[CF-Devel] Mouse proliferation -- possible solution?

[H. S. Teoh]

I've been making some newbie maps recently, and I noticed how often I had
to turn off the "generator" flag in mice so that the maps don't become
unplayable very quickly due to the insane proliferation of mice. Which
means I cannot use mouse generators either, since the generators would
produce only mice with generator=1. But this makes things kinda boring,
since you DO want the mice to reproduce, just not as quickly as they do.

So here's an idea of how to solve this problem (not just with mice, but
with any other monster in the game that reproduce): we already have code
to occasionally generate an orc leader from the orc generators, etc.. Why
not use this with mice? Every time a mouse reproduces (or a mouse
generator makes a mouse), have a random chance of whether the new mouse
can reproduce or not. (I.e., mouse generation can produce either fertile
mice or sterile mice.) If we keep the chance to some reasonable value,
this should make mice reproduce but not forever, so it won't flood the
map. 

(This should be useful not only for mice but also for stuff like
caterpillars, which also tend to reproduce endlessly.)

What do you think?


T

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