[CF-Devel] Various proposed changes

[Mark Wedel]

"david.delbecq" wrote:
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      > I just want to note that in Crossfire, maps are usually designed in a
     
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      > way that what's out of sight is not meant for the player to see.
     
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      > It would be rather ugly for example, if the map-mechanisms (those
     
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      > combination of buttons/gates/boulders that "do special effects")
     
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      > would show up due to some detection spell.
     
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      > Also, often there are multiple levels of a virtual "building"
     
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      > on one map. Now if the player could see on level 1 the monsters
     
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      > from level 2 right next to him, wouldn't that be weird?
     
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      Sure this can be a problem if a player gets in view the monsters of the next
     
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      level. But don't forget that magic mapping already has this problem. This is
     
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      an issue to think about (especially what concern map mecanisms). But what
     
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      concern monsters, i don't think seeing the little goblin who push the buttons
     
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      is a problem, since you don't see the button. Also don't forget that this
     
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      problem already appeared with xray. Perhaps using some no_magic information
     
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      we could prevent some squares to appear with x-ray or detect monsters!
     
     
 Its a little ironic that this discussion got restarted after I have already
made the changes.

 But a few notes:

 Xray does not let you see the entire map - it basically lets you see everything
in the 3 space square around the player.  Thus, if something was hidden behind a
wall more than 3 spaces deep, you can not see it with x-ray.  Many maps that use
boulder/gate/whatever combinations to do more interesting things hide these
features well off to the side of the map so they can not be visible via x-ray.

 magic map works in a similar fashion - it will only 'penetrate' walls in the
near vicinity of the player (I also think it may be 3 spaces).  So if you have 4
spaces seperating your map levels within the real map, magic map will not
display any strange effects.

 The detection spells are more problematic.  In the not too distant past, the
client/player map size was known to be no larger than 11x11.  So if you hide
something behind 6 spaces from the nearest point the player can get to, the
designer could know that it could not even be seen with protection spells.

 Now with the new max map size of 25x25, anything that required map distance to
hide can be visible.  To put 13 spaces/walls between the feature and the nearest
player point creates some pretty big black holes.  And things like detect
curse/magic/monster penetrate walls up to the maximum distance.  So the fact
that there may be walls, or even no magic spaces won't prevent viewing.

 Note that the detect spells range needs to be improved.  Currently, it is just
a hard code value (was 11x11 area (ie, viewable map), back when that was the max
size, now its 25x25.  IMO, this should really be level dependent - at low
levels, maybe its 11x11 (or even smaller), with it increasing at high levels).

 This still doesn't prevent such features from being revealed - save for adding
special tags which say 'this should not be revealed by a detection spell', there
is probably no good fix.  But such a tag should be added to fix the invisibility
fiasco, as that certainly was/still is much more a problem.  Perhaps one tag for
all these detection spells would be sufficient (ie, if the creature is
invisible, and has the nondetection flag, he won't show up with detect evil/show
enemies either).

 You could also add a new spell 'nondetection', which sets that flag
temporarily.  Would probably be of more interest to players who want to annoy
other players however.