[CF-Devel] Equipment musings

[Mark Wedel]

Tim Rightnour wrote:
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      On 14-Jul-02 Mark Wedel wrote:
     
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       The code that will be checked in will make it extremely easy to add new
     
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     body 
     
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     parts.
     
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      The point of the claws was to tie up the arms so you didn't have to perform a
     
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      hack like "that dragon has zero arms".  I can think of other uses for body
     
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      location charts, for example, hacking an arm off, or critical hit messages that
     
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      vary depending on the classifications of a target, (to avoid the message that
     
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      says "you behead the amorphous blob").
     
     
  Well, the change of body information wasn't really meant for stuff like the 
critical hit.  But I see the point - if the information is there, use it.

  However, as it is now, there is no defined internal mapping - rather, there is 
  table that contains the load/save names, as well as descriptive names for the 
locations.  Their position in the table determines the position in the array the 
values are loaded in.

  So to use this for critical hits, the table probably needs to include another 
value, that contains information on of that part is something that could be 
taken out by a critical hit, and perhaps how critical a critical hit on it would be.

  For example, a critical hit can't really take out a skill slot or range slot. 
  And a critical hit on the neck is very serious - much more so than one on a 
finger.  It also gets more complicated, in that you have potential dependencies 
- if an arm is chopped of, then that also removes the ability to wear one ring, 
one brace, and one glove for example.  However, that part wouldn't be too hard - 
unless a body part is directly connected to several others, you could just index 
one (eg, the shoulder points to arm, which points to wrist, which points to 
hand, which points to finger.  So if the wrist is chopped off, thta then also 
includes the hand and finger, etc).

  But that is getting a bit beside the point of the current topic.

  When I wrote the code, I envisioned just not giving body parts to creates that 
don't have them, and not using force (or other objects) to use them up.

  Note also that such an approach makes for easier backward compatibility - for 
old players, they inherit the body information from the arch, so everything 
works.  If force objects are used, then the load code has to check race, check 
to see if there is a force object, and insert an appropriate one.  If new body 
parts are added which also races should have, this gets even more complicated.

  When we get to the point where this information will get used for other stuff, 
I think we should review the best way to do it.  One of the points to doing this 
was to make it extensible for more body locations to get added, and I think that 
should happen - the game will have more flavor if for example that Quetzalcoutl 
has to buy different boots than other races.

  I should probably modify the artifacts file to let it modify the body part for 
items.  Thus, you could have an artifact like:

Object of dragons
type boots
body_foot 2
body_dragon_foot -2
end

  Where the body stuff in the object just modifies the basic version.  Could 
also have things like 'armour of smallness', which halfling creatures need.