Mark, on hearing your specific examples, I'd say what you've got in mind sounds good. I really don't think anyone has issues with the client size nowadays.
However, Catherine's comments made me think of something else: having actual videos, etc., might interfere with the ability to impose subjectivity. I know that not every single thing in the game world evokes different responses in different people, but it strikes me that (for example) one character might find such a horror film gruesome and nauseating, while another might think it was entertaining or even amusing (because of terrifically bad production values, perhaps.) With text, it's easy to describe things in a slanted way - but an actual video will always get an initial reaction from the player, not the character. Of course, good roleplaying can fill in the difference, but it's nice when the way the environment is described makes you think about how your character's experiencing it.
Like I said, I approve of the project as a whole, and this isn't an answer to your specific question. But, just thought I'd toss it out there.
I like the idea of having videos in specific places - maybe we could take advantage of Poobah's giant HDTV, etc.
On the other hand, I'm more ambivalent about sound. For my taste, it would have to be either *very* occasional - laughing children, a babbling brook, but mostly silence - or complete enough to convince me to turn off my music while I'm playing. True, it's a bit jarring to have "The Twist" come on when you're fighting spiders *cough*notthatIwouldknowkata*cough* but it would be even more jarring to have sounds in half the rooms and not in the others.
I guess my feelings about sound about match up with the description of why TC isn't graphical. It would be cool to hit a radio and have it actually play something, just as it's great that there are occasional pictures - but mostly it should be left to the imagination, because any attempt at implementation would fall short.
I find that, since I'm sitting at a computer, it's more convenient to just use Notepad or similar to quickly draw maps. But then, I type faster than I write, so I guess it's an individual preference.
Actually, I've played DND some, and am struck by the fact that, at least for the first 10 levels or so, characters of identical race and class ARE pretty identical. Personalities might differ, but the system does tend to make abilities the same or similar. I think we're trying to avoid that in SM.
of course, this thread is over a year old, so probably this won't get read...
A friend of mine uses a Mac with Safari, and we can't get the applet to load on his computer. We've checked that he has the latest version of Java, etc.; the only error message we've been able to find is something about an expected end of parameter in font definitions.
Anyone else using Safari on a Mac, or have any ideas in general?
Just ran into a Surveyor, and he reminded me of something I've been thinking about for a while...
So, I'm a student at Middlebury College, where the month of January is a separate term. I don't yet know exactly what I'll be doing, and one of the suggested options is an internship. I would consider it the coolest thing ever to do an internship with SmartMonsters. (I'm located on the East Coast, so it would have to be a telecommuting scenario.) My question is, is this a remote possibility, either this year or in the future?
I have found what seems to me a serious oversight in the cartographer spiff system. Since Selfea's maps are separate images, they're on their own .jsp pages, which each have their own tracker for spiffs. Hence Selfea can potentially be spiffed up to 2200 by each player. On the other hand, Thoth uses Flash, which puts them all on the same page. Thus, no matter how completely or how well he maps the City, he can never be spiffed more than 1,000.
I'm not sure how this would be fixed. Also not sure if it's about to become a non-issue, since I had heard talk of changing the spiff system somehow.
(On a completely unrelated note, while writing this I was reminded that some people have 2 or 3 identical player pages. Anyone know what causes that?)
