new client....

about the server question, from wat i understand, only around 120 people can log on and the game lags bad for almost everyone when only 80 people log on. in runescape, the servers usually arent the problems when players face lag.

about the message boards, i mean the one linked from the main page for faldon.

The current server could handle 200-some players if its bandwidth were upgraded. I sent in the forms Dec. 4th but the folks providing our connection said they never got them so I need to get around to resending them (to upgrade from 1 to 5 Mbit/sec). The server doesn't even use 10% CPU at any time (it's a Prescott P4 running at 2.8GHz IIRC) so the connection is the entire bottleneck there.

The new client will not mean any changes to the server in and of itself. A new server will come later. Really I just started up again a couple days ago now that I've replaced my keyboard mouse and monitor with less harmful versions (a Kinesis Contoured keyboard, a touchpad instead of a mouse and a LCD instead of CRT monitor). Anyhow, characters will not transfer to a new server though as far as citizenship and accounts I'll probably end up making the same accounts work with both.

The new client will likely reuse most of the same art initially so those things will be finished, yeah.

The issue is that the current client and server use a single byte for the player ID. So exactly it could do 255, minus the four connections reserved for the server monitor (which reboots it when it's crashed) But as it stands the server takes any connection and gives it a number, so people in the chat client can reduce that number when they're trying to see if the server's up, things of that sort. So the functional number is lower.

To do more would require the new client to be done. It'd be a significant number of changes on the server, too, since it's an enormous mess of spaghetti code Anyway I hope that helps

As far as mechapumpkins, etc. they do look cheap, yeah.. But there are only a few in the game and originally I had thought I'd just use them as an event monster. The download is pretty big as is, mostly because of armor (20MB a pop, compresses to about 5, and that's per gender)... Were the game 3D none of this would be a problem.. ah well I'm starting to go off topic. We could do that though, the blue dragon for reference is artdir/0.pc2/67.pc2, to give you an idea how much space a monster of that size takes. It's some, but nothing compared to armor, but it does all add up. Well it's not something for right now if anything