[CF-Devel] more alchemy formulae

[Mark Wedel]

Tim Rightnour wrote:

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      On 10-Apr-02 Mark Wedel wrote:
     
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       Has anything been done to make the formulas more accessible to the players 
     
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     (characters)?  From my playing experience, if you try to do it honestly (find
     
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     formula within the game), it seems next to impossible to get much in the way
     
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     of 
     
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     a set of formulas to make anything.
     
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      Why not make the books containing formulae more common in treasure piles, or
     
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      less costly in bookstores?
     
     

  I haven't looked lately, but one problem I used to have is just finding books 
in the stores or anyplace that would otherwise sell them.


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      Personally.. I'd like it if those books had a purpose.  Say for example, you
     
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      have a recipie book.  When you get a formulae, you can use your writing skill
     
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      and literacy to transcribe the recepie into your book.  Then the players have a
     
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      nice little reference available to them for future alchemy use.  In addition,
     
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      if you ready the book, and it contains the recepie you are attempting, it gives
     
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      you a bonus.
     
     

  There are different approaches to doing this.  I'd personally like it to be 
fairly automated (you'd need to have a copy command or something) - the more it 
is maintained automatically, the easier it is then for the

You could enforce the notion that the character has to know the formula to use 
it.  Thus, just the fact that the player knows you need to mix X and Y isn't of 
any use.  I believe some quest formulas already do that

The simplest way to do this would just make something like a 'known formula' 
invisibile object in the players inventory.  in the msg on that, you just list 
all the formula the character knows - when the character reads a book that has a 
formula, that new formula is added to the message.  When they try to make 
something, the alchemy code finds that object and sees if the formula they are 
making matches one in that list.  Some server command that lists all the formula 
the character knows (by looking at the object, then finding the formula, and 
displaying it) could be added.


A more ambitious approach would be to make the formula into archetypes/objects. 
    This archetype is then copied into the players inventory (invisible object) 
when the player learns something.  The msg/endmsg aspect of the archetype could 
get used for the description (eg, eye of dragon plus and arrow, stir once, and 
get an arrow of dragon slaying).  The nice thing is by the this being an object, 
maps could make up new archetypes without needing to modify the formulae file.