SwiftKit (SwiftSwitch v3)

24 January 2008 – 11:01am

Just because I have my own RuneScape Client it doesn’t mean I can’t post about other Clients and have a non-biased opinion…

Just like most other people I’ve tried SwiftSwitch and was impressed with what it had to offer, but having access to SwiftKit closed BETA I was able to check it out and actually see what is what.

I have to be brutally honest and to the point, I’m not impressed with SwiftKit at all, the actual appearance of the Client looks, well, bloated and horrible. I know that my Client doesn’t have a flashy interface at all, but it’s not supposed to, it’s a “Light-Weight Client”. I hate the fact that there are pointless loading bars everywhere, quite honestly, if your Client actually does take such a long time to load then you’re clearing doing something wrong, I also hate the percentage bars you get when you view highscores, as if we don’t see these enough on Forums and websites already in signatures? (and that’s coming from me, a guy who created such things).
The horrible water-mark over the RuneScape Client, the “SK” is really annoying just like the old “SS” was. On to the IRC Client (created by Sephiroth) the latest version which is used in SwiftKit just proves how bloated and ugly SwiftKit really is, in Sephiroth‘s defence I don’t think he would have made such an ugly looking IRC Client if Strider (creator of SwiftSwitch/SwiftKit) didn’t ask for the design.
The armoury (Equipment Calculator in LSK, created by Rune HQ) I must admit would have been a great idea… About a year ago. With Rune HQ‘s Equipment Bonus calculator (although it’s made with flash) in my honest opinion is a lot better, plus it’s the original.

Enough about bad points lets talk about the good points. The only thing that impressed me the most was the Clan lookup (via RuneHead) which isn’t new to RuneScape Clients at all, mine for example has been running over 3 months, in fact, SwiftKit is the last to produce such a utility, almost every Client out there has it. The other thing what caught my attention (didn’t impress me) was the Monster Database lookup, which again isn’t anything new. The first one of these I saw was by Covey (creator of EliteSwitch, an illegal RuneScape Client) and it looks a whole lot better than the one that SwiftKit uses.

In summary, I personally would rather Strider update SwiftSwitch than SwiftKit because it doesn’t have anything new or exciting in it, although it may have been re-coded and used maybe 200 less lines of code it appears to load a lot slower and sluggishly, at least, that’s the impression I get from all the pointless loading bars.

In Strider’s defence I know he doesn’t play RuneScape any more and I’m not going to sit here and write/say he’s a pathetic coder because he isn’t, I’d never do that to any coder (unless they didn’t write something their self) but why re-write a program that was already better than the one in the future? (I’m saying SwiftSwitch is better than SwiftKit) it makes no sense at all.

But who am I to say? That’s just the opinion I have about SwiftKit.