of fixes real quick.

[loftar]

I must admit that I have considered making the client open source and everything. I wouldn't mind it with regards to ownership of the code. There are other problems, though;

It would mean that it would be free game to do such things as removing the light mask for full visibility on even the darkest of nights; or implementing wall hacks*; or implementing auto-grind macros; or maybe something else that I can't think of right now.

But I'll keep considering it. Maybe some middle ground could be struck, like allowing access to a few trusted ones or something. I don't know. At the very least, I'd need to discuss it with Jorb.

* It could be argued that one should be able to see and interact with stuff behind other things. I do like the possibility of hiding behind trees, though.

[theTrav]

I figured as much, no worries, just know the offer is there