Quote:
-->Removal of notepad and IRC client
Reason: Features are taking up space and are useless. IRC is not connected to a channel that actually has people in it and nobody that I know of needs any notes other than the mission data or other announcements.
Connect to a populated IRC client, then. Or better yet: Don't purchase the software if you don't use it. Notepad could be more useful though, but I guess that's only because of limitations into how I can use it. For instance, if it could be used while the game was paused, I'd definitely use it more often.
Quote:
-->Removal of reduce CPU usage buttons
Reason: We are trying to be hackers not rookies so we should not need to slow down our usage of the CPU.
Hey! I actually use those! Don't remove them!
You see, their utility lies in giving you the option of reducing the CPU usage of one program in particular, re-spreading those CPU cycles to all your other currently-running programs. This is particularly useful when you have a bunch of programs already running, and then you start something lightweight such as a trace tracker that doesn't require much CPU in the first place. This new program will immediately try to hog a large portion of CPU, which it doesn't need. If the reduce CPU buttons were missing, I'd have to try to manually juggle with all the other programs running, unbalancing them in the process. No, I'd much rather click one left arrow and get back to my hacking.
Quote:
-->Moving close program button to where CPU reduce usage was
Reason: Much better access to full CPU usage button and relocation of a button that can be accidentally pressed.
While I wouldn't say moving it there (since I opt to keep the buttons), having a little space (thereby moving the rest of the CPU panel a tad to the left) between the CPU buttons and the cancel button would be nifty.
Quote:
-->Add a filter option on the map
Reason: Hard to find computers when lots of them are registered.
That would be totally awesome. While you're at it, bring back the link-highlight feature (right-clicking on a "Show Link" button in the main view makes the node show up a different color in the map, such as orange or red. Ideally, throw in multiple colors with the ability to rotate between them, and Hiding/Re-Displaying the button - with a double-click - returns the node to default color).
EDIT: I was still pondering how the notepad could be made more useful, and I came up with something I think would be pretty cool - Drag'n'Drop Stuff!
The main idea started with being able to simply select an IP link, either from the main view, from InterNIC (or other DNSes), from logs, or a few other places, and drag and drop it to a notepad window or even a mail window (which is also inspiring me for a "find a machine" type of mission, where you have to find a certain machine with certain properties or containing a certain file/type of file - and while we're in there, some "Create a user account on a corporate system" mission where you have to hack admin to create a user account for the client, and then drag'n'drop the code pair for that account to the reply message), and that once dragged there can be clicked, dragged to the main window, or whatever else you can think of. If possible/viable, this could even be extended to bank accounts, log entries (but then you'd have to add an additional mouse-catcher that would detect whether the mouse is dragging a specific part of the log, such as an IP or other number, or the whole log by clicking and dragging outside of any such selectable parts), codes, programs & files (dragging and dropping a file would automatically start the file copier v1.0 and tell it to copy the selected file to the dragged location) and other misc. fields (for instance, information fields in the GCD, IAD, ISSD, DNS Records Display, etc.).
Also: While we're still at it, if you're going for a recode, you might as well start externalizing more stuff, such as mission-types and software and hardware upgrades. I don't know how much can already be modified externally (I only know that you can add/mod gateways and LANs with overrides), but having more stuff out there more easily accessible can only be a good thing IMO - unless that would cause too much of a strain on a player's machine, but AFAIK just loading more content in memory at start would only slightly increase the RAM requirement (aside from the initial parsing), which is fairly low for Onlink at the moment...