From JettB2 at aol.com Sat Nov 2 13:40:37 2002 From: JettB2 at aol.com (JettB2@aol.com) Date: Thu Jan 13 17:53:05 2005 Subject: [cf-admin] Help with Windows XP Message-ID: <6c.25206b5f.2af58435@aol.com> I am an avid crossfire player, but I just got a computer with windows XP. I know there are all kinds of problems with XP, but I am 14 year old who is not so familiar with advanced computer type-stuff. If there is any kind of server that I can use for my computer? Thanks -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20021102/eb0f1f04/attachment.html From leaf at real-time.com Mon Nov 4 13:29:44 2002 From: leaf at real-time.com (Rick Tanner) Date: Thu Jan 13 17:53:05 2005 Subject: [cf-admin] Help with Windows XP In-Reply-To: <6c.25206b5f.2af58435@aol.com> Message-ID: Short answer: no There is no "install wizard" or "click here to install" Windows based server. Are there any plans for one? No one has officially announced they are working on one. What I mean by officially is posting to the mailing list, code checked into CVS, etc. Unofficially, a windows port is in progress(?) and more information is available here: http://www.theperlguru.com/crossfire/ On Sat, 2 Nov 2002, JettB2@aol.com wrote: > I am an avid crossfire player, but I just got a computer with windows XP. I > know there are all kinds of problems with XP, but I am 14 year old who is not > so familiar with advanced computer type-stuff. If there is any kind of > server that I can use for my computer? > Thanks > From tanner at real-time.com Mon Nov 4 14:47:29 2002 From: tanner at real-time.com (Bob Tanner) Date: Thu Jan 13 17:53:05 2005 Subject: [cf-admin] Help with Windows XP In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200211041447.29598.tanner@real-time.com> On Monday 04 November 2002 01:29 pm, Rick Tanner wrote: > Short answer: no > > There is no "install wizard" or "click here to install" Windows based > server. If someone is interested in doing an install wizard you can look at Inno Setup. It's an open source Win32 installer. -- Bob Tanner | Phone : (952)943-8700 http://www.mn-linux.org, Minnesota, Linux | Fax : (952)943-8500 Key fingerprint = AB15 0BDF BCDE 4369 5B42 1973 7CF1 A709 2CC1 B288 From mrussell at pilotindustries.com Fri Nov 1 09:34:27 2002 From: mrussell at pilotindustries.com (Matt Russell) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:00 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Compiling problem Message-ID: I'm pretty new at unix, here goes. I'm compiling the client and after I configure the make gives me this error. Version:1.0.0 ************************** mrussell@pilot5% make /usr/bin/perl -p -e s#/usr/local/lib/sounds#/usr/local/lib/sounds# sounds.dist > sounds /usr/bin/perl utils/deftoheader.pl sounds soundsdef.h def_sounds 199 lines processed gcc -g -O2 -DSUN_SOUND -DNEW_SOUND -DBINDIR='"/usr/local/bin/"' -Wall -I. -I/usr/openwin/include -c sound.c gcc -o gcfclient client.o commands.o init.o item.o metaserver.o misc.o newsocket.o player.o sound.o gx11.o -lm -lnsl -lsocket -lXpm -L/usr/local/lib -L/usr/openwin/lib -R/usr/openwin/lib -lgtk -lgdk -lgmodule -lglib -ldl -lXext -lX11 -lsocket -lnsl -lm gcc -o cfclient client.o commands.o init.o item.o metaserver.o misc.o newsocket.o player.o sound.o x11.o -lm -lnsl -lsocket -lXpm -L/usr/openwin/lib -R/usr/openwin/lib -lX11 -lXext Undefined first referenced symbol in file init_pngx_loader x11.o ld: fatal: Symbol referencing errors. No output written to cfclient collect2: ld returned 1 exit status *** Error code 1 make: Fatal error: Command failed for target `cfclient' ********************************************** Here is the crossfile -o file. I assume this is ok It looks like the problem is with the client. Client version 1.0.0. *************************************************** mrussell@pilot5% crossfire -o Reading bmaps from /usr/games/crossfire/share/crossfire/bmaps...done (got 3665/3666/3666) Reading faces from /usr/games/crossfie/share/crossfire/faces...done Reading animations from /usr/games/crossfire/share/crossfire/animations...done. got (732) Reading archetypes from /usr/games/crossfire/share/crossfire/archetypes... arch-pass 1... Adding friendly object Evil Master, Bonehead. done Setting up archetable...done loading treasure...done arch-pass 2...done done Welcome to CrossFire, v1.0.0 Copyright (C) 1994 Mark Wedel. Copyright (C) 1992 Frank Tore Johansen. Can't open /usr/games/crossfire/share/crossfire/shutdown Non-standard include files: Secure: Datadir: /usr/games/crossfire/share/crossfire Localdir: /usr/games/crossfire/var/crossfire Perm file: /forbid Shutdown file: /shutdown Save player: Save mode: 0660 Playerdir: /players Itemsdir: /unique-items Use checksum: Tmpdir: /tmp Map max timeout: 1000 Map reset: Max objects: 25000 Use_calloc: Use_swap_stats: Explore mode: Shop listings: Random encounter: Max_time: 120000 SunOS pilot5 5.8 Generic_108528-09 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-60 *************************************************** Here is the ./configure info for the client. **************************************************** mrussell@pilot5% ./configure loading cache ./config.cache checking host system type... sparc-sun-solaris2.8 checking target system type... sparc-sun-solaris2.8 checking build system type... sparc-sun-solaris2.8 checking for a BSD compatible install... (cached) /usr/local/bin/install -c checking whether build environment is sane... yes checking whether make sets ${MAKE}... (cached) yes checking for working aclocal... missing checking for working autoconf... missing checking for working automake... missing checking for working autoheader... missing checking for working makeinfo... missing checking for mkdir... (cachd) /usr ********************************************************************** This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify the system manager. This footnote also confirms that this email message has been checked for the presence of computer viruses. ********************************************************************** From root at garbled.net Sat Nov 2 00:40:17 2002 From: root at garbled.net (Tim Rightnour) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:01 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Compiling problem In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On 01-Nov-02 Matt Russell wrote: > I'm pretty new at unix, here goes. > > I'm compiling the client and after I configure the make gives me this error. > You need libpng, and configure needs to find it. --- Tim Rightnour NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS http://www.netbsd.org/ NetBSD supported hardware database: http://mail-index.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/hw.cgi From mwedel at sonic.net Sat Nov 2 00:47:20 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:01 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Compiling problem References: Message-ID: <3DC374F8.3090605@sonic.net> 1.0.0 is an _ancient_ version. No one is going to do any serious investigation on any issues with that. Grab the latest versions (1.4.0) from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=13833 Matt Russell wrote: > I'm pretty new at unix, here goes. > > I'm compiling the client and after I configure the make gives me this error. > > Version:1.0.0 > > ************************** > mrussell@pilot5% make > /usr/bin/perl -p -e s#/usr/local/lib/sounds#/usr/local/lib/sounds# sounds.dist > sounds > /usr/bin/perl utils/deftoheader.pl sounds soundsdef.h def_sounds > 199 lines processed > gcc -g -O2 -DSUN_SOUND -DNEW_SOUND -DBINDIR='"/usr/local/bin/"' -Wall -I. -I/usr/openwin/include -c sound.c > gcc -o gcfclient client.o commands.o init.o item.o metaserver.o misc.o newsocket.o player.o sound.o gx11.o -lm -lnsl -lsocket -lXpm -L/usr/local/lib -L/usr/openwin/lib -R/usr/openwin/lib -lgtk -lgdk -lgmodule -lglib -ldl -lXext -lX11 -lsocket -lnsl -lm > gcc -o cfclient client.o commands.o init.o item.o metaserver.o misc.o newsocket.o player.o sound.o x11.o -lm -lnsl -lsocket -lXpm -L/usr/openwin/lib -R/usr/openwin/lib -lX11 -lXext > Undefined first referenced > symbol in file > init_pngx_loader x11.o > ld: fatal: Symbol referencing errors. No output written to cfclient > collect2: ld returned 1 exit status > *** Error code 1 > make: Fatal error: Command failed for target `cfclient' > ********************************************** > Here is the crossfile -o file. I assume this is ok > > It looks like the problem is with the client. Client version 1.0.0. > > *************************************************** > mrussell@pilot5% crossfire -o > Reading bmaps from /usr/games/crossfire/share/crossfire/bmaps...done (got 3665/3666/3666) > Reading faces from /usr/games/crossfie/share/crossfire/faces...done > Reading animations from /usr/games/crossfire/share/crossfire/animations...done. got (732) > Reading archetypes from /usr/games/crossfire/share/crossfire/archetypes... > arch-pass 1... Adding friendly object Evil Master, Bonehead. > done > Setting up archetable...done > loading treasure...done > arch-pass 2...done > done > Welcome to CrossFire, v1.0.0 > Copyright (C) 1994 Mark Wedel. > Copyright (C) 1992 Frank Tore Johansen. > Can't open /usr/games/crossfire/share/crossfire/shutdown > Non-standard include files: > > > > Secure: > Datadir: /usr/games/crossfire/share/crossfire > Localdir: /usr/games/crossfire/var/crossfire > Perm file: /forbid > Shutdown file: /shutdown > Save player: > Save mode: 0660 > Playerdir: /players > Itemsdir: /unique-items > Use checksum: > Tmpdir: /tmp > Map max timeout: 1000 > Map reset: > Max objects: 25000 > Use_calloc: > Use_swap_stats: > Explore mode: > Shop listings: > Random encounter: > Max_time: 120000 > SunOS pilot5 5.8 Generic_108528-09 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-60 > *************************************************** > Here is the ./configure info for the client. > > **************************************************** > mrussell@pilot5% ./configure > loading cache ./config.cache > checking host system type... sparc-sun-solaris2.8 > checking target system type... sparc-sun-solaris2.8 > checking build system type... sparc-sun-solaris2.8 > checking for a BSD compatible install... (cached) /usr/local/bin/install -c > checking whether build environment is sane... yes > checking whether make sets ${MAKE}... (cached) yes > checking for working aclocal... missing > checking for working autoconf... missing > checking for working automake... missing > checking for working autoheader... missing > checking for working makeinfo... missing > checking for mkdir... (cachd) /usr > > > ********************************************************************** > This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and > intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they > are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify > the system manager. > > This footnote also confirms that this email message has been > checked for the presence of computer viruses. > ********************************************************************** > _______________________________________________ > crossfire-devel mailing list > crossfire-devel@lists.real-time.com > https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/crossfire-devel From pc-crossfire at crowcastle.net Sat Nov 2 21:27:20 2002 From: pc-crossfire at crowcastle.net (Preston Crow) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:01 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Minor bugs Message-ID: <200211030327.gA33RKAJ024699@lol1120.lss.emc.com> Several minor issues: Giants don't throw boulders. They have them; they just don't throw them. >write_socket_buffer called when there is no data, fd=5 >Socket on fd 5 has overrun internal buffer - marking as dead >Write_To_Socket called with dead socket That happened when stepping on a very large pile of objects. The client received a stream of "That item is too heavy for you to pick up." messages before disconecting. Perhaps the server should watch for sending the same message more than some number of times (like 50), and not send more than that many in a row. In the shop inventories, shoes and gloves list the (armour +10) and such, making for an ugly display. Other items don't list their attributes. It would be nice if shop inventories would list "17 daggers" instead of "dagger" 17 times. This would make shops easier to browse. --PC From meeg at mamia.prninfo.com Tue Nov 5 21:20:35 2002 From: meeg at mamia.prninfo.com (Meegwun South) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:01 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] new archs In-Reply-To: <200211030327.gA33RKAJ024699@lol1120.lss.emc.com> from "Preston Crow" at Nov 02, 2002 10:27:20 PM Message-ID: <200211060320.WAA20804@mamia.prninfo.com> Archs at http://www.elvenrealms.net. New archs called Archons, larger 4 space Archons also being made. Lantern for BigWorld is almost finished, the lantern turns on when you apply it and off when you unapply it. New fire dragon arch is being made to replace the old one. Different sized rain puddles are done and the hail is going to be done soon. Two ElvenLands artifacts are made: Armour of Scales and Cloak of Fire. Also new faerie archs in the making. Send arch requests to meeg@prninfo.com or list it in the CF-Devel mailing list. -Ketche From root at garbled.net Wed Nov 6 04:46:59 2002 From: root at garbled.net (Tim Rightnour) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:01 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Alchemy fiddling Message-ID: So I've been tossing around ideas to fiddle the alchemy skill a bit, and I'd like to run it by everyone here, before I go and make a big mess of it. Basically, I would like to break alchemy up into smaller skills, but still keep the engine how it currently works. For exmaple, right now, you can throw arrows and stingers into a pot, and make poison arrows. Instead, I would like to break the arrow and bow formulae, into the "fletcher/bowyer" skill. So rather than using alchemy on a cauldron, you would use the bowyer skill, on a workbench. I would like to split the formulae, into bowyer, smithery, jeweler, alchemy and thaumaturgy. Each one getting the appropriate formulae. At the same time, I would like to undo the "use the alchemy spell to make it go" part, and have it work on the alchemy skill. The idea of this being: 1) It makes the individual skills more useful, and slightly more interesting. 2) Alchemy is no longer a big create-all skill. 3) More complex formulae, may require ingredients that are created using other skills. For example, a special arrow might need a water of the wise, which you might create via alchemy. 4) It wouldn't affect how alchemy currently works really, it would just distribute it around to other skills, which are all under mental anyhow. 5) It just makes more sense. Making arrows with alchemy when you have a fletcher skill is kinda silly. 6) None of this would really impede the work mark has proposed earlier regarding alchemy. I think the two ideas are relatively independant of one another. 7) the shops like the armor shop, and the bow shop, would have little sections like the alchemy shop, where you could go and create your goodies. 8) You would have to know the skill, to perform whatever thing it is you are trying to do. Unlike now, where you just need the spell. --- Tim Rightnour NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS http://www.netbsd.org/ NetBSD supported hardware database: http://mail-index.