Des reg
Sonic reg
The whole thing LOOKS great. I love the roundtime bars in the command prompt box, thats the best. All the windows look cool, and I was running around getting the descriptions of as many critters as possible , just to see how that worked (very good BTW)
The defualt font choices were also very nice.
Function wise it's a different story.
For those who are still clinging to 15" monitors, have bad eyes, or for some other reason have a 800x600 display resolution-- it sucks. I don't believe I'll ever get over having to scroll up or down to see my injuries or the exits, and i'll definately have a hard time choosing between the two.
What chucks this up into the unbearable category is the fact that you can't to the best of my knowledge move around the windows in the panel with the exception of verticial switharounds. Same for the top hands section. Would it be that hard to allow you to expand the frame for the panels and move those bad boys around a bit, and change their size?
I don't need a 400x400 pixel picture of my room exits, the pictures pretty, but it would be equally as pretty cutting it in half. This would also allow, i believe, for it to be on the screen with the other way-to-large windows without having to scroll through.
The faults of having a web based front end are making themselves apparent already.
My first experience with the new front end was a pain. I click on the button and up comes the load screen with the pretty logo.
I knew i was in for a treat when the loading took 5 minutes. While it was loading I had a nice peak at the FAQ, which assured me that i can still play it with windows 2000, but because they were chicken to use 100% Java, it won't be availible for mac (and i assume no linux also--booo!).
I jump right in to a swarm of creatures. Move south a few rooms (the now-natural number pad movement is still in effect, nice) and try to peruse the options -- of course i had to verify the script option, even if it wasn't working. Big ole hour glass. Ok, so i'll go fight those creatures... hmmm.... can't type anything into the window, can't exit the options window because its not present yet-- I go read the rest of the faq, check back, read the version notes, check back, read the known issues.
When ive thouroghly read everthing and checked the boards twice, still no window. A few creatures enter the room and start swinging. At this point i realize the broken picture link in the upper corner is the injury/scar display. Not the best information to be unavailible when your being attacked and have no way of typing anything. Luckily i remembered to stance down earlier. I had enough of creatures just swinging at me, so i had to ctrl-alt-del my way out of the window, which of course ended all other internet explorer windows, including the boards and the faq i was reading a little more in depth...
As is alot of things, it sounds great in theory,works great in testing, but fails miserably (at least so far) in the real world.
I hope beta really means beta, not just complete version that nobodies ran yet.
Hope they can find away to clean up the code.
I'm crossing my fingers for user programmed enhancements. I heard alot about GM's being able to customize the panes and stuff, i'd like to be able to submit some java code snippets as well.
The settings saved on the server is nice, as is the logging features. I don't really feel confortable storing my scripts on SIMU servers, but they probably send the script in its entirety over as soon as its ran anyway 
.
Final Verdict:
The "wots a directory?", can't-find-the-file-they-downloaded-yesterday, "son come help me" crowd this is supposedly targetting usually connects via AOL with a dialup. That said, they will have major headaches trying to use this beast(literally too if they have to use 1000x resolution, which of course they won't know how to change...). The more advanced probably won't appreciate everything the new FE does diferent for quite awhile, and don't want to sacrifice reliability for something they already have installed on their computer anyway.
The best place to use this is at school or work at the moment. And work only during breaks (last thing you need is to bring the whole computer down because you tried to click option..."Oh hi mr. next customer, i was playing a game and broke my computer")
So:
Slow, buggy, pretty!, unstable, potential to cost you a few deeds, did i mention slow ?
'lood
"escape eh? try ctrl-alt-del, more fitting title..."
[This message has been edited by kelood (edited 09-07-2001).] reg
Looks pretty (and I mean real pretty)... but unfortunately it performs too poorly for me to prefer it.
Perhaps in the future they will clear up some bugs, get it beta tested by the typical GS player on a typical computer and then work out some major problems.
I'll be sticking to the Wizard FE.
- Lord Kranar, human Archwizard reg
But it's not the Wizard.
Simply put, I don't want to do all my highlights, etc. all over again.
I'm staying with wizard. reg