Not sure how the Match Viewer currently gets information from the BB servers, but would it be possible to create a non-browser loaded match viewer?
It's very possible to do. But it's not easy, not by any means. Not bigging myself up here, but the match data is a pig to go through, parse and sort out properly. That's why there are still a few bugs in the viewer here and there. Besides, the flash viewer itself is pretty much intertwined with the data and contains a number of the algorithms for display purposes, so to get the exact same output in another app would also mean dumping the flash code out. Suffice to say the whole project would require a short manual and would be a slog to do. I wept tears of pain during the ordeal of making the viewer, I wouldn't want that on anyone else :-)
Parsing the data server side for nice, easily readable, well formatted chunks for an external application is a possiblity, albeit probably a server killing option, but one that's not really on the list of things to do. The containing XML wrapper would most likely be huge and unwieldly
This may reduce how CPU intensive it is (at least by removing the need for a browser running at the same time). I am not sure about reduced performance of in-browser flash compared to standalone flash apps. But I would assume the standalone (especially in windows) would be more efficient.
I can consider making a standalone flash for external use, once we get a proper I/O interface up on the servers.
Edited 10/1/2007 10:31:31 PM by BB-OxidusEdited 10/1/2007 10:33:37 PM by BB-Oxidus