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/hw.cgi From mrussell at pilotindustries.com Wed Nov 6 09:11:39 2002 From: mrussell at pilotindustries.com (Matt Russell) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:01 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Crossfire Problem Message-ID: I was wondering if you have some insight in a problem I'm having. I compiled crossfire 1.4.0 on my SunOS 5.8. The GTK client starts just fine, but I haven't been able to start a game. This is the what I get when I run crossfire. I assume there is a server issue. It looks like I'm missing the cfsndserv file, shouldn't it have been included when compiled. If not do you know where to get it. Any help would be much appreciated, matt ********************************************************************** mrussell@pilot5% crossfire Character Width : 11 Character Height: 10 Warning: could not convert keysym KP_Up into keycode, ignoring Warning: could not convert keysym KP_Down into keycode, ignoring Warning: could not convert keysym KP_Right into keycode, ignoring Warning: could not convert keysym KP_Left into keycode, ignoring Warning: could not convert keysym KP_Home into keycode, ignoring Warning: could not convert keysym KP_Prior into keycode, ignoring Warning: could not convert keysym KP_End into keycode, ignoring Warning: could not convert keysym KP_Next into keycode, ignoring sh: /usr/local/bin/cfsndserv: not found Can't connect to server: Connection refused ********************************************************************** This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify the system manager. This footnote also confirms that this email message has been checked for the presence of computer viruses. ********************************************************************** From pc-crossfire at crowcastle.net Wed Nov 6 13:24:38 2002 From: pc-crossfire at crowcastle.net (Preston Crow) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:01 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Barrel Bug Message-ID: <200211061924.gA6JOceH016609@lol1120.lss.emc.com> I was doing the Knight of Scorn quest on Metalforge last night, and I ran into a bug regarding barrels. On the final level, there are a bunch of barrels. These are the kind you can walk over or pick up. However, if a monster is standing on the barrel, instead of attacking the monster, you try to roll the barrel. In this case, it meant I died, as there was nothing useful I could do (I hadn't learned any spells yet). The situation looked like this: G---| GGBM| ----| Where 'M' is me, 'G' is a goblin, and 'B' is a barrel that a goblin is standing on. I should have been able to kill the goblin with my sword. --PC From pc-crossfire at crowcastle.net Wed Nov 6 13:42:06 2002 From: pc-crossfire at crowcastle.net (Preston Crow) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:01 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Chest bug (GTK client?) Message-ID: <200211061942.gA6Jg6ww016689@lol1120.lss.emc.com> If you stand on a chest that happens to contain a food and apply the chest, you are then standing on a food. However, if you hit 'a' to apply the food, it ignores the food. I suspect that this might be in the gtk client, not the server, but I'm not certain. --PC From temitchell at sympatico.ca Wed Nov 6 18:54:45 2002 From: temitchell at sympatico.ca (Todd Mitchell) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:01 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Alchemy fiddling References: Message-ID: <001801c285f8$43bae2a0$0a02a8c0@kameria> >4) It wouldn't affect how alchemy currently works really, it would just >distribute it around to other skills, which are all under mental anyhow. I like this idea. The fact that these skills aren't independent is a bit of a sticky. This would be even better if you could have different levels of these skills rather than having them all at the same level based on the skill catagory (like mental). Still it is a step in the right direction I think. It makes game sense, increases the value of some skills and allows more recipies to be developed without unbalancing alchemy in general. The cost of the effected skill scrolls should be adjusted however... From yann.chachkoff at mailandnews.com Thu Nov 7 04:17:21 2002 From: yann.chachkoff at mailandnews.com (Yann Chachkoff) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:01 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Alchemy fiddling Message-ID: <3DCA44C6@mailandnews.com> >===== Original Message From Tim Rightnour ===== >Basically, I would like to break alchemy up into smaller skills, but still keep >the engine how it currently works. > >For exmaple, right now, you can throw arrows and stingers into a pot, and make >poison arrows. Instead, I would like to break the arrow and bow formulae, into >the "fletcher/bowyer" skill. So rather than using alchemy on a cauldron, you >would use the bowyer skill, on a workbench. > >I would like to split the formulae, into bowyer, smithery, jeweler, alchemy and >thaumaturgy. Each one getting the appropriate formulae. I'd suggest a design allowing *any* skill to be used, instead of just those. So, if we later decide to create new skills, we'd just have to add related formulae into the formulae list. Probably each formula should schematically look like: [skill] [formula] [effect] instead of the current [formula] [effect] pattern. Maybe we could add some kind of tag for 'alchemical tools' (Cauldron, Worbench, etc), marking them as suitable for a specific alchemical skill. (For example, it could be something like "alchemy [skillname]" in the object archetype). This too would result in an easily customizable system. > >The idea of this being: > >1) It makes the individual skills more useful, and slightly more interesting. Indeed true. >2) Alchemy is no longer a big create-all skill. Again true. >3) More complex formulae, may require ingredients that are created using other >skills. For example, a special arrow might need a water of the wise, which you >might create via alchemy. Could also force more players to work together somewhat - a Wizardry specialist could make the Water of the Wise, and a Smithery specialist could then make the arrow. >4) It wouldn't affect how alchemy currently works really, it would just >distribute it around to other skills, which are all under mental anyhow. The only difference would be that some formulae would go under another skill instead. Besides that, nothing prevents you to keep the 'alchemy' formulae as they're, and add some new ones for the other skills. >5) It just makes more sense. Making arrows with alchemy when you have a >fletcher skill is kinda silly. Well, it depends... If you consider those as 'magically created' arrows, it does make some sense to be able to produce them using alchemy. On the other hand, it is indeed silly not being able to create 'manually created' ones using fletching. >8) You would have to know the skill, to perform whatever thing it is you are >trying to do. Unlike now, where you just need the spell. > Definitely true; plus you'd be able to get experience points in mental more often than before, which isn't a bad idea IMHO. So I globally agree with the idea - Just be careful doing a sufficiently flexible system. Y. Chachkoff ------------------------------------------------ Help supporting JXFire ! (http://jxfire.sf.net) ------------------------------------------------ From emaillist+cfdev at dogphilosophy.net Thu Nov 7 13:07:51 2002 From: emaillist+cfdev at dogphilosophy.net (emaillist+cfdev@dogphilosophy.net) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:01 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Alchemy fiddling Message-ID: <200211071207.51828.emaillist+cfdev@dogphilosophy.net> 'scuze the formatting - I just joined the list and am cutting-and-pasting from the archives to reply here... >I'd suggest a design allowing *any* skill to be used, instead of just those. >So, if we later decide to create new skills, we'd just have to add related >formulae into the formulae