what, both of you?
(1)
Seriously though, I can't take all (or even most) of the credit, the original jcrossclient (
http://bolthole.com/jcrossclient/) still provides most of the framework for the newer client (even as it has been extended, fixed, tweaked and hacked to pieces) - the only way I have managed to make the progress that I (and the other jcrossclient developer) have is because of Phil Brown's original design. Also of course, the client on its own would be worthless without all the work on the server and the game content that runs on it.
As it is, jcrossclient shouldn't be /that/ slow, it is written using AWT, which is normally quite fast (at least compared to swing) - and was started in the last century, when speed optimisations were more important; much of this still persists, in things such as the server and map thread delay options - if you set these high enough, then the client should still be usable, even if it does appear to be on a laggy connection.
In any event, in the last fortnight, we had some new map rendering code written by james jackson (the aforementioned other developer), which improves performance noticably on slower systems (although there are a few more things that need help before I will announce a beta 1 release, mostly protocol side stuff)
However I will soon be reaching the point where I would be very interested in performance reports on slower machines,
Hopefully I should have a 1.0 final release sometime in march or april, and after that focus on trying to turn it into a web applet (I've already made some vague attempts in that direction), to make the game accessible to those who are in environments where running stand-alone applications isn't possible (internet cafes, airports, schools, offices - not that I would condone the last two of course
)
(1) this from the guy who runs amiga OS 3.1 under UAE, GNU Hurd and AROS on various systems.
