MAngband

Map recentering?

(Note: This is all I had to go on.  Someone had issues with how and where the map recentered, I'm guessing?)

As I recall, the server doesn't support continous map recentering for the client, whereby the player is always in the center of the screen and everything else moves around him.

Sure it *could*.

This might almost overload some slow connections though, redwawing the map creates a lot of traffic.

Yeah.. i'm on a 56k modem, and i have occasional problems already.  The other day i was in a pit-sized room full of hummerhorns (+10 speed breeders), and my modem wasn't keeping up with the required download rate to track all of their movements and their attacks.

Keystrokes i entered would take around 30 seconds before i saw the results of them.. in fact when i portalled myself out, i was attacked by hounds without my knowledge for about that long, before the transfers caught up, and i could get somewhere safe  :-/

Shouldn't the current uncovered/known map be stored on the client? Then looking around/recentering would take place on the client avoiding connection issues. The server would send updates to the client when they took place as it does now. Pressing Ctrl-R for redraw would cause the server to send the entire known map again in case anything is missed/garbled.

Hmmm... am I understanding the problem fully? I suppose if the client doesn't do any of this already it'd be a bit of work eh?

Plus there's probably lots of other issues related to this.

Maybe I should just shut up.

That's a perfectly valid question.

The reason it currently does not is simple.  There can be changes to the map the client might not know about.  For instance, another character might *Destruct* the level.  This could be handled via curses-style-update-only-what's-been-changed once  virtual pad has been established, but it also requires the client buffer all the pertinent information, which just isn't being done yet.

In fact, doing it this way would greately simplify things like animating multi-hued items, projecting missle objects, and allow "record" mode in the client.  It's a great idea.

Patches Welcome

Of course, the patch has to work on terminal mode, X mode, Windows mode, and Aqua mode.