list. Probably each formula should schematically >look like: > >[skill] [formula] [effect] > >instead of the current [formula] [effect] >pattern. > >Maybe we could add some kind of tag for 'alchemical tools' (Cauldron, >Worbench, etc), marking them as suitable for a specific alchemical skill. >(For example, it could be something like "alchemy [skillname]" in the object >archetype). This too would result in an easily customizable system. I very much like this idea. In addition to the obvious "making useful items" this could be further extended to create "special effects", especially if either the "alchemical" definition specifies the "alchemical tool" required (and not requiring any tool if not specified) or if the skill can be defined as to whether or not it needs a "tool" (or, alternatively, have a definition that allows the player's inventory to be the "tool") As a silly example, you could then have a "litterbug" skill, and a wandering NPC with it that applies it to the pattern litterbug food => garbage litterbug water => empty_bottle to represent eat/drinking and throwing the empties around, or something like illusionism pixie_dust flint_and_steel => puff_of_smoke (fog) for a stage-magician, or degrade_metal platinacoin => goldcoin degrade_metal goldcoin => silvercoin degrade_metal silvercoin => pile_of_sulphur for an odd metal-digesting wandering monster... Just some thoughts. I just recently compiled up crossfire on my system again to play around with, and last night started tackling "adding new things". I'm impressed with how easy it seems to be so far with the flexible system that's in place now (I created a new race as an experiment - I couldn't find any documentation describing what was involved, but about an hour of poking around the existing arch's and I was able to easily slap a new one together...) From joel at mamia.prninfo.com Sat Nov 9 10:44:30 2002 From: joel at mamia.prninfo.com (Joel South) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:01 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] 1.4.0 Server No Workee on Solaris 8 In-Reply-To: from "Matt Russell" at Nov 06, 2002 10:11:39 AM Message-ID: <200211091644.LAA03289@mamia.prninfo.com> We've been unable as yet to get a working 1.4.0 server running under Solaris 8 on Sparc. Version 1.3.0 works fine, as seen on the system at lemur.elvenrealms.net . 1.4.0 compiles OK, but after installation coredumps with a sigsev. I suspect some big vs. little-endian code problem with all the changes, but at this point it needs to be debugged... > > I was wondering if you have some insight in a problem I'm having. I compiled crossfire 1.4.0 on my SunOS 5.8. The GTK client starts just fine, but I haven't been able to start a game. This is the what I get when I run crossfire. I assume there is a server issue. It looks like I'm missing the cfsndserv file, shouldn't it have been included when compiled. If not do you know where to get it. > > Any help would be much appreciated, > > matt > ********************************************************************** > > mrussell@pilot5% crossfire > Character Width : 11 > Character Height: 10 > Warning: could not convert keysym KP_Up into keycode, ignoring > Warning: could not convert keysym KP_Down into keycode, ignoring > Warning: could not convert keysym KP_Right into keycode, ignoring > Warning: could not convert keysym KP_Left into keycode, ignoring > Warning: could not convert keysym KP_Home into keycode, ignoring > Warning: could not convert keysym KP_Prior into keycode, ignoring > Warning: could not convert keysym KP_End into keycode, ignoring > Warning: could not convert keysym KP_Next into keycode, ignoring > sh: /usr/local/bin/cfsndserv: not found > Can't connect to server: Connection refused > > > ********************************************************************** > This email and any files transmitted with it are confidential and > intended solely for the use of the individual or entity to whom they > are addressed. If you have received this email in error please notify > the system manager. > > This footnote also confirms that this email message has been > checked for the presence of computer viruses. > ********************************************************************** > _______________________________________________ > crossfire-devel mailing list > crossfire-devel@lists.real-time.com > https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/crossfire-devel > From tanner at real-time.com Sun Nov 10 12:12:46 2002 From: tanner at real-time.com (Bob Tanner) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:01 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] 1.4.0 Server No Workee on Solaris 8 In-Reply-To: <200211091644.LAA03289@mamia.prninfo.com> References: <200211091644.LAA03289@mamia.prninfo.com> Message-ID: <200211101212.48532.tanner@real-time.com> On Saturday 09 November 2002 10:44 am, Joel South wrote: > We've been unable as yet to get a working 1.4.0 server running under > Solaris 8 on Sparc. Version 1.3.0 works fine, as seen on the system at > lemur.elvenrealms.net . 1.4.0 compiles OK, but after installation coredumps > with a sigsev. I suspect some big vs. little-endian code problem with all > the changes, but at this point it needs to be debugged... Can you upload the core dumps? If they are large you can put them into ftp.real-time.com/incoming Try running the crossloop.web, which will uses gdb to do a backtrace when the server crashes. You can then post the bt, server.logs, and core dumps. -- Bob Tanner | Phone : (952)943-8700 http://www.mn-linux.org, Minnesota, Linux | Fax : (952)943-8500 Key fingerprint = AB15 0BDF BCDE 4369 5B42 1973 7CF1 A709 2CC1 B288 From mwedel at sonic.net Mon Nov 11 02:14:27 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:01 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Crossfire Problem References: Message-ID: <3DCF66E3.1000909@sonic.net> Matt Russell wrote: > I was wondering if you have some insight in a problem I'm having. I compiled > crossfire 1.4.0 on my SunOS 5.8. The GTK client starts just fine, but I > haven't been able to start a game. This is the what I get when I run > crossfire. I assume there is a server issue. It looks like I'm missing the > cfsndserv file, shouldn't it have been included when compiled. If not do you > know where to get it. > Note the error indicates that the client is trying to connect to a machine that is not running a crossfire server. Now why it is trying to connect to that specific machine, or why that machine isn't running a server is a more relevant question. The client won't start up a server - that needs to be done separately. From root at garbled.net Mon Nov 11 03:55:45 2002 From: root at garbled.net (Tim Rightnour) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:01 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Request for formulae/art/maps Message-ID: So, I've committed some stuff to the alchemy code today, that allows a much greater flexibility and variety of things to be done with it. If possible, I'd like to get some new stuff in there to show off this feature. If any of this piques your interest, please feel free to contribute. 