[CF-Devel] About CVS 11th/May

[Mark Wedel]

Tom Barnes-Lawrence wrote:

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      1)-Configure script broken:
     
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      It thinks libXpm and libpng aren't installed. I noticed
     
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      this in 0.98, but I forget how I got round it then;
     
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      this time I resorted to passing
     
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      --with-ldflags=-L/usr/X11R6/lib to configure.
     
     
 I just looked at the script/configure.in

 Best I can tell, when it tries to link in for the testing of the png and Xpm
libraries, it should be using the same compiler flags as it will when it does
the actual program compile.

 If the link doesn't work at that point, better to bail out there than find out
when we try to do the actual compile.

 Fixing this up to work better may not be really hard, but verifying it actually
works properly for everyone gets fairly difficult (ie, that it doesn't break
anything for people with the libraries in /usr/lib, or /usr/openwin/lib, ...)


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      2) Changes to message text:
     
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      Dnh said the other day that he'd altered the text for
     
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      where you can't pick stuff up, like I'd suggested.
     
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      Thanks for that, but I notice that it's only been
     
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      changed in pick_up(), and not in command_take()-
     
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      The latter seems to apply to using the "," key
     
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      to pick stuff up, so that stills wrongly says "a thing".
     
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      ..
     
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      OTOH, the cost description in examine() seems to be
     
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      changed to say "The It/They would cost" or "You would
     
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      get (money) for the it/them", which are both pretty
     
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      bad- IMHO those were OK before, without "the" in them :)
     
     
 DB: youu want to fix this?

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        ..
     
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      3)Not a bug, just an idea:
     
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        Glancing over the config file, I noticed the random
     
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      encounters thing, and got thinking. The comment there
     
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      suggests the main problem with it was when they turned
     
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      up in the wrong places, which had been my experience also.
     
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        As a variation on maps specifying that encounters can
     
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      occur, how about a config option to allow encounters, but
     
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      only on maps in the /world directory? IMHO that's where
     
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      most of them would be *meant* to happen, so servers could
     
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      use them without them being too obtrusive, and then maybe
     
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      some of those bugs mentioned with them could be found.
     
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        Would this be reasonably simple to implement? Could it
     
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      slow the server down much? Would it be better to pretend
     
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      the encounter maps never existed right now?
     
     
 Probably yeah.  IMO, that should be removed all together with the addition of
the random map code peter added.

 Even if it is limited to world maps, you get into this situation:

 You are wondering through the forest to say the dragon cave.  It generates one
of these encounter maps, and drops you basically in the center.  This map is
full of monsters, but these monsters are relatively easy (your going to the
dragon cave after all!), so it just just becomes a nuisance to head to one of
the edges so you can get out of this.

 So you beat things up in the dragon cave, and head home.  Unfortunately, this
encounter map is still there, and there is no way to tell exactly where it is
(other than memory), so you can into it on your way home, and once again, head
towards the edge.

 So aside from the fact these are really nuisances, even if you want the exp to
kill whatever monsters, these maps are relatively boring - has some number of
monsters, has a little varied terrain, etc.

 If we really want random encounters out there, much more preferable would be to
create a new object type that does this for us.  This would be an invisible map
object.  it would contain some speed value (denoting how often monsters get
generated), perhaps some random fudge factor so it isn't 100% predictable (ie,
it could be 10 minutes one time, and 5 minutes the next), using a treasure list
to know what monsters to generate (and in this way you could actually generate a
group, like a group of orcs, and not just one at a time), and use some value to
denote where these monsters would appear (the invisible object location would be
the upper left corner of the rectangle, and perhaps sp/hp would denote the
amount of possible offset, giving a rectangle of where this stuff may appear)

 There would be nothing preventing more than one of these per maps, or even
having the areas overlap.

 Realistically, with the current outdoor maps, I'm not sure how important an
idea this really is.  This could be interesting if we went for a unified scale
map scale, which may have some apeal, but I think is unlikely to happen.  I
think more likely would be a dual scale (basically keep city scale and building
scale, but get rid of the outdoor scale, the city would just be a large area on
the outdoor map).  This IMO is more likely as only the world maps would need to
get redone then, and they are not that extensive that this would be a really
hard job,  But even that I would consider somewhat unlikely and a low priority. 
On the bonus, this would put some real scale between cities (currently, the walk
accross the continent is not that much than a couple walks accross the city - if
this scale change, the walk accross the continent would be a serious walk). 
This would also help mesh with other possible enhancements (boats, flying, etc. 
Ie, you could fly over the city wall to get in/out instead of going through
gatehouse)

 But that is another discussion.

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      ..
     
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      Tomble
     
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