I come with an idea. I know as exciting as the emulator is to everyone that discovers it, I am sure the community is inoculated against posts like this one, where someone has a new idea. With that being said, I know my own nature of getting side tracked with pet projects that never seem to be finished; so, I am not sure how far I could get with this.
Now that I have created plausible deniability for the future... I was trying to think of a project that falls within my abilities and would help me learn some of the emulator. A thought that I had was to create a lightweight client in a browser that uses a global broker (network server) to proxy JSON structs to the c structs and the related server.
Browser Client (2D)
-Uses the .txt maps for the zone representation (possibly as vector graphics for zooming)
-Uses AJAX for asynchronous requests
-Basic symbols to represent Players,NPCs, and Mobs.
-Possibly even a MUD like interface to begin with, with all text commands
Broker
-Server in twisted,
http://www.twistedmatrix.com/
-Convert JSON structs to cstructs
-Act like a client without the graphics
Some thoughts on what people think as far as risks and challenges would be great. Since I am very new to the code, having started reading through it this last week, I know there is a billion things I am missing that could make this impossible. Coupled with my lack of game development experience, and we have a recipe for disaster
Conveying proper movement speeds in flattening 3d movement to 2d movement strikes me as a challenge.
I figured I could look at the mob files and the bot code to give me an idea of a lightweight first go.
I also saw some mention of OpenEQ, and wondered if someone thought there might be some value in looking there, and if so, anyone have any particular areas they think I should focus into first?
Lots of questions, I know... lots of wishful thinking, you bet!
Kit