1) Formulae. I think alot of new formulae could be be devised for the new alchemy stuff.. some things that had occurred to me: Rings. Maybe you add a potion of might, a hunk of gold and a diamond, and you get a ring of Str. A jeweler's bench might be nice for this. (jeweler skill) Wands. Maybe a stick of some sort, a scroll, some other random ingredient. (thaumaturgy) Books. Perhaps a pile of scrolls could be bound into a book? Maybe special ingredients could be used, like skin, to make the binding for special books, which could be combined with scrolls or other things to make a tome/grimoire. (literacy) Foods. Different food ingredients might make a meal. Perhaps a little food with magical seasonings might make some of the more rare artifact foods, like the magic mushrooms. (woodsman) Weapons/Armor. There should be alot of weapons and armor one could make with the smithery skill. Perhaps more of the random artifacts could be formulated. It would be best, if some of the really cool formulae, required ingredients from multiple skills. So you might have like a special shield, that is made up of items derrived from each of the other skills, culminating in the "ultimate formulae" for that skill. This would add an interesting element, as now you might have to gather 30-40 items to make your one item, and would require all of the different skills, or as gros mentioned.. players might work together to pull it off. Certain special formulae could also require a different cauldron. Like a special shield, might require you to find an anvil, rather than a forge, to perform the formulae. 2. Graphics. Some of the above is going to require new graphics. There really aren't that many cool foods in the game. In additon, new graphics for some of the skill items, like the forge, jeweler's bench, desk, pot/pan, bowyer's workbench, and whatever you would make wands on. In addition, back to weather for a brief second.. The following would be nice: New rivers. Wide rivers, little streams, branching streams, little trickles. herbs, flowers, fruited trees. Things I can plant on the world so people can go out and pick apples and thyme for thier cooking skill. What about grass in different colors.. or trees in various states of seasonal change. Perhaps I could figure out a way to make the leaves turn brown in the fall, and the trees die in the winter. grass could change to brown, back to green. Actual cactus that could sit on the desert tiles would be nice too. Farm animals. Cows, sheep, goats, pigs, horses. For example, the ogre royalty quest mentions ogres killing sheep. Wouldn't it be nice if there was a little farm by the ogre cave that had a bunch of sheep wandering about? Plus, you could slaughter them for ingredients! :) If we ever get transports working, maybe you could rent a horse and ride it to navar. 3. Maps. Some of the shops in scorn, or perhaps other cities as well, could use a little room like the one on the alchemy shop, with a forge, workbench, desk, etc, so people could actually use the new skills. Perhaps instead some of the unused houses in scorn could be transformed into work areas. Each one of these rooms might contain a few random books/scrolls that detail some of the formulae one might use. Perhaps some of the really easy formulae might be permanently detailed on a fake book, so a newbie could get right into the fun. (Imagine how neat it would be for a newbie dwarf to run through the newbie tower, and come out with a pile of orc bits, and make himself a nice pretty dagger) Also.. a lighting emporium for scorn would be really nice. A nice little shop that sells a variety of torches, flints, lamps, and other glowing things. When you put it on the map of scorn, it should be really brightly lit. :) Additional ideas welcome. --- Tim Rightnour NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS http://www.netbsd.org/ NetBSD supported hardware database: http://mail-index.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/hw.cgi From emaillist+cfdev at dogphilosophy.net Mon Nov 11 13:26:08 2002 From: emaillist+cfdev at dogphilosophy.net (emaillist+cfdev@dogphilosophy.net) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:01 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Request for formulae/art/maps In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200211111226.08628.emaillist+cfdev@dogphilosophy.net> On Monday 11 November 2002 02:55 am, Tim Rightnour wrote: > So, I've committed some stuff to the alchemy code today, that allows a much > greater flexibility and variety of things to be done with it. If possible, > I'd like to get some new stuff in there to show off this feature. If any > of this piques your interest, please feel free to contribute. Good timing - I just discovered how much fun it is to add new things to Crossfire. I haven't looked much at the alchemy system, so my suggestions could be completely bogus here. There's also a bunch of standard formulae in the suggestions to, so feel free to use or alternatively scoff at any of them... In general, it might be worth "mapping" some general characteristics of materials to potential effects when used alchemically. "In general" (or "by default") what happens when you include Gold (Cha bonus because it looks spiffy, perhaps and/or Resistance to Acid?) I have no idea how hard that would be to implement, but it might make the results of alchemy a little more predictable or consistent (i.e. instead of having to list every single possible combination of (object) + Gold + Philosophical Mercury = (object) (Cha +1), the system would be able to "guess" that since there's not a specific formula, that the inclusion of Gold should mean a chance of adding Cha +1 to the object. (I wouldn't actually get RID of the formulae - it shouldn't ALWAYS be predictable what you get...just have a somewhat consistent way of dealing with "if there's no pre-defined formula, do THIS") I like the idea of having the ability to do "continued" building of something. For example, with the jeweler skill, you might start with: 7 gold nuggets => Gold Ingot Gold Ingot => Ring ("of Adornment") Ring + 3 Ghost Ectoplasm => Adds "Resist Ghosthit +5" to Ring Ring + Unicorn Horn => adds "Resist Poison +5" Possibly also the ability to "combine" a smaller item of magical jewelry with a larger one to increase the larger one's capabilities (and free up "body-part" slots)? Ring (Resist Fire +15) + Amulet (ac+1) + 7 Philosophical Mercury => Amulet (ac+1)(Resist Fire +15) (etc.) Or with smithery, the ability to use the skill to make small incremental improvements to a weapon (improve weapon speed, dam +1, add damage types with appropriate hard-to-find ingredients, etc.) or to armor (reduce weight, improve armour, improve ac, etc.) Sword + 3 Raas Ichor + Philosophical Mercury => Sword with weapon speed improved by 1... or Chain Armor + 7 Pixie Dusts + 7 Pixie Wings + Philosophical Mercury => 3/4 weight chain armor (This is particularly where a "generic" system might help if it's not already in there - it'd save having to include every single type of sword in otherwise-identical formulae in the list.) [...] > Books. Perhaps a pile of scrolls could be bound into a book? Maybe > special ingredients could be used, like skin, to make the binding for > special books, which could be combined with scrolls or other things to make > a tome/grimoire. (literacy) Seven seems to be a popular number for the alchemy formulae: 7 Scrolls of Identify + Snake's Skin => Tome of Identify 7 Scrolls of Cure Disease + Snake's Skin => Prayer Book of Cure Disease etc. > Foods. Different food ingredients might make a meal. Perhaps a little > food with magical seasonings might make some of the more rare artifact > foods, like the magic mushrooms. (woodsman) Additionally, the ability to turn "poisonous" materials into edible food 2 Booze of Poison => Booze (non poisonous) or possibly the ability to make food that also does a small amount of healing or cures disease: Roast Bird + Water of the Wise => Chicken Soup (cures disease, +5 hp, +50 food) > It would be best, if some of the really cool formulae, required ingredients > from multiple skills. So you might have like a special shield, that is > made up of items derrived from each of the other skills, culminating in the > "ultimate formulae" for that skill. This would add an interesting element, > as now you might have to gather 30-40 items to make your one item, and > would require all of the different skills, or as gros mentioned.. players > might work together to pull it off. I like this idea a lot. Also if "incremental" improvements