[CF-Devel] Equip method, multiple weapons and two handed bows

[Todd Mitchell]

There is a lot of postings going into the 'change in equip' thread.  A lot
of different items are being brought into this one thread and it might be
good to rehash and clarify.  Since I am partly responsible for forking the
discussion I though I should try to untangle it a bit.  I also did some
limited research on the topics being discussed, I went back to in the
archives of this forum and found all these issues were discussed in December
2000.  Some of the discussion was very similar to what has come up this
month (David Hurst discussed coding multiple weapon check and attacks, Peter
Mardahl dismissed the bow- shield issue as unimportant, Andreas Vogl
spoke about how missile weapons sucked)  Well imagine my embarassment coming
in to a reprise conversation as a newbie.
anyway here goes:
 1. Mark Wendel brought up the idea of changing the way that items are
equiped.

>
     
     Currently, the type of object determines how man you can wear, and if you
     
     can
>
     
     wear it at all.  It is hard coded that you can wear 2 rings, 1 helmet, 1
     
     suit of
>
     
     armor, etc.  some of the flag_can_use_armor refine this in a very primitive
     
     way.

>
     
     The change would basically modify equipable objects to specify whay body
     
     >
     
     location (or equip location) they go on.  For example, helmets would have a
     
     line
>
     
     added like 'equip_location head', armor would have 'equip_location torso',
     
     rings
>
     
     'equip_location finger', etc.  Objects could specify multiple locations -
     
     >
     
     'equip_location weapon_hand,shield_hand' could be used to allow 2 handed
     
     weapons.

Thats it.  This did not bring up allowing multiple weapons or multiple
weapon combat, although it would work nicely towards equiping multiple
weapons.

2. Multiple weapons

I believe David Hurst brought up the two weapon thing, which no longer a
suprise to me after reading his messages from december 2000.  I know that
Mark mentioned the problem with using two weapons and Tim Rightnore replied
that the bonuses could be fudged to make thing more balanced.  I though I
was thinking clearly and jumped in on how two weapon attacks should work but
I thought that it should be designed to work with any number of weapons
since this went along with the kind of open ended equip method that Mark was
suggesting and since this is a fantasy game where 3, 6, and 12 armed
monsters are possibly right around the next hallway.  I just thought that if
the code was to be updated for two, then it could be updated for x instead
to make things easier in the future. (I also thought it would be cool to
make some monsters with multiple attacks...)
Making a skill for multiple weapon use is also a good idea to control it a
bit, although if you can buy it for 1000pl, it isn't really going to slow
anyone down.  If you have monsters that can do multiple melee attacks you
might want to have a skill for doing multiple attacks with a two handed
weapon as well (namely two handed weapons like swords or battle axes), since
otherwise these weapons will be at a disadvantage.  God, it never
ends...It's obvious there is a lot of balance issues for melee combat with
multiple weapons.
Just for the record, I don't necessarily advocate multiple weapon combat
being introduced, at least not for players.  I just thought to point out how
it could be built off of
Mark's proposal.  I found it amusing after the fact that David had responded
to my mail saying some one would have to write the code, although at the
time I didn't see the irony in this comment.

3. Bows for two hands
Mark:
>
     
     Now the only really noticable aspect to this to players would be changing
     
     the
>
     
     range locations.  They current range location is really a leftover from
     
     long
>
     
     ago.  With this change, I would make it so there is only 1 range slot
     
     (which
>
     
     horns, bows, wands, skill tools, etc, would all vie for).  This simplifies
     
     the
>
     
     code a great deal on the server, and probably makes more sense anyway.
     
     
One problem with bows currenlty is that you can equip them as a sort of
amulet to get bonuses.  Also if you have two handed swords you cannot
benefit from a shield, but when you use a bow you can benefit from a shield.
Changing bows to two handed weapons seems to be something that others agreed
with as well, but I hope that it comes about as a result of the changes that
Mark proposed in the equip method and not just by itself, since that would
be the best way to handle it I believe.   There are three ways to do combat
in the game,
melee, ranged weapon and magic, but it is a lopsided triangle and ranged
combat is
the runt of the litter here (mainly the monsters run at you too fast and/or
the
areas are too confining).   That's another discussion.
I still think it would be a good idea to make bows and
crossbows two handed weapons and to clean up the range locations as Mark
suggests, although I do know that this will make bows even less attractive,
from what I am hearing, they are not being used much anyway.  It would be
nice if there was still a ranged weapon 'slot' and a melee weapon 'slot' and
selecting the ranged weapon disabled the bonuses of the melee weapon and
vice versa, and if
the ranged weapon was two handed , disabled the shield bonus, but I'm not
gonna go there.

So that's it.  Three items that are related but not dependent.  As David
said,  "Of course, no one has said they actually want to code this ;) and in
the end it comes down to that person as to how
it is implemented =)".  I am just making suggestions.  (I also went out and
got an ansi C primer).