Trust me, I tried it, it took longer than 60 seconds just to review myself, let alone the people I was with.

What kind of frame rate/responsiveness are you used to? How long between pressing the button and seeing the list move?

And, have you actually tried it?

> People still play games on screens that small?

No, but since I get a benefit in the dungeons from tossing a window that short at the game, it is to my benefit to do so.

Err, why are you wondering about the physical screen in an age of logical windows, anyways? Or do you believe that a program should take over the whole screen no matter how big it is?

That's serious. Frankly, I'm of the (now dead, apparently) camp that higher resolutions should permit sharper images, not smaller images. I'm so very happy that this is what SK does -- no matter how small my pixels may get, I toss a section of so many inches by so many inches, and I see a roughly equivalent view.

Hmm...

Well, just to let you know: While playing, I also have a window open monitoring log files. I have a network activity monitor a keystroke away. Sometimes I have a web browser open (and I use Safari while playing because it has a smaller memory footprint than Firefox.)

===

2048 x 512 works, and gives a very nice 4x aspect ratio. But the camera angle ...

The sides of the window are angled so strongly ...

And, the extra width doesn't help that much -- yes, you can see monsters farther. You can see very large portions of levels (and all of some smaller levels). Clockwork Tunnels ... not so much, because of the up-slants in the hallways.

And the frame rate is noticeably slower.

Dropping to 1800 x 600 (3x aspect ratio) gave me a map view that is just about the same size as the minimap.

All in all, I think keeping the width to the screen -- so I can see chat in a party -- may be the best way. 1024 x 512.

BUT:

You gotta see the clockworks in 4x aspect! Aurora Isles, or Lichenous Lair -- Turn on the background, switch to 4 times, find an idle/empty corner, and just watch the background for 20 minutes or so. Nicely done.

Three rings: Do you actually have a full planetarium set of gears running that, or did you fake it at some point?

I think you completely miss the point.

I'm trying to play in a wider window because the game gives a benefit to playing in a wider window.

I can turn my graphics up to high, sit in a corner, and watch the clockworks in the background. I get a very fluid motion display and it looks wonderful.

If I go to the microsoft windows machine, I see more. The large gears that have spinning thingies inside of them show up clearly, with the spinning clearly visible, on the microsoft windows system; that's a level of detail I don't see on the Mac.

If there's a bunch of monsters on-screen, I have a horrible delay as they spawn. If they are just sitting around, I see a decent frame rate, even on high. (I'll double check that this afternoon). As soon as they move, attack, etc, then I have to have low-quality rendering to get more than about 1-2 frames per second.

(When I played Vendetta Online, on this mac, I capped my frame rate to 45 fps to keep the machine cool enough to keep the fan turned off.)

Now, addressing what you wrote:

> You can't manage to check what items you got because your framerate is horrendous. (You already saw all of it when you picked it up in the first place. Why do you need to check it all again?) You want to play in a tiny window so your framerate won't be as bad. You have several other programs running while you play.

1. If I play at 1024x688 (I think that turned out to be the magic number), or x720 if I turn off the dock, then I have no problem checking out everything that everyone in the party received. And no, I don't pay attention to who got what, or even what I got during play -- I'm too busy with the things that are demanding my attention to be distracted by the rest.

2. I don't play in a tiny window because of the frame rate. That's not the reason for using a smaller window. The wider view is the reason for a smaller window.

3. I cannot help but have other programs running. Have you heard of "Unix"? An OS designed from day one to be multiple process, multiple programs, that has over time evolved to move more and more stuff out of the kernel into programs that run separately?

> Are you not aware that 30+ fps is ideal? Do you think that 10 is good? Have you not watched a video of a game in progress? Do you think that your computer, which barely runs Spiral Knights, is an acceptable gaming device? Is there a reason you need to constantly monitor your network activity and log files? Have you played nothing other than this and YPP? Do you think that more than a 30th of a second is an acceptable response time to your input?