can be supported without a major code re-write, this feature might similarly encourage player cooperation. A heavy duty warrior type with the woodsman skill might team up with a wizard who knows how to do smithery... [...] > 2. Graphics. Some of the above is going to require new graphics. There > really aren't that many cool foods in the game. In additon, new graphics > for some of the skill items, like the forge, jeweler's bench, desk, > pot/pan, bowyer's workbench, and whatever you would make wands on. I'll try my hand at the "chicken soup" arch and graphics if anyone wants... > In addition, back to weather for a brief second.. The following would be > nice: [...] > herbs, flowers, fruited trees. Things I can plant on the world so people > can go out and pick apples and thyme for thier cooking skill. A "food generator"? Not a bad idea... [...] > Farm animals. Cows, sheep, goats, pigs, horses. For example, the ogre > royalty quest mentions ogres killing sheep. Wouldn't it be nice if there > was a little farm by the ogre cave that had a bunch of sheep wandering > about? Plus, you could slaughter them for ingredients! :) If we ever get > transports working, maybe you could rent a horse and ride it to navar. Hmmmm.... Wild Bear + 7 Foods (+ Woodsman skill) => Pet Bear? :-) Am I right in thinking that one could make a "pick-up-able" animal with nothing more than the appropriate flag (no_pick 0) in the arch, without any other code changes? Or would something screwy happen when the animal tries to move while in the player's inventory? > 3. Maps. [...] > Additional ideas welcome. I've started playing with adding spells and items to Crossfire (I'll post the URL where I've been putting what documentation for doing so that I can come up with in another mail momentarily), and I'm finding I'd like to have a "Crazy Peddy's Experimental Equipment Shop" - where the admin can define a "list experimental_equipment" in the treasures and have only items from that list appear in the shop. That way, when someone wants to get a new spell tried out by players, players can find "Tome of NewSPell" at that shop for sale. Same goes for new weapon objects, wands, scrolls (including scrolls of [some new skill]), foods, and so on. Not necessarily more than one or two at a time from the list, just so that players know that they can sometimes find strange and interesting new experimental things there that may or may not be useful, but are often at least fun to play with. ("'Tome of Cause Milk?' This I've got to see....") From leaf at real-time.com Mon Nov 11 14:29:54 2002 From: leaf at real-time.com (Rick Tanner) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:02 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Empty random maps, was: [CF-maps] smuggler quest broken In-Reply-To: <200211012311.gA1NBAUM021832@lol1120.lss.emc.com> Message-ID: Could this have anything to do with the Monsters sleeping post over on CF-Devel? Initial post: http://mailman.real-time.com/pipermail/crossfire-devel/2002-October/003610.html "What I see, is that areas that used to be packed end-to-end with monsters, are now containing one or two, and a generator at the back of the room. Someone on IRC mentioned that this is due to the monsters sleeping, and blocking the generators." Followup post: http://mailman.real-time.com/pipermail/crossfire-devel/2002-October/003622.html "The bigger problem it solved is that monsters now sit still, so when you get to the far side of a level (that isn't just a big chamber), the monsters are still there, instead of all of them coming towards you at the start of the level." "If an area is supposed to be packed full of monsters, then the map maker should put those monsters in." Just a thought... - Rick Tanner leaf@real-time.com On Fri, 1 Nov 2002, Preston Crow wrote: > >> And I don't think the knight quest has been fixed in CVS yet. > > > > Just tried it out locally on my system (I'm presuming we're meaning the goblin > >head quest) and it worked OK. > > > > However, there are perhaps issues with some of these maps - on an active > >server, it is very possible that some of the world maps won't reset very often. > > It does work now, but the random levels are all essentially empty. It used > to be that they got progressively harder such that the last random level > was about as difficult as the end map. > From emaillist+cfdev at dogphilosophy.net Mon Nov 11 15:06:21 2002 From: emaillist+cfdev at dogphilosophy.net (Flying Pedestrian) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:02 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] "Developing new stuff" documentation? Message-ID: <200211111406.21449.emaillist+cfdev@dogphilosophy.net> I've started writing up (somewhat sloppily) what I've found out about adding new features to Crossfire. If anyone's interested (or just bored) what I've written up so far can be found at: http://www.dogphilosophy.net/SECTION-Dog_Philosophy/SECTION-Play_With_It/SECTION-Play_With_Crossfire ('scuze the long URL, just me experimenting with "all dynamic" web design...) I've got a brief overview of "adding things" in four sections and a somewhat sloppy tutorial on adding "ordinary" combat spells. Any comments, suggestions, and especially corrections are welcome... (P.S. If anybody's had a chance to try out the "sparkshower" spell I used to practice adding spells originally and you want to see it behaving the way I'd intended, try it out in the "Undead Church" in Scorn...) From emaillist+cfdev at dogphilosophy.net Mon Nov 11 15:27:23 2002 From: emaillist+cfdev at dogphilosophy.net (emaillist+cfdev@dogphilosophy.net) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:02 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Bunch of arch-related questions Message-ID: <200211111427.23077.emaillist+cfdev@dogphilosophy.net> Does somebody on the list have a good grasp of what the "non-obvious" fields in spell arch's mean? For example, what does "hp" represent in a spell arch? There's some partial discussion of different meanings of the fields for different object types in docs/Developers/objects (for example, mentioning that "hp" for treasure chests represents how many items it might have in it), but it doesn't seem to cover spells at all. Also, in relation to the damage type, I assume there's no problem combining "damaging" damage types with "non-damaging" damage types (like confusion and paralysis)? It seems to work, but I wasn't sure... For the "chaos" damage type, is it really a distinct damage type, or does it simply do random other damage types? (i.e. is the damage from a "chaos" type attack subject to possible reduction from other resistances?) Also, in general, what would people be most interested in seeing added: New spells New skills New races New monsters New potions New weapons New foods (etc. etc.)