Keep with .NET and upgrade to 2.0 or 3.0.
Go with Java
Full executable with minimal dependencies
Go for Vista compatibel launcher, forget the linux bullcrap.
Face it, Vista is the future.
Royall on Order / Royal_wind_unity, Royall on Chaos
Dinsdag on EU-Evernight (LOTRO)
As I said, all I want is a non-web launcher that has all the web launcher options... Linux compatible launcher would merely be a value added bonus - at least as long as there is no native Hz client. VI probably makes Hz client for IBM 3090 before Linux, so...
And... about Windows. Win NT is ancient history. W2k is history. XP is yesterday. Vista is today. Windows 7 is the future :P
horizons is the only (and first?) game with an browser based launcher?
Almost anything can be made Linux compatible, and although I'll likely switch to a Linux/XP dual-boot this summer, I suggest doing what you can to work towards Vista compatibility first, especially with little things like the launcher. I personally refuse to get Vista, and I'll likely wait until Windows 7 before getting a new Windows OS, unless my career path requires me to get Vista on a personal machine. (I know I'll wind up needing experience with it, that's for sure).
Java is nice, but it's also a pain in the butt to deal with. While it's multi-platform, there are so many little things that always need to be kicked and bashed into place before they'll work. But that's just me, I'm still new to Java, and our end-of-year project in it was rather...painful.. in some aspects. XD; I imagine experienced coders could make it work a lot better.
Theoretically .NET should be platform independent, too. There is a linux implementation, but I don't know how in line that is with the frameworks from MS
I wanna be ancient. Why is there no ARoP for Saris?
I wouldn't say Vista is the future; I've read a few articles saying that Microsoft (and others) are starting to wonder if Vista isn't 2008's WinME; a short-lived OS that nobody really likes.
Vista sucks for gamers because of the ridiculous CPU/RAM usage, leaving less resources for the games they want to play, Vista sucks for anyone trying to run older software because they just simply changed too much, Vista sucks for anyone running a computer older than a year, due to the increased demand on the CPU and RAM, and Vista sucks price-wise, too. Is it still $150+ per license?
So... other than new computers with Vista pre-installed..... why are people installing Vista, again? Meh. If people'd wisen up, and stop buying their crap, then maybe Microsuck would actually get it in their heads they need to make something worth using. They did decent with WinXP (though Linux has always, is, and will always beat the crap out of MS anyday), I have no idea what possessed them to release something like Vista...
It kinda sucks that Microsuck is ending WinXP support here soon, in a last-ditch effort to force people to buy their piece of crap OS. Hopefully they churn something new out soon, because Vista just isn't cutting it. I am one of the many people who will stick with WinXP until I cannot find any hardware/drivers whatsoever at all that are compatible with WinXP and/or if I run into any must-have programs that require Vista or later to run.
I won't comment on the long-ish offtopic but the one fact that Vista, like or hate it, is the step past Win XP. Whatever coming past Vista will have most if not all the features of Vista and will require the software to adhere to the same or stricter "rules".
While for an user it may be excusable to skip one O.S., software companies can't, Istaria won't work on what comes after Vista and needs to be ported.
As for dot Net and Java, they are "libraries" whose role is to cut on development times. Java imho is not the way to go for a game, too much can go wrong that an end user will not *ever* be able to fix and its aim (after some efforts in the past) is more at creating "easily" portable network applications (that in every phase will be handled by programmers, including final deployment) than as client general library.
The "general client library" is one of the dot Net domains. It promises to cut development time in long-tiresome tasks (i.e. dealing with O.S. idiosyncrasies, implementing managed memory and threads...). The "cost" is the usual "mass of stuff" to install on the computer - but this time it's off the O.S. makers themselves, not (the case of Java) of a company (Sun) they are openly against.
The third approach involves getting, learning and using third party libraries, hopefully this time Vi people learned the lesson and will install open source stuff, there's loads for every need of the client.
Vahrokh Vain - Ancient dragon level 100 adv 100 craft 34M of untainted, fireworks and other crap free hoard.
