xale/itetrinet

TetriNET Client Developed for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

itetrinet's Issues

Game actions list steals keyboard focus

The list of actions on the game view is currently able to steal keyboard focus from the field, which means that all of the local player's keyboard input stops working.

Multiple-line clears should reward multiple copies of specials

It appears that some other clients may reward multiple copies of acquired specials if the player collects them with multiple-line completions; e.g., a Tetris (4 simultaneous lines) awards 4-6 copies of any specials inside those lines. Needs investigation (i.e., read the GTetrinet source.)

"Use on self" key

Add a key binding specifically reserved for using a special on the local player. The reasoning behind this is that it is much faster to remember a specific key than fumble for the correct player number each game.

Growl support

Growl support (for events like players joining and leaving, chat messages and games starting and ending) would be a very nice thing, especially if users could configure the notifications to be on, off, or only when the app is in the background.

There should be notifications for the following events:

• Players joining the channel
  
• Players leaving the channel
  
• Players changing their team
  
• Games starting
  
• Games being paused
  
• Games being resumed
  
• Players being eliminated from the game
  
• Games ending
  
• Announcing the winning player
  

View bindings not implemented

All of the custom NSView subclasses with bindable properties don't actually have the bindings-compliant backend code necessary to make them work. How they are able to anything at all has me completely lost.

Sparkle support

Sparkle (the third-party auto-update framework) support, while more difficult to add than Growl support, would also be a good addition to iTetrinet.

Game view architecture needs restructuring

The current architecture of the game view (i.e., the code connecting the "Game" tab of the main window to the model) is in need of a major rewrite.

Themes are not copied to user's Application Support directory

At the moment, Themes store only loose references to the original theme file's location, and load all information from that file when the Theme is loaded. This will break if the user moves any of the necessary files.

In future, Themes should automatically copy all the files they need to the user's Application Support directory, and hold references to those files only, ensuring that they are always available.

Game actions need formatting

The list of game actions (lines sent and specials used) should use formatted text; color, at the very least.

Switch field "safety margin" commented-out?

The code to push the field down by up to 6 lines after a switch field special is used appears to be commented-out in the game view controller; this is exceedingly strange, since I thought that code was working. Needs to be investigated further.

Specials view should indicate capacity

The specials view on the game tab needs some way of indicating its present capacity (i.e., how many specials it can hold at maximum.)

No support for "same pieces" option

Version 1.14 of the protocol supports a feature that gives all players the same sequence of falling blocks. The implementation of this is described in the developer documentation on the jetrix site. At some point, iTetrinet should add this version of the protocol, adding a protocol version pop-up menu in the server list.

Off-by-n error in text attribute parsing

There appears to be an offset error in the parsing of text attributes on incoming message: attribute ranges end one or two characters two early. (To be precise, the attribute ranges appear to end early by exactly the number of open attribute tags.)

Game isn't playable

A good deal of the code needed to play Tetris is still unfinished: specials don't work, there's no end-of-game detection, etc.

Unified winlist

Having looked more closely at GTetrinet's implementation, the current two-table style for the winlist should probably be removed in favor of a single table, with an additional column indicating whether the entry is a player or a team.

Partyline messages do not support formatting

Partyline messages are supposed to contain a small amount of formatting information, mostly just for text color, specified on the protocol page. iTetrinet does not presently support this feature.

No channel support

Support for channels has been partially written, but doesn't currently work. The implementation should probably use the TetriNET Query protocol, described here: http://jetrix.sourceforge.net/dev-guide.php#section2-5

Game chat field tab key issue

Pressing the tab key while the game chat field has keyboard focus causes the focus to move to other parts of the UI, which can be a problem if the user is in the middle of a game and can't quickly move focus back to the game field.

Confirmation dialogs needed

User confirmation dialogs are needed for the following situations:

• Quitting the app when connected to a server
  
• Closing the server connection while a game is in progress
  
• Quitting the app when the "key bindings" section of the preferences window has unsaved changes

Bolded text in game actions list changes size

For some odd reason, the ranges of text in the game actions list that are displayed in bold are also drawn in a larger size, causing the text to be clipped by the edges of the cell, and reducing the available space. This needs to be fixed.

No "game over" detection

The game is mostly playable, but at the moment, the local player cannot lose the game, since there are no checks in the game view controller for when the player loses.

Pause button

Toolbar needs a pause button, menu needs a pause menu item. Connect to the Tetrinet protocol's "pause" feature.

Also: determine whether a "pause" message can be sent by any player, or just the moderator/operator.

Reserve number keys for specials

The keyboard preferences pane needs to be configured to disallow the assignment of the top-of-keyboard number keys 1-6, which are used for sending specials.

See also: issue #11.

Game chat key binding does nothing

The "game chat" key binding hasn't been implemented yet; it should cause key focus to move from the user's field view to the chat field. (Focus should return to the field view as soon as a message has been sent.)

See also: #29

Game chat field steals keyboard focus

Similar to #27. The game chat field should return keyboard focus to the local player's field after the user sends a message.

Specials view needs some improvements

The specials view could really use a border, as this would make it easier to see the capacity of the queue, and possibly some subtle lines on the background delineating exactly how many specials would fit.

jetrix complains of malformed field updates

When certain field updates (specifically, updates after a line has been cleared) are sent to the server, jetrix spits out some information about index-out-of-bounds exceptions, and then complains about receiving a malformed field update from the client. The code for generating the fieldstring needs to be checked, as this is likely the culprit.