? From michael.toennies at nord-com.net Mon Nov 11 18:45:23 2002 From: michael.toennies at nord-com.net (Michael Toennies) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:02 2005 Subject: AW: [CF-Devel] Empty random maps, was: [CF-maps] smuggler quest broken In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Yes, the "sleep 1" in all this monster arches is a kind of bug now. In original "gauntlets" style, this sleep has some meaning, but in crossfire today its a bug. It will break the rest of the monster move commands logic. Sadly, i have explained this some time ago, perhaps 2 years. But it was ignored. Just browse the list archive about it, i think. The other reason why mobs don't attack or stay is a bug in get_nearest_player() in server/player.c. The line while (QUERY_FLAG(ol->ob, FLAG_FREED) || !QUERY_FLAG(ol->ob, FLAG_FRIENDLY)) { is wrong. First, players are non-friendly objects (see login.c). So, after some time, they will be removed from this list - means, mobs who use this routine for find a target will not notice the player. This happens every time, when you got in the server log a "removed non friendly object...". Include a "%s\n", op->name" in the log message und you will see that the list kicks the players. Simple change it to this: while ((tag_t) ol->id != op->count || QUERY_FLAG(ol->ob, FLAG_REMOVED) || QUERY_FLAG(ol->ob, FLAG_FREED) || (!QUERY_FLAG(ol->ob, FLAG_FRIENDLY)&& ol->ob->type != PLAYER)) { btw, another bug is in the function draw(). Remove this function, its unneeded. More bad, this function update the LOS before it calls the map_draw routine which updates the map tiles again (and in the right order). But the draw call of the los function resets the update flags before the right calls - means all darkness LOS in crossfire is broken since ages. You can see this effect by entering the tower in Naval - the tower in the se corner, which is totally dark in. enter it, cast a firebolt and press space or apply then on the door without moving. You will see that you will have LOS bugs in the city shadows, coming from the tower. > > Could this have anything to do with the Monsters sleeping post over on > CF-Devel? > > Initial post: > http://mailman.real-time.com/pipermail/crossfire-devel/2002-Octobe r/003610.html > > "What I see, is that areas that used to be packed end-to-end with > monsters, are now containing one or two, and a generator at the back of > the room. Someone on IRC mentioned that this is due to the monsters > sleeping, and blocking the generators." > > Followup post: > http://mailman.real-time.com/pipermail/crossfire-devel/2002-Octobe r/003622.html "The bigger problem it solved is that monsters now sit still, so when you get to the far side of a level (that isn't just a big chamber), the monsters are still there, instead of all of them coming towards you at the start of the level." "If an area is supposed to be packed full of monsters, then the map maker should put those monsters in." Just a thought... - Rick Tanner leaf@real-time.com On Fri, 1 Nov 2002, Preston Crow wrote: > >> And I don't think the knight quest has been fixed in CVS yet. > > > > Just tried it out locally on my system (I'm presuming we're meaning the goblin > >head quest) and it worked OK. > > > > However, there are perhaps issues with some of these maps - on an active > >server, it is very possible that some of the world maps won't reset very often. > > It does work now, but the random levels are all essentially empty. It used > to be that they got progressively harder such that the last random level > was about as difficult as the end map. > _______________________________________________ crossfire-devel mailing list crossfire-devel@lists.real-time.com https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/crossfire-devel From leaf at real-time.com Mon Nov 11 20:14:40 2002 From: leaf at real-time.com (Rick Tanner) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:02 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Bunch of arch-related questions In-Reply-To: <200211111427.23077.emaillist+cfdev@dogphilosophy.net> Message-ID: Per a quick discussion on IRC, I've setup a poll on the Crossfire website and decided to use this topic to get it going. http://crossfire.real-time.com/poll/ Remeber, it works and that's the important thing.. ;) Please let me know possible topics for future polls. Thanks! - Rick Tanner leaf@real-time.com On Mon, 11 Nov 2002, emaillist+cfdev@dogphilosophy.net wrote: > > Also, in general, what would people be most interested in seeing added: > > New spells > New skills > New races > New monsters > New potions > New weapons > New foods > (etc. etc.)? From joel at mamia.prninfo.com Mon Nov 11 20:55:24 2002 From: joel at mamia.prninfo.com (Joel South) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:02 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Bunch of arch-related questions In-Reply-To: from "Rick Tanner" at Nov 11, 2002 08:14:40 PM Message-ID: <200211120255.VAA14652@mamia.prninfo.com> What about all of the above? :P I'd like to see all of that added. (: From emaillist+cfdev at dogphilosophy.net Mon Nov 11 22:31:37 2002 From: emaillist+cfdev at dogphilosophy.net (Flying Pedestrian) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:02 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Patch to add "biting" as a HtH attack (2.8kb tarball) Message-ID: <200211112131.37322.emaillist+cfdev@dogphilosophy.net> Okay, I'm going back and cleaning up my early fumbling attempts... I'm breaking up changes I've done separately now. This first portion adds the "biting" skill (hth attack). Patch against current CVS (at least as of a few minutes ago). bzip2'd tarball which contains a diff to add "biting" and the arch file for arch/skills/biting.arc Comments/suggestions welcome... -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: crossfire-biting.tar.bz2 Type: application/x-tbz Size: 2857 bytes Desc: crossfire biting patch Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20021111/a2a75229/crossfire-biting.tar.bin From emaillist+cfdev at dogphilosophy.net Mon Nov 11 22:46:26 2002 From: emaillist+cfdev at dogphilosophy.net (Flying Pedestrian) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:02 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Patch to add a new race (3.7kb patch) Message-ID: <200211112146.26207.emaillist+cfdev@dogphilosophy.net> Okay, patch #2 - adds the "Sossaurians" (civilized serpentmen) as a player race. Attached file include the new files in arch/player/race and the .diff patch for crossfire/lib/treasures for the race's starting abilities (makes use of the "biting" patch as one of the skills). Again, comments, suggestions, etc. are welcome. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: sossaurians.tar.bz2 Type: application/x-tbz Size: 3782 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20021111/64a80b55/sossaurians.tar.bin From emaillist+cfdev at dogphilosophy.net Tue Nov 12 00:27:15 2002 From: emaillist+cfdev at dogphilosophy.net (Flying Pedestrian) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:02 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Sheep! (another patch - 2.2kb) Message-ID: <200211112327.15999.emaillist+cfdev@dogphilosophy.net> Tim Rightnour wrote: > Farm animals. Cows, sheep, goats, pigs, horses. [...] > Wouldn't it be nice if there was a little farm by the ogre cave that had a > bunch of sheep wandering about? Plus, you could slaughter them for > ingredients! Okay, got no idea if I did this right, so if somebody could put some of these critters on a map somewhere and check them out, let me know how they work. Tarball contains arch's for: arch/monster/animal/farmyard/sheep.arc arch/monster/animal/farmyard/sheep.base.131.png arch/monster/animal/farmyard/sheep.base.171.png arch/food/leg_mutton.arc arch/food/leg_mutton.base.111.png arch/flesh/misc/sheepskin.arc arch/flesh/misc/sheepskin.base.111.png and a diff patch for crossfire/lib/treasures which hopefully gives the sheep the appropriate chance to drop a sheepskin or leg of mutton. Try not to laugh too hard at the badly drawn sheepskin. I figure with the new skill/alchemy system going in, the sheepskin would be handy for making cloaks with some cold resistance... As always, comments, suggestions, etc. etc...you know the drill. -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: sheep.tar.bz2 Type: application/x-tbz Size: 2274 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20021111/0676aea6/sheep.tar.bin From emaillist+cfdev at dogphilosophy.net Tue Nov 12 01:04:32 2002 From: emaillist+cfdev at dogphilosophy.net (Flying Pedestrian) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:02 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Bunch of arch-related questions In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200211120004.32506.emaillist+cfdev@dogphilosophy.net> Oh, don't forget New Dieties/Religions... On Monday 