[CF-Devel] World Maps Redux

[Mark Wedel]

Tim Rightnour wrote:

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      If we are going to be undertaking a massive map workover.  Can I please beg a
     
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      request?
     
     
 You can always make requests.  If they get answered may be a different story :)

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      Can we *please* get the special "map items" out of the map files, and placed
     
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      under arch?  It would make things *sooo* much cleaner.  Right now, on my
     
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      current project of twiddling all the weapons to have the right messages.. I'm
     
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      going to have to go on some wild crusade through all the maps to find the
     
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      various daggers/etc buried within and fix them.
     
     
 If the items on the maps are done properly, it should not be an issue - those
items should inherent all proper information from the arch they came from.

 Now it is possible that some items are not derived properly (eg, they took the
hammer arch, gave it a ne face and abilities).  In that case, it should be fixed
on the map to be the dagger arch.  But I don't think there are any cases where
that really happened.

 
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      In addition, it gives people the ability to instanly look over the weapons and
     
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      know what we have available.  There are also lots of strange silly-items like
     
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      the dwarven keyring, etc.  In future overhauls, these will be very difficult to
     
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      hunt down and fix.
     
     
 at one point do you determine if a dagger is different enough it should be a
new arch vs a variation of what we have?  If I give dagger fire attack, should
then be a new arch?  What about ability bonuses, etc.

 The problems I see with all derivations becoming archs:
1) A lot more archs - so many more that looking through them to see what is
there may not be all that feasible.
2) More difficult to add new maps - you now need to update the archs.  This may
not be terrible, but is certainly more a pain if someone says 'check out this
cool map I did'.
3) It can reduce uniqueness.  Eg, if I create a map and put a custom weapon on
it, it is unlikely someone else will make a weapon of the same abilities.  OTOH,
if this is now an arch, much more likely some other map maker will see it and
say 'ahh - that meets my needs', and puts it in there map - especially if it
saves the effort of them having to make a new arch.


 It has long been my policy that something only needs to be an arch if it adds a
new face/animation - if all that is happening is that the objects abilities are
being changed, no need for a new arch.  I think you can see that if this same
idea (don't customize monsters in maps, instead make them archs) was applied to
monsters, it would be pretty outrageous in terms of number of monsters all
pretty similar.

 I would be interested in knowing in more detail of what you are trying to fix
and why the archetype inheritance does not work.  One of the really good things
about using archetypes and deriving differences is that if the arch is changed,
all the objects based off it should change.

 Thus for example if it is realized that some resistance on trolls is wrong and
altered, all trolls on all maps will get that new value instantly by changing
that one arch (the exception is if some trolls already have a different value
for that stat).  In comparision, if you have 20 different trolls because that is
how many customizations, all of those would need to get modified