[CF-Devel] Containers

[Michael Toennies]

Hi

I have a idea, i got in mind some month ago when i playing cf.
I think about it as i find a bug.

But let me show what we has as containers:

At the moment, there are 5 "kind" of containers you can have in your
inventory:

- all items (bag, sack, chests, bookshelves)
- money, gems (pouches)
- keys (keyrings)
- arrows (holder of arrows)
- bolts (holder of bolts)

There should perhaps one more container: a scroll holder. Thats a AD&D
official item,
and it should be useful for cf too.

You can toggle then with apply in a 3 stage loop: unapplied, applied, open.
You can apply as many container you want.
You can only open one container at the time.
To close him, you must toggle him in the main inventory.

You can put a container in a container (all items type)
You can't apply or open a container in a container.

Thats what we have.

As a bug, i find this:
In some cases you apply a container of some sort, for example a holder of
arrow (you have also only
one of it in your inventory). Now you playing with a pounch and apply him.
For some reason, if you now go with autopickup over a arrow, the arrow isn't
insert
in the holder of arrows. Also a get don't put him in. You must toggle the
holder 3 times
to apply him again then it work. I don't test it really out, but has anyone
the same
experience?

Well, i find that the work with container is not very comfortable for the
player at this moment.
Is a kind of complicate and when you apply 3-4 bags and sacks, you really
don't know
whats going on with your items and where they goes.

Also, its not very logic to apply a container and you must give then a
explicit cmd to open it.
You should ready the container and then you should have the control about
it, means put item in
and be able to control whats in.

After some thinking if find a way to do that, do only some minor changes to
cf. It will not effect
gameplay but it will make the containers much more effective. The windows
client and the linux
client use different interfaces for it, but both are weak (windows) or are
complicate (unix).

Because we have 5 sorts of containers, we can add a bar of containers next
to the inventory. It will
also work without a bar, simply show the container automatically if you have
selected the container in
the main inventory. But i will explain the bar idea.

This means 1 slot for 1 applied kind of container.

What we need for this is, that only one container of one type can be applied
at the time. So, only
one bag can be applied. If they are applied, they are also open. The items
struct need to be
updated for *container_items, *container_keys and so on. But they are only
4(5) pointers,
because we can't apply more.

Now can always show the container and the main inventory. Changing the
container window and the inventory
windows goes like a norton commander like panel system. Get and put item cmd
also.

This gives the player a much more better control about his containers, it
make it easier on server side
(never more than one of a container type, for example simply check for
pickup a arrow container_arrow,
if there is none check container_bag, if none it goes direct in main
inventory.)

Also, the interface on client side will be much better. The container you
see in the container bar is the
active container, all items go in this, and the shown itemlist of a
container is the one  of the selected container in bar list. And to change a
container in the bar list, simply go to the inventory and apply a
different container, and it will exchanged in the bar to the old one.

This is straight, because the normal inventory stuff for wear and wield work
in the absolut same way.
This will bring the logic for all items in the same way.

MichToen