4. News flash: 15 frames per second is absolutely plenty to watch animations and see fluidity of motion. 10 frames per second is acceptable (not great, but acceptable). Yes, I can tell the difference between 24 fps and 30 fps while watching TV. I can tell the difference in the image quality, and wish more stuff was shot at the 30 fps, higher contrast modern stuff, but for whatever reason, that's considered "unnormal" or something. And my eyes can detect CRT flicker at 90 Hz (when I used CRT's, I always kept the vertical rate at 100 or better, and took whatever display size I could get at that rate.)

A game design that says that there will be an average of 3 frames of delay before your commands reach the server is something else entirely. You can expect an average of half a frame of delay from the server before your client finishes the last frame, one more frame to show what the server sent you; that's 1.5 frames (average) before you see stuff on your screen. Now you react to that; if the client were able to send what you type to the server as soon as you type it, then you're talking about 1.5 frames plus reaction time -- that's as fast as you can get, and if all NPC actions are significantly longer than that, then your game handles slower machines just fine.

5. My machine barely runs SK? Yep. Is it within the specs? Yep. Do I think it's an acceptable gaming device? Yep.

Do I think that programs have the right to expect the best possible quality of graphics hardware? Nope. Do I think that programs should demand thousands of polygons 60 times a second? Nope. Do I think programs need thousands of polygons? Nope. I grew up with 128 by 48 (Trs-80) and had plenty of good graphics games on that.

6. Do I need to monitor my log files? Because SK has a "grow and grow" issue, I want to keep an eye on the warning that comes out before swapping turns on. (I normally have dynamic_pager disabled, so there's no virtual memory swapping; a pair of watchdog scripts keep track of memory usage and turn it on if things get tight. A full dungeon run seems to turn it on, so I keep an eye on things so I know when to reclient.). Now, at the same time, I like to keep watch on things like warnings of someone trying to hack into my system (hint: ftp access to an account named "Administer" will not work, you can give up after an hour or two whoever you are), etc.

As for watching network, I'm doing that more out of curiosity. But I do keep the activity monitor up even if I'm not looking at it.

7. I've played a lot of games, actually.

8. More than 1/30th of a second response?

Look at a typical game for a moment.

Server sends client an update. Client is busy doing the last frame. Client then does the frame with server's action (1.5 frames). Client checks keyboard queue, see nothing. Client then draws another frame (2.5 frames).

Now, two things can happen here:

One: Client reads your keyboard, reads the server, determines what your actions will do, draws a frame, and then sends the result to the server.

Two: Similar, except that the client first sends the result to the server, then draws your actions.

(NB: I'm assuming that the client is responsible for local response to your actions, and predicts what the server says will happen in response to your behavior. Since the server is constantly repositioning you back when moving through bramble, this seems accurate -- the game assumes you are moving, and draws you moving; the server sends out corrected positioning information to the client.)

Case two gives you a total delay of about 2.5 frames plus reaction time (or about 3 frames); case one a total delay of about 3.5 frames plus reaction time (or about 4 frames). In comparison, the minimum possible is really 1.5 frames plus reaction time.

For your 1/30th of a second response time, you need 3 frames in 1/30th of a second, or 90 frames per second.

That's an excessive requirement for the consumer's client equipment.

If the client is expected to handle 30 frames per second, then nothing can be designed to happen faster than 1/10th of a second at the server. If the client is expected to handle 15 FPS, then the server's design limits are 1/5th of a second.

On the other hand, if you have 1.5 frames plus reaction time as the delay, at 15 FPS you have a delay of 100 ms plus reaction time. How fast do you expect your players to react? How long do you expect them to take to press a key?

If you have animations that give you some predictability (such as a change in stance, drawing back a big club, noise of a swing, etc), then reaction time can be considered "low" -- the player can time when they do something to what's happening on the screen. After all, it's not like the client will be late displaying the animations, right? I mean, the client and server both run a time synch protocol, so the server can say "This animation starts at T=x", so when the client starts the display, it can have the animation match what the server thinks, right?

Oh, or do you actually have the client start the animation from T=0 no matter how far back the client may be, so that when the server is "done", the client still has 80-120 ms of animation to display?

