[CF-Devel] Future crossfire changes/projects

[Mark Wedel]

On Wed, 16 May 2001 
     
     helfesrieder at netscape.net
     
      wrote:

>
     
      To decide about the future directions of CF, there needs to be a
     
     >
     
      consensus about the overall goal.
     
     >
     
     
     >
     
      To my understanding, the overall goal is to significantly enlarge
     
     >
     
      the player base of CF. In other words, to attract, to pull, many
     
     >
     
      more new players on the CF platform.
     
     >
     
     
     >
     
      Second, to attract many new players, one needs to know what most, if
     
     >
     
      not almost all, players want.
     
     
I will note that free software may be a bit different in commercial
software in this regard.

 For commerical software, its pretty obvious you want as large ap laying
base (and thus a maximum number of sales).  Given the developers are getting
pained, you can get them to do features/enhancements which meet this goal.

 Free software is a bit different.  I'm not (and I'm guessing most/all
the other cf developers) getting any monetary gains from the software
(I guess this could potentially change by making crossfire servers fee
based for example).  Given that fact, the developers work what they want
to work on.  Many times, these features do match making the game
more fun to play/increase its audience (after all, developers also play
the game).  This is one reason I started the discussion on the cf-dev
alias - it is the developers that will end up doing the coding.

>
     
      All players play to have fun and a good and exciting gaming
     
     >
     
      experience. If you meet this demand, they will come. Otherwise
     
     >
     
      they will not come.
     
     
 Others may disagree, but I personally think it is not possible for
crossfire to compete with commercial games ala everquest, ultima online,
etc.  They have a lot more resources to throw at game developement,
and can basically tell developers 'do XYZ'.

>
     
     
     >
     
      So, what is needed to meet these demands and expectations ?
     
     >
     
     
     >
     
      In my opinion, CF needs improvement in 3 top-level areas:
     
     >
     
     
     >
     
      * Improve Presentation
     
     >
     
          ** generally : support richer media types
     
     >
     
          ** better sounds
     
     >
     
          ** better graphics
     
     >
     
          ** ambient sounds
     
     >
     
          ** soundtracks
     
     >
     
          (** video clips / cut scenes / stills?  -> who would be able
     
     >
     
                     to produce them ?)
     
     
 And at least in the last two, how do you distribute them?  Even soundtracks
would need to get professionally produced (otherwise, you almost certainly
run into copyright issues).

 I agree sound quality right now is poor.  ambient sounds could add a lot.
Better graphics is a bit vague.  While others have suggested isomorphic style,
I personally don't like isomorphic games.  The the above view tile may be old
fashioned, but I personally like it.  One question may be whether isomorphic
can be done just in the client, or does the server actually need to know
about it in some way (and if it does, how much does it need to know?
Just different tiles, or is the handling of it fundementally different)

 An addition to this, in a little more specific terms, would be enhanced
handling of the lighting code.  This could become even more relevant
if features such as night/day are added.

>
     
     
     >
     
      * Improve Content
     
     >
     
          ** CF background setting / story
     
     >
     
          ** Consistent World design (world map)
     
     >
     
          ** high quality Stories, Quests, "Epic Quests" (compare Everquest)
     
     >
     
          ** New Player experience
     
     
 Agree with all of those.  Note that most of these are map changes,
with the cavaet that for things like epic quests, new/better objects
may be needed.


>
     
      * Improve Game Mechanics / Logic
     
     >
     
          ** Monster & NPC  AI
     
     
 Agree.  I would also like to see fewer monsters, but make those
out there more interesting/tougher.  Ideally, also try to balance
monsters and players more equally - right now, monsters have 10 times
or more hp monsters that players.  The end result of this is that a
group of players accidentally casts a spell in the wrong direction, that
party may be toast, simply because for the spell to be effective
against the monster, it does a lot of hp and kills the players.