"Next Block" view does not center images

The "Next Block" view box correctly shows the preview of the next block to fall, but it does not center the image. This has to do more with the way the block-images are created in the first place, so this probably needs to be solved by adding another method to the iTetBlock drawing category, that will render an NSImage of the block without any transparent padding, which is only necessary when the block is actually on the board.

Specials queue is deallocated with observers still attached

Two items on the main window interface—specifically, the specials view and the label with the name of the currently-selected special—are bound to properties of the local player's specials queue, and when the local player is released (e.g., when disconnecting from a server) these bindings remain "attached" to the deallocated queue.

Probably would be fixed by #14.

Hard to read green text on green background in actions list

The blue and red text show up very well in the game actions even when drawn on a background of the similar color, (used for highlighting) but the green text is nearly impossible to read. The text should either be darkened or the background lightened to increase legibility.

"Switch to chat after game" preference

GTetrinet switches back to the chat view tab when a game ends; this should probably be added as a checkbox in the General pane of the preferences window.

No winlist support

iTetrinet currently discards the winlist sent by the server when the user first connects. Ideally, it should maintain this list in another tab of the main window.

TextAttributes doesn't strip non-printing characters

The TextAttributes -formattedMessageFromData: method currently leaves-in any non-printing characters in incoming messages used as formatting bytes by the TetriNET protocol; most of these cause no problems when the message is printed into the chat text view, but some (such as newlines) cause issues. This should be changed so that the characters are removed.

Can't connect to certain servers

The client reliably receives an end-of-stream from some servers (e.g., nenoth.ietfng.org) very shortly after joining and receiving the player number message, causing an immediate disconnect in the eyes of the user.

"End Game" does nothing

Pressing the "new game" button (which should be changed to an "end game" button) after the game has started, brings up a confirmation sheet asking whether to end the game in progress, but the sheet's callback does nothing. There is currently no way to end a game in progress.

Also, leaving the server does not clear the game controller's state, so it still thinks there is a game in progress.

Keyboard prefs pane doesn't distinguish numeric-keypad number keys

While the non-numpad 1-6 keys are reserved, the 7-9 and 0 keys are not, along with all keys on the numpad. This creates a minor issue with the user not being able to tell these keys apart from one another in the keyboard preferences pane; e.g., numpad 7 looks exactly like the non-numpad 7, but these are different keys "behind the covers." For clarity's sake, some sort of annotation should be added to the numpad key-images.

"NSMutableData subdataWithRange: causes integer overflow"

Noticed this in the logging output when testing the other day. Appears to happen after disconnecting from one server and connecting to another. Probably occurring in the network controller, but needs to be tracked down precisely, if it can be reproduced.

Pieces are not centered on entering the board

Several pieces ("blocks") are not properly centered when they first enter the board. This should be address, since it potentially creates a balance issue.

"Active special" label doesn't work

The label next to the specials view on the "Game" tab of the main window is supposed to display the name of the first special in the local player's view, but instead always displays "No Special".

See also: #14, #15

App continues running when main window is closed

The app should terminate when the user closes the main window (after asking for confirmation, of course.)

Key binding views' key images could be prettier

The images generated by the iTetKeyView views are not the finest graphic design. At some point in the future, I'll have to decide whether to make custom images for the keys, (ugh) or if there is a way to programmatically generate nicer images (perhaps using a set of template images.)

The highlighting needs work too.

Operator player is determined incorrectly

iTetrinet has so far been working under the naive assumption that the player with player number "1" in the current channel is always the "operator" (with start/stop game permissions, etc.) This is apparently incorrect, and the operator number can be shifted around under various conditions. This behavior needs to be pinned down more precisely, and then accounted for.

Local player's name in alternate color

It might be beneficial to print the local player's name in a different color on the chat views, to help distinguish what the user has said from incoming messages.

No support for numeric keypad

The keyboard bindings preferences do no distinguish between ordinary, top-of-keyboard number keys and the number keys (and other keys) on a numeric keypad. This is an issue because most TetriNET clients reserve the (non-numpad) 1-6 keys as "targeting" keys for specials (i.e., press a player's number to send a special to that player.)

"No bytes on read" currently un-handled

The network controller periodically receives a "HasBytesAvailable" event from the read socket, attempts to read, and receives no bytes from the stream. Currently, this occurrence prints a warning and does nothing else, but I believe this may be NSStream's way of saying "end-of-stream," in which case the client should probably disconnect and display an error message.

Field views should indicate when a player has lost

Field views currently have no indication (except perhaps a "death field" update sent by the server, like Jetrix's "Jetrix field") that the player in that slot is dead, which makes it difficult to determine if a player is still playing.

Some blocks can't be rotated at top of field

Certain blocks in certain configurations can't be rotated when they first spawn on the board, and the collision-detection code prevents them from doing so. A special-case check should be added, to shift these blocks downward one row and allow them to rotate.

Hang on connecting to www.tetrinet.us

The app hangs for up to thirty seconds when attempting to connect to www.tetrinet.us, with absolutely no response to user input or interface updates. Activity Monitor samples appear to indicate that the app is blocking on [NSHost hostWithName:] in the network controller; my guess is that this is a DNS lookup taking too long and preventing the next iteration of the run loop, which may be difficult to fix.

"Offline" mode

It shouldn't be too hard to create an offline-play mode, allowing users to play Tetris without being connected to a server.

Game actions list truncates actions

Some game action descriptions are too long to fit in the width of the game actions list, and are truncated by the table. GTetrinet handles this by drawing the remainder of the message on the next line, but this is difficult to do with table views.