Isarion - Reaver Healer Spiritist, many craft classes.
I voted #3, it would be easyer to code in a way to change caracters while still in game.
(some days it can take as many as 5 min for me to get back into the game)
Honestly tho if any of the options opens the game up to a wider player base i would be for it. (Vista is ebil!)
Tamaracaran Thothalomadais: Dragon, As old as the world, Twice.
Jamana Ternfaust: Gnome of 31 flavors!
Erzat Ember: Dryad Battlemage, Construction Bug.
Halfust Thothalomadais: Human somthing or other.
Yup. This is why I never played CoV. I spent so much time getting it going that I was truly ticked off by the time I got in game. I saw one little annoying thing and immediately cancelled my account. You do *not* want people to be ticked off with the game before they even start it up.
MS is abandoning the Vista kernel. It is ME all over again. The main reason for Vista was the new data driven file system, which was a total bust and is currently relegated to their R & D division.
Windows 7 will be a Vista-like interface built on the XP kernel, and is currently headed by the brains behind Office 2007. Because, you know, the Ribbon was such a flaming success he should now work on an entire OS?!? Joy.
So no, Vista isn't the future. Intel needs a reason to keep selling chips, though, so the bloated UI will be.
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
- Albert Einstein
Elated that HZ is no longer in the hands of the Infidels.
Now.. I may have to split my time between 2 games... CS:S and HZ...
Hmmmmn,
From what i've read here (the first thing that came up in google after reading the posts above, I don't endorse it as the best source) it's not like they're planning to trash the current kernel in favour of the XP one.
The current Vista kernel has evolved via previous versions of NT from NT 3.1, through NT 3.5, NT 3.51, NT4, Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Vista is currently running EXACTLY the same kernel as Windows Server 2008.
I'm not sure what is being suggested here but it's certainly not the case that MS is considering reverting back to the XP kernel (or beyond). XP is part of the Vista lineage which is allegedly being replaced (in 2010 or something).
I've noticed much Vista bashing going on on these forums and I'm not convinced that it's all justified. My current home machine runs it without a problem (Quad core @ 3ghz with Nvid 8800 GTS 512) as does my Dell XPS M1710 work laptop.
I'd not recommend upgrading existing machines to Vista unless they're truly up to it. That would be silly. Anything with a built in Intel Graphics chipset should be ruled out .
With regard to performance, my partner has an identical machine which is currently running XP and both machines achieve comparable framerates in Crysis (providing we're both running it in DX9 mode).
The release of Vista was not an industry secret and there was plenty of time for game developers to ensure that everything was working in the new os. I work for a smallish software company and can assure you that there was no need for last minute panic testing with this thing. Vitrium were/are in an unenviable position, having acquiring the HZ/Istaria Chronicles etc... property after the release of Vista with no planning being done by the previous owner(s).
Vista is not going to go away. It's about time we had a version of ICOTG that can be enjoyed by people with machines purchaed in the past year or so.
Algernon
Last edited by Algernon; June 12th, 2008 at 11:42 AM. Reason: added a smiley
Pssst... Just so you know, Algernon, it isn't ALL machines bought in the past year, either.
I have a brand new machine but no Vista. That one has XP and of course runs Istaria fine.
I also have a year old laptop but no Vista. That one runs Linux, and I love it.
So while you are right that Vista isn't going away, I also believe that more and more people who are knowledgeable about computers and able to change the system they are running under are going to choose to either install Linux on their Vista machine, or use a working copy of XP where possible. After all, if Microsoft's own execs won't upgrade to Vista, why should anyone else? (Wish I could find the you tube video of that, but it's not coming up for me right now.)
Meh. Yet I'm running Vista and like it. I'm pretty sure that ICOTG is the first thing that I've found that I can't run
I of course could run something different on my machines but don't want to. I'd like to visit Istaria but am not prepared to revert for it. Will users still be running xp so that they can participate in Istaria in 2k10 when the next version goes into beta?
Algernon.
