[freespace2] CD-ROM status update

[Michael.Wagener at materna.de]

> I've got detection pretty much worked out.  I'm only scanning mount
> points rather than devices now so it's a bit more reliable.  This also
> let me easily add the ability to use multiple cd-rom drives.  In other
> words, if you have two drives then load both discs and don't 
> worry about
> switching them.  A new ini option is PromptForCD which, when set, will
> let the game require a cd in the drive to play, otherwise a 
> cd will NOT
> be used.  I would like some input from everyone as to whether or not
> this should be on by default.

I think the default should be to NOT require the CD. This is due to
the fact, that the most common setup (IMHO) would be the single
desktop maintained by the experienced player. These people should
have seen the movies already and keep FS only for gameplay.
One more reason is described below.

> I also made sure that a user defined mount point is available with the
> ini option CDMountPoint.  The mount points I scan are the 
> same ones that
> Loki Setup uses plus a couple of additions so if you have trouble with
> Loki Setup finding your drive let me know and I'll make sure 
> it's added.
> The user defined mount point will also let you point to a 
> NFS/SMB mount
> which has the contents of all of the CDs on it.  I figure this would
> help out for the odd LAN party so you don't have to make sure everyone
> has a disc to play.

This is one more reason to not require the CD. The most common setup
for LAN parties would be to play off of a network share or to copy
the contents of that share to a local drive. Both would not go well,
if starting the game without a previously existing .freespace would
prompt for a CD.

> The movie code has also been expanded to read movies off of the CD if
> one is available but not require it.  Viewing cutscenes in 
> the tech room will prompt for a CD if the ini option is set.

Good idea. In fact I am halfway through implementing it myself.
Well...

> The only problem at the moment is managing the different discs if a
> change is needed.  Mounting/ejecting on different platforms and
> auto-mounters are the only real holdup.  I'm not sure how to 
> handle this correctly so if anyone has any suggestions I'm all ears.

Do we agree, that you do not want to do this remotely? I mean, you do only
want to manage locally mounted media?
Then I am beginning to think about the two major desktop environments.
Both of them include a media management system. Since I am somewhat
familiar with gnome-vfs I'd volunteer to look into it's possibilities
of solving this problem. Or am I falling short on this?

Regards,
Mike