[CF-Devel] Client/server protocol enhancements.

[Scott MacFiggen]

On Mon, Dec 31, 2001 at 06:31:08PM -0800, Mark Wedel wrote:
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       A minor wishlist for me would be to make the map in the gtk client 
     
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       scrollable - if using fog of war, it is sometimes convenient to 
     
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       thing 'so what was over there again', and being able to scroll to 
     
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       over their would be cool.  That probably  isn't too hard, but for 
     
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       reasons of optimization, you really only want to render what is actually 
     
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       being shown on the monitor, and not the entire canvas.
     
     
  I've thought about this myself, it should be easy to implement but
  it would be memory intensive..

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      As said, currently text descriptions are not contained anyplace within the
     
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      server.  That of course could change.  For spells, we could send along 
     
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      spellpath and spellpoint information.  AS said, that last one can vary 
     
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      based on many things.  That could be useful for requestinfo protocol 
     
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      command.
     
     
As far as I'm concerned, the more info we can get to the player, the
better. So if it is possible and not difficult, I'd like to see it
in the next rev of the protocol. If that happenes I'll modify the
gtk client to take advantage of it.

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       Formulas for damage/range/etc get complicated.  One reason is that 
     
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       the client does not have that information for the items (client 
     
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       has no idea that the sword does 8 points of damage for example).  
     
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       Or are you talking damage etc for spells?
     
     
I was talking about spells since I know the client doens't know anything
about objects, which I think is wrong but it would take more than a
simple protocol extension to fix that problem.

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      cost, how it advances, and the spellpath would be no problem.  Sending 
     
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      along range and damage and how it increments could be a little iffy 
     
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      depending on if people consider that secret information or not.
     
     
I read a game design book a while back that was pretty blunt on this
subject. The book said it was bad game design to hide things from players.
The basic idea was why put something in your game and then not tell
the player about it..
Also, I would think any good wizard who has spent years studying his
magic would know the approximate effectivness of his spells.
Anyway, if this info gets sent over to the client, I'll modify the
gtk client to make use of it.

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      s->c: newplayerstats <str><dex><con>...<flag><race information as above>
     
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      flag would be set/cleared depending on if a point total was being used, or if
     
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      the stats had to come back legitimately.  Note that presuming swap stats is
     
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      still allowed, the str/dex/con values for each race are the adjustments (eg, +1,
     
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      -2, etc), and not the stats if they choose that race, because the swapping is
     
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      not symmetrical.  EG, thing of an elf with +1 dex, -1 con.  Suppose 16 was
     
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      rolled for both of those, so 17 dex and 15 con.  If you swap those,  you would
     
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      still have 17 dex and 15 con because the base roll is 16.
     
     
Yeah, that looks right.

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       Spells (and most equipment) is based on class.  Some skills and equipment 
     
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      are on race, some on class.  So you would then have to extend it the 
     
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      newplayer stuff to also send the available classes.  However, 
     
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      I'm not positive if that is as easily done as the race is (I'd have 
     
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      to look at how the hall of heroes does it).  It would certainly be 
     
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      possible to set up archetypes for the classes that
     
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      then send along the right stuff.  Could have another selection list 
     
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      above that also contains the class, shows the adjustments it has.)
     
     
I would prefer it all in one step, easier for a newbie to figure out
what is going on.. The hall of hereos thing works ok too though.


	-Scott