[CF-Devel] Future of maps.

[Mark Wedel]

dnh wrote:
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      I am interested in this auto join feature? will it auto join
     
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      monsters/items? Will the AI run with the monsters on another map?
     
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      might this cause problems? For example, if the ai is working, then all the
     
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      monsters will walk to the edge of the map, but for some magical reason
     
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      they can't cross it.. =)
     
     
 The maps will be autojoined, but the way I see doing it, everything on the maps
won't see the joining - ie, 4 autojoined maps will effectively appear as just
one large map.

 This means that monsters can run accross it, arrows fly accross the boundaries,
dimension door would do the right thing, etc.

 I am sure there will be lots of bugs.  Just thinking about it, monster logic
uses the coordinates to find distances, and that probably won't work right if
players are on different maps.  And in fact, a lot of things that check for map
would need to be redone (for example, checking to see if object is on the same
map is pretty vague in such a case - if two characters are on the tiled maps
standing at the edge, they would be considered on different maps, but for
everything else, should be able to interact properly.

 Probably everything that looks at the map or x,y values would need to be
re-examined in the code.


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      #1 means the continents (worldmaps) are just plain boring (like they
     
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      are now). Travelling is short, but still so pointless that people want
     
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      teleporters in their apartments. The continents don't have any serious
     
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      "structure". The worldmap is just a big bunch of linked exits.
     
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      The sole advantage of this concept is the simplicity of design.
     
      
I'm thinking more with scale than implementation.  If map tiling is added, the
linking of exits could be removed.  But you still have the problem of a pretty
small and pretty congested area.

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      #3 is in my opinion an overdue. We might get the opposite problem:
     
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      Lack of detail due to the incredible size of maps. Huge roads
     
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      and buildings, a player must walk about hundred squares only to get
     
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      from the magic store to the weapon store.
     
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      Not to speak of the immense work to create maps like that.
     
     
 Yes - its a lot of work.  Movement speed would be much more important, as
otherwise journeys could really drag on.  And I'm not really sure how much it
helps in the wilderness.  While everything is farther apart, the stuff you do
find is bigger - ie, the tower of demonology, at least the first floor, would be
something like a 30x30 area on the map, so you only need to get somewhat close.

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      #2 seems perfect since only the worldmaps need to get redone (not
     
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      the cities). And the worldmaps are in bad need for a redo anyways. :)
     
     
 The hard part in basically all the proposals is fixing all the exits.  It isn't
hard work, just a lot of it.  Some scripts could probably be written to automate
that pretty easily (city 5,5 is now world_g3 12,12, and it could apply similar
offsets for most everything else).  And of course broken exits would get
discovered quite quickly.

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      We would need to introduce a set of blocking worldmap tiles (mountains,
     
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      dense forest, etc) to get a "structure" into the new, scaled-up worldmaps.
     
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      Basically like walls in dungeons. Another issue is monster
     
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      generation/control, but it could be handled just like in dungeons.
     
     
 Note this already exists (some mountains do block view, as do jungle spaces). 
IMO what would be cooler than absolute blockage would be incremental blockage of
some sort.  Ie, you can't see through a 10 deep thick forest, but could through
perhaps a 2-3 deep forest (maybe it blocks absolute at say 5 spaces).  This
could probably borrow from the darkness code in some sense.

 Thus could of course get extended to other effects.  Rain may add a blocking
factor of .2/space, so you can only see 5 spaces along a clear road in the rain,
but only 2-3 (really 2.5) spaces through the forest when its raining.


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      Having that set, the worldmaps act pretty much like dungeons and
     
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      provide some adventure for travellers. Reaching certain places might
     
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      require a certain character level - That is terrific IMHO.
     
     
 on the todo list is the idea of spontaneous monster creation without
generators.  Ie, a forest space has some % chance of generate a
forest_creature.  I'm sure that could get optimized such that you wouldn't need
to have all the forest spaces have speed - instead, in the map object itself
(internal), it could tally number of each time of space and just store that in
the map object, and periodically generate from that or the like.

 Some thing would generate nastier creatures - mountains/badlands could generate
stuff nasty enough to be a dangerous for low level people (say like wyverns or
hill giants from the hills) - if your travelling through a lot of hills, you may
run into one, or you may be lucky and not.  This could effectively block some
areas from low level people.