[CF-Devel] World Maps Redux

[Mark Wedel]

 I've given some thoughts to the world map redo.  May basic plan is:

1)  Expand the world map by a factor of around 30
2) Use the new map tiling to join the maps, so they appear correctly if playing
with larger map windows.  Also fixes things like dimension door.
3) Remove the city icons, and instead they get placed on full scale on the world
maps.  Some other dungeons may be similarly put.  This reduces crossfire to a 2
scale system, but also gives some other benefits (different ways to enter/exit
the city, etc.
4) I'm not completely decided on the size for each piece - I'm thinking
something a little smaller (30x30 or so) - this is small enough that one could
view the entire segment on most standard monitors when editing it.

 Something ideas I've had:
1) Make the game a little less blocky - do this by putting some curved type
objects for things like trees, roads, etc,  I'm really not sure how useful this
will be unless there are a lot of different curved type pieces.  This is purely
cosmetic change.  Related here would be to make some 'edge' cases for the forest
- ie, at the edge, you would see the tree trunks.

2) add an outdoor flag to these maps.  Currently, this would not have any use,
but could be used in the future to know that the map should have weather effects
or get adjusted via setting sun, etc.
3) Random generation on these maps.  these maps could generate random objects -
the frequency could be controlled via an attribute in the map header.  this can
be useful for generating some random monsters in the world maps, but can also be
used to generate other random objects, like random herbs in swamps or
forest,random minerals in the mountains,etc.

 I personally think it would be sort of cool to go hunting in the forest looking
for some herb you need for that potion.  The problem is that this really won't
be much of a search - if your playing with a 25x25 map, you'll be able to spot
that special plant from a good distance.  My thoughts on this:

a) use something like the rune code - if you search for it, you may find
something (if there is in fact anything), but if theres nothing around, you
don't find it.  This may not be very useful.
b) Redo stacking - eg, instead of forest being one object, it would instead be
grass and then the trees.  The the special plants could get put between those
layers, making it harder to see.

I figure that for the random generation, the type of terrain would determine
what type of thing is generated.  For areas with cities, the encounter chance
would be 0.  Alternatively, a bunch of different encounter lists could be used,
so for things like cities, it would be benign stuff.  I really don't want to get
into 'this batch of squares shouldn't have anything generated, but this batch
should'.

4) Maybe add some partial line of sight blockage, eg, maybe a total of 4 is
needed to completely block line of sight.  A row of trees/forest has a blocking
factor of 1, so it would take 4 rows to completely block sight.  Jungle may have
a value of 4 for example, so one row blocks it.  I'm not sure if this is worth
it or not.

 Just some thoughts.