Better still would be if the client starts with a lead, so that when the client shows "animation finished", the user can press a key, and the response arrives at the server when the animation is finished. Combine that with feedback from the client "This is sent at timestamp of 'enemy attack finished'" and you can actually have your client act in "real time" even if it is slow. (Ever do real time programming? Fast response turns out not to be nearly as important as consistent, predictable response speed.)

But to do that, properly, you have to have internal clocks between the two systems synched; you have to track and adjust for processing delay rather than just network delay; etc.

> With your situation, there is no reason you need to run this game in a window, let alone with multiple other programs also running. As a developer, I would never cater to your type. In fact, I would hope players like you never even discover my game. I'm convinced that you have no idea how to even enjoy games in general. You would be the person who, upon receiving a gift from a friend, would dismantle the gift and become confused as to what its purpose is, rather than even considering to use it for its intention.

9. Mac Full Screen Java Has Bugs!

Java programs on a Mac really have to run in a window. Period.

Maybe Os 10.6 and Java 6 have solved those problems. I can't run Java 6, and I can't run Os 10.6.

I don't have code block support. I don't have dispatch queue support. There's a lot of nifty technical stuff in 10.6 that makes multi-threaded programming much nicer, encapsulated subroutines better, better error reporting/checking as a result, etc. There's a new objective-C language with new features.

Apple decided that, since the end-user stuff being released in 10.6 wasn't needed on power PC machines (the biggest apparent factor was better support for multiple cores), that none of the improvements would be released. For reasons that I have no understand of at all, they decided not to make any more java improvements to 10.5 (and now they have said that any future java releases will be entirely up to Oracle to do all porting.)

10. Other programs running?
AGAIN: I cannot help but have other programs running.
The windowed programs that I have running, for the most part, take negligible amounts of CPU and GPU power. Around 5-8% CPU.

11. >As a developer, I would never cater to your type. In fact, I would hope players like you never even discover my game. I'm convinced that you have no idea how to even enjoy games in general.

So, let me see:
1. As a developer, you expect your clients to have whatever machine is needed to run your games
2. You only want people with high-end machines to find your games
3. Enjoy games? You better believe I know how to enjoy games. I grew up with cardboard counters on hex grids. I learned very quickly that Monopoly is about property, trading, and development, more than "luck of the space you land on". (Quick Monopoly variant: After passing out the money, do an auction for all the properties in the game. Each person goes around, selects one property to be put up for auction. Mortgaging properties is allowed. Minimum bid is $5 more than the mortgage amount. You'll get a game that has little or nothing to do with luck of where you land, and everything about control of the money supply, trading skill, and knowing what to develop before what.) After going to my first gaming convention, I found out about all sorts of games I hadn't seen before, including the 18xx family (1830, etc) -- games with no element of luck of any kind (Ok, random roll to determine player order, fine.), all about player interactions.

I learned the view of "play to win". I learned that quickly. I generally played against people much better than me, and I had to learn and improve to have any chance to win. Much later, I learned "play to enjoy", oddly after learning Magic: The Gathering, when making a silly themed deck was more interesting than making an uuber-powered deck.

Not knowing how to enjoy games?
Maybe I enjoy games differently than you do.

Do you find it fun to play a game with someone that doesn't put any thought into what they do? Or do you find it fun when someone plays in a way that gives you a challenge?

Do you play role playing games? Do you play them to have the nastiest character that can inflict the most damage? Or do you play to be the most in-character -- even to the point of only using short words, one, or two sounds per word, as you are dumb? Now, re-read that last half-sentence from the view of a low int, high wisdom character. I've played characters with intentional blind spots -- I've played in systems that encourage you to load your character up with psychological limitations and personality flaws.

Playing within the rules, to achieve a goal, to the best of my ability, and doing what I can to expand my ability? Yes, I do have fun, even when I'm playing to win. In fact, I'm always playing to achieve a goal, be it "First place", "Most spectacular death" (paranoia), "Everyone dies" (running paranoia :-), "Survive longest" (a weak second place finish is still a second place finish, if a stronger person got eliminated first), enjoying people's company, etc.

And I'm always analyzing games. I can't help that.

> I designed my computer to play games, not using the entirety of my large screen is a waste of money

I was not able to design my computer. My computer came as-is. You know, a general purpose machine that happens to play games.