I guess this is for Betalord to read, but feel free to comment on it even if you're not him :). Although the current client is great, I would like to see the following changes:

1. Ability to host a game on a LAN without connecting / setting up a server.
2. A logon screen a la MSN where you have to enter your username / password, can select the server you want to connect to, and select if you want the client to remember you and / or if it has to reconnect at startup. This logon-screen would be the first thing you see when you start up the client and would replace the first two tabs of the Preferences window.
   Believe it or not, I actually play this game on public computers, and changing this would make my life a whole lot easier.
3. Move the maplist in the battle window to the right, so that it can fill the whole of the window from top to bottom (much like the player list in the main window), and show all of the minimaps next to the mapnames. This would make selecting a map a tad easier.
4. Make the battlelist sortable by the columns (like the filepane in windows explorer is by Name, Size, Type, Modified), and perhaps make it even filterable.
5. Add columns to the playerlist in the main window (name, status, rank, country), and make it sortable by just clicking on the column titles (like the proposed battelist change).
6. Let the client remember the order of the columns of the battlelist.
   Right now you can move them around, but the client forgets their order if you shut it down.

If you'd implement these suggestions you would become my personal hero, but remember that I love your client as-is right now. Nonetheless, it could be just a little bit better ...

made it easier to developers and use Mantis to submit feature suggestions (one at once or group similar in one report) http://taspring.clan-sy.com/mantis/

thanks

Thanks for the tip, I'll also post it there.

These are the ones I know answers to off the top of my head:

1. He wants to do that (so it can support single player without joining the server first), but in order to do that he needs to use code from the server software. It's written in Java, so that would mean for *anyone* to be able to use the client, they would need the JRE. He's said if you can find a free compiler that will compile it to a standalone exe, he can easily do this.

3. He wants to retain support for 640x480

4. Planned, I think

Really? That's a noble goal, but hardly worth the effort IMHO. How many people do you know that are still on 640x480? Supporting only 800x600 is a safe bet, I'd say.

I just remember that Sun has recently made some SDK's opensource (I read it in a Dutch newspost). Seems like Java Enterprise System, Sun N1 Management Software and developmenttools, like Sun Studio 11, Sun Java Studio Enterprise 8 and Sun Java Studio Creator are freely aviable. I just checked Sun's website, and you can just download Studio 11.
There's probably a jar -> exe tool somewhere in one of those software packages.

[edit]
The original press release by Sun can be found here: http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2 ... 130.1.html

Not sure what you're talking about, Studio 11 is set of tools for C/C++ and fortran developers and works on Solaris/Linux, not Windows. But if you come up with a direct link to a free tool that can do jar->exe, do tell :)

Just one simple client issue: Make double clicking a replay in the list do the same as selecting the replay and clicking "Watch".
Sounds very easy to do.

it does.

Ah, great...
Last time I tested this, it didn't.

/me jumps off and boots his laptop for testing...