[CF-Devel] Future development & version 1.0.

[Peter Mardahl]

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      > I think crossfire was a good game deserving of 1.0 years ago.  It's
     
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      > been fun to play the entire time I've worked on it.  I really think
     
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      > that in the last years, we've added icing to an already good cake.
     
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      > It was a good game before I ever touched it.
     
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       I think before the client server split, crossfire would not have been ready 
     
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      1.0.  Back when the server did remote x displays, lag was determined by the
     
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      laggiest connection.
     
     
It was perfectly ready for 1.0 as a non-networked game.  I have played
much crossfire all by myself exploring the maps people have created.
Crossfire is truly a worthy game based on that alone.

>
     
      > > 1) Stability of the server.  The server really needs to be able to run fo
     
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      > > under heavy loads with no problems.
     
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      > 
     
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      > The only remaining serious bug I know of is "that map bug":  the one
     
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      > where you come out of an exit and end up in the sea.
     
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       I'll re-look at the enter_exit code - a rewrite may be in order in any case.
     
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      But even that bug seems pretty rare.
     
     
It's quite annoying though.  It's the one thing we "really should fix".
I don't understand that area of code very well, unfortunately.


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       Including the server with maps makes a pretty big distribution.  For example
     
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      client with sounds archive would probably be around 500k or so (presuming we
     
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      only ship the raw sounds and don't do the au sounds).  The bzip2 map archive 
     
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      a tidy 2.6 megabtyes.  Untarred, its like 15 megabytes (or 30 mb - don't
     
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      remember if linux du shows blocks or kb).  That becomes a non trivial archive
     
     
So 5M total for a complete server+maps+client distribution?  And about 40M
of disk space uncompressed?  You... realize, of course, how lightweight
those demands are compared to a great many games?  Or to Netscape?

I'll volunteer to put together RPMs of maps + clients + server:
binary versions.  I will need a client which will allow easy startup
of the local server + metaserver support.  I do not think making
a binary version of the server would be difficult.  I do not
see why you think everyone would have to compile his or her own
server.  What is the difficulty with shipping server binaries?

>
     
      > Random maps.  This is why I DID random maps.  My whole reason for making
     
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      > that huge exertion.
     
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      > This is why I once proposed making cities where, by default,
     
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      > each exit led to a random map.  The random maps are pretty good.
     
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      > They could be much better.  However, no one has done significant work
     
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      > on them but me.   The existing potential of random maps has been only
     
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      > 5% exploited....  For example, I could probably pretty much duplicate
     
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      > nethack with random maps.
     
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       But random maps are still persistant - ie, if I go on the goblin quest, thos
     
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      maps stick around for some amount of time (as evidenced by the fact I can go
     
     
Certainly.  What I was proposing was a greatly expanded application of
random maps, such as a whole city with many buildings, all leading to
deep random maps.  I can also design random maps such that they lead to
more random maps.

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      back and haul out my loot and make multiple trips).  So while it may be easy 
     
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      add lots of random maps, I don't recall a lot of exits leading to them right
     
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      now.
     
     
No, there are about on the order of 10 right now.

>
     
       this is of course easy to fix, and maybe it should be worked on.  I still th
     
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      one of crossfires stronger points are the pre-made maps, but simply put, we
     
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      can't make enough of those fast enough - perhaps with new players, we can get
     
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      new maps created.
     
     
True, which is another reason why I did random maps.  Random maps can
keep ahead of a rapidly growing playerbase, while set maps would have no
hope.

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       And note that for windows client at least, their only real option is to play
     
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      against a public server.  Now the downside of windows only users is that they
     
     
Hmm, honestly, I wasn't considering "evangelizing" to Windows people.
We can, of course, but I wasn't considering targeting them initially.

I'm not too worried about not having a map editor for Windows.  Let
crossedit be their killer app which leads them to Linux!  Certainly
I don't see enough windows-programming-oomph currently around to do
a windows crossedit, nor a new UNIX crossedit, for that matter.

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       True.  Helps if we have real players and not dummy logins or windows that
     
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      aren't doing anything.
     
     
Let's schedule a playday, then, on some server where we can run
it under a debugger.  Crossfire.csua could host it.


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       If so, then I would suggest this for a timeframe:
     
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       In a few weeks, make a 0.99 release to get it out there (basically a 1.0
     
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      beta).  Other than what we have and already proposed enhancements (gods
     
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      rebalancing, PR adjustments), no new features.
     
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       See how that release works out, and a month or so after that, release 1.0. 
     
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      Basically only difference from 0.99 is to squash some more bugs and try to
     
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      balance any remaining issues.
     
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       Sound reasonable?
     
     
Better than reasonable, it sounds great.  Let's:
1) finish up the Gods
2) finish up PR things
3) fiddle with the clients a bit to support the metaserver 
4) and local-server-startup
5) find and crush bugs
6) tune balance and go to 0.99, 
7) with 1.0 coming out a month after 

...as you say.

PeterM