Vahrokh Vain - Ancient dragon level 100 adv 100 craft 34M of untainted, fireworks and other crap free hoard.
Isarion - Reaver Healer Spiritist, many craft classes.
Windows 7 Preview was run on the XP kernel rather than the Vista kernel. Also, Microsoft has been taking too much flack for the Vista bloat, especially with the major system manufacturers like Dell taking a stand against MS because their low end systems won't even boot on Vista. As you have seen, indications are that they will be borrowing from MinWin in an effort to keep the footprint down. MinWin is its own critter, but it much closer to XP that Vista.
You state that your performance in Vista is the same as XP, while also indicating that one should not make the jump to Vista unless the hardware is up to the task. This is the issue that so many of us are having. Why go through the pain and cost of upgrading when there is little to no tangible benefit? I know I certainly do not need a 3D accelerated note pad, and user security is a joke. Toss in compatibility issues and the math is easy for those concerned about such things.
Given the low sales and high abandonment rates, I am guessing quite a few of us are concerned.
There were so many issues surrounding the Vista release and how it differed from the version software vendors received that even the big companies seemed to give up on it. It is one thing to just hope your software will run on a new OS, it is another entirely to put the money and effort into fixing compatibility issues only to have the vendor break those at release.
I imagine your shop is a .net shop or is creating software with limited hardware control. Wild guess on my part, but those seem to be some of the applications that ported across fairly easy. But when even some of Microsoft's software wouldn't run on their own OS you know there is a problem. I certainly wouldn't lay the blame on any Horizons developers for that one.
"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."
- Albert Einstein
Windows NT 4.0 had 99% of the XP potential, security, NTFS and network featuers and an infinitely smaller "footprint" (it still runs on an old server of mine, a Pentium _1_, 64M RAM), but people bought Windows 2000 and then XP.You state that your performance in Vista is the same as XP, while also indicating that one should not make the jump to Vista unless the hardware is up to the task. This is the issue that so many of us are having. Why go through the pain and cost of upgrading when there is little to no tangible benefit?
The issues were about companies did not like to have to write new drivers "so soon", since XP looks all but obsolete and they were still designing products made for XP.There were so many issues surrounding the Vista release and how it differed from the version software vendors received that even the big companies seemed to give up on it.
The intended cheap hardware company plan would be to write max 1 driver per new peripheral.
The Microsoft plan is to slam down as many Windows release as often as possible, screwing hardware vendors that work with very tight schedules and budgets already.
I write mission and life critical control software for corporations, production lines and even small companies. It's low level enough to span from serial / low level TCP / IP Siemens / Omron PLC control software to the WEB site for querying the customers orders and do CRM.I imagine your shop is a .net shop or is creating software with limited hardware control. Wild guess on my part, but those seem to be some of the applications that ported across fairly easy.
All it takes is not to suck and / or be cheap.
Horizons is the single software I used out of thousands that has this kind of issues.But when even some of Microsoft's software wouldn't run on their own OS you know there is a problem. I certainly wouldn't lay the blame on any Horizons developers for that one.
I can imagine some old production line low level control program might have issues, but those issues were here since those ancient DOS programs had to be adapted to run in a multitask / GUI OS.
I still don't see Vista less compatible than some Solaris or Novell releases I had to admin, I still have orders of magnitude less issues installing a S.A.N. Java control application there than on Sun OS or even Linux (which I always preferred Debian exactly because of old apps porting issues).
The big mistake at Microsoft was to enable too much crap by default. No one really gives a toss to have their games neatly indexed, nor their hard disk violated by that most idiotic and pervasive "search index" service.
And they achieved the insanely hard objective of developing a startup cache for last used applications and still to mis-market it bad enough that people see it as a bloat and slow down.
Vista without that crap runs almost as well as XP but is more usable and comfortable, running since March 2007 on 3 computers here, without a single BSOD or anything.
Vahrokh Vain - Ancient dragon level 100 adv 100 craft 34M of untainted, fireworks and other crap free hoard.
Isarion - Reaver Healer Spiritist, many craft classes.
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