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

[Mark Wedel]

"H. S. Teoh" wrote:
>
     
     
     >
     
      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.
     
     
 I find this is a great use for the disease spells - quickly wipes out large
numbers of these pesky creatures.

 The question of self generating monsters may be more reasonable.  I don't have
a problem with black puddings and green slime, but things like the mice, normal
slime, etc, reproduce to the extent its just a nuisance - the creatures by
themselves are harmless.

 You are right in that the artifact monster code can be used to fix this.  Just
turn off the generating ability in the mice archetype and then creating an
'artifact mouse' with that flag turned on will do the trick.  Its hard to
generalize this for all monsters that should reproduce, but the artifact file
does support multiple matching.

 Problem is the base arch really has to get changed, which could affect some
maps that require rapid breeding of the creatures.  But I can't see too many
maps relying on that fact.