[CF-Devel] Return home on save?

[Andreas Vogl]

Mark W. wrote:
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      Michael Toennies wrote:
     
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      > Well, log in on save bed position is some hard.
     
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      > Why not make ONE new map cmd? And this must only be insert in some
     
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      > maps - in the maps which BIG monsters, tricky locked mazes and with
     
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      > treasure rooms.
     
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      Adding hints is a good idea, but is a big task - if we want to get 1.0
     
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      out soon, bigger than we want to spend, because not only does it
     
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      potentially mean updating all the maps, this is not an automatic
     
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      process - you need to look at each map and see the suitability.
     
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      Here is a revised idea:
     
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      It is easy to find out how long ago the player was saved off.
     
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      How about something like if the player has saved more than 15 minutes
     
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      (arbitrary time, but I think its reasonable), they are brought back on
     
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      their save bed.  If less than 15 minutes, they got brought back on their
     
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      original position.
     
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      Advantage of this:
     
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      1) Players can't camp out in treasure rooms - I believe the shortest
     
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         map reset time is basically 2 hours after the last player has left.
     
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      2) Players who accidentally disconnect get to resume playing from where
     
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         they were - for better or worse.
     
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      3) Players who purposely disconnect have to wait 15 minutes to get the
     
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         word of recall, which in most cases probably is not a time saver.
     
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      4) Players who somehow get trapped only need to wait a relatively short
     
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         amount of time to get brought back in a place where they can resume
     
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         playing.  This saves the server admin trouble of fixing characters,
     
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         and 15 minutes is probably faster than the server admin will respond
     
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         anyways.
     
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      Thoughts?  Any big problems with the above scheme?
     
     
Yes, I do see a problem with the above scheme. It will be impossible to
take a break from playing (a quest) for more than 15 minutes.
Okay, in most cases it's actually 2 hours (till the maps reset), but
that's still not much.
Crossfire is an addictive game that can be played quickly without
spending much time (E.g. in a "coffee break"). When the time is up
you simply put your char into a safe corner hit <save> and disconnect.
I think it would be very sad if we gave up this big advantage by setting
a 15 minutes time-up. That means the player has to sit at least one full
hour to do certain quests, bad news for "coffee break"-players.
Even I have often disconnected in the middle of Mwizard when
suddenly I had to leave - And returned the other day.

However, I believe MichToen's idea is very good. The issued save/logout
problem only exists on about 0.1% of all maps. If we have this new map-
attribute we could slowly start to apply them at the most important points
(That is the big treasure rooms out there: Mwizard, demonology,
firetemple etc). Later we can extend them to more maps. Lockup-mazes can
usually be corrected by inserting emergency exits. And getting disconnected
on a map with big monsters means death in most cases anyways.


Andreas V.