11 November 2002 07:14 pm, Rick Tanner wrote: > Per a quick discussion on IRC, I've setup a poll on the Crossfire website > and decided to use this topic to get it going. > > http://crossfire.real-time.com/poll/ > > Remeber, it works and that's the important thing.. ;) > > Please let me know possible topics for future polls. > > Thanks! > > - Rick Tanner > leaf@real-time.com From root at garbled.net Tue Nov 12 02:32:15 2002 From: root at garbled.net (Tim Rightnour) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:02 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Sheep! (another patch - 2.2kb) In-Reply-To: <200211112327.15999.emaillist+cfdev@dogphilosophy.net> Message-ID: On 12-Nov-02 Flying Pedestrian wrote: > Okay, got no idea if I did this right, so if somebody could put some of > these critters on a map somewhere and check them out, let me know how > they work. So I like the leg, and the sheepskin isn't bad. but the sheep is drawn in the wrong style. The sheep is more of the classic style, than the base style we've been trying to move towards, or use. If you look closely at most of the creatures, you will notice they are drawn in a sort of wierd isometric angle, giving them a 3d look. They stand up off the map, not flat against it. A really good example would be to look at some of the images where there is both a base and a clsc image for the same picture. Notice how the two are different. The sheep is definately of the classic style. Whereas your leg, definately has that wierd 3d effect I spoke of. As for the sheepskin.. I like it. Add some stub-legs off the sides, so it looks more like a hide than a popsicle, and it will be perfect. I'm not sure how you really make something flat look 3d.. Also.. in the interest of gore.. you might add liver and heart to the sheep treasures. If you do a goat.. it will definately need a head part, for those evil rituals. You know.. a good brain bodypart might be kinda funny.. --- Tim Rightnour NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS http://www.netbsd.org/ NetBSD supported hardware database: http://mail-index.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/hw.cgi From root at garbled.net Tue Nov 12 03:10:07 2002 From: root at garbled.net (Tim Rightnour) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:02 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Re: New races and spells. In-Reply-To: <200211120004.32506.emaillist+cfdev@dogphilosophy.net> Message-ID: >> Per a quick discussion on IRC, I've setup a poll on the Crossfire website >> and decided to use this topic to get it going. >> >> http://crossfire.real-time.com/poll/ If we are going to be adding new spells, races, dieties, whatever.. I think some thought needs to go into whatever we create. For example, yet-another-area-effect-spell isn't all that interesting. Races are a complex subject.. as it has to offer something new and unique to the game to be really useful. What about a given race would make someone want to play it, vs another race? The dragon race is an excellent example, as it is a totally different gameplay aspect than other races. I for one would want to know that a new race had been fully playtested before it went into the game.. but I'm just one of many developers, don't rely on my word alone. We often disagree. There are however, some spells I would find interesting.. and these are just thoughts, so please comment and discuss. 1) Weather related spells: Moonbeam: Increase the light level of an entire outdoor map tile by 1 at night. Forecast: Try and guess the weather. Perhaps you could code in the locations of the major towns, and give current conditions for each town. humidify: Crank up the humidity in this weather zone. dryspell: Crank the humidity down calling storm: lower the atmospheric pressure. calm: raise the atmospheric pressure. call lightning: if it's raining, and you are outdoors, call lightning bolts down from above to hit things around you. I would imagine this as the bolts coming from above, so the visual would be that in a radius of N, there would be individual strikes on monsters all around you. tornado: like ball lightning, but with a little air-elemental gfx. It would probably need to move slower, but still randomly. Outdoor only of course. Perhaps it flings items around as it touches piles. lightball: Dunno how hard this would be to do. But a floating ball of light, that works like ball-lightning, but does no damage. It would just follow you around from map to map, lighting the way. I'm looking for a cross between a pet monster and a ball lightning here. Perhaps fun effects could be added to the spells we allready have depending on weather. Like if it's really stormy, lightning does more damage. Or if it's cold out, fire really stings. Perhaps wind spells would do way more if you fire them in the direction of the prevailing wind, and nothing if you fire against it. 2) Other spells: Guided Missile: Magic Missile meets create bomb. A missle goes flying, hits, and kaboom! Do we have a chain lightning spell? Do we have any kick-back spells? Like prismatic sphere, or aura of fire, where things take a little damage when they hit you? Prismatic sphere might be fun, as it has that random factor. 3) Skills: Perhaps we can come up with some skills that might make people want to play as a thief. Like a backstab skill, where if you are hiding, you can backstab a nearby monster for mondo-damage. You would of course need to be using a stab-weapon. How about a bezerker rage.. where you go into a wild rage, killing everything in sight, under computer control, until you can't see any other targets, or wind up dead. perhaps you do extra damage while raging.. but the danger is you can't stop if you are in too deep. Just some ideas.. --- Tim Rightnour NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS http://www.netbsd.org/ NetBSD supported hardware database: http://mail-index.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/hw.cgi From henric at lysator.liu.se Tue Nov 12 03:34:09 2002 From: henric at lysator.liu.se (Henric Karlsson) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:03 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Bunch of arch-related questions In-Reply-To: Message-ID: How about new quests. That's what I personally miss most of all right now. Esp. the kind where someone requests help getting some item/ rescuing a friend/ killing something and return with a proof, and when you return you get a reward. I think Tobias tower in Santo Dominion is a nice example, where you get an amulet or ring in the end. /Henric On Mon, 11 Nov 2002, Rick Tanner wrote: > > Per a quick discussion on IRC, I've setup a poll on the Crossfire website > and decided to use this topic to get it going. > > http://crossfire.real-time.com/poll/ > > Remeber, it works and that's the important thing.. ;) > > Please let me know possible topics for future polls. > > Thanks! > > - Rick Tanner > leaf@real-time.com > > On Mon, 11 Nov 2002, emaillist+cfdev@dogphilosophy.net wrote: > > > > > > Also, in general, what would people be most interested in seeing added: > > > > New spells > > New skills > > New races > > New monsters > > New potions > > New weapons > > New foods > > (etc. etc.)? From emaillist+cfdev at dogphilosophy.net Tue Nov 12 11:36:53 2002 From: emaillist+cfdev at dogphilosophy.net (Flying Pedestrian) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:03 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Sheep! (another patch - 2.2kb) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200211121036.53750.emaillist+cfdev@dogphilosophy.net> On Tuesday 12 November 2002 01:32 am, Tim Rightnour wrote: > On 12-Nov-02 Flying Pedestrian wrote: > > Okay, got no idea if I did this right, so if somebody could put some of > > these critters on a map somewhere and check them out, let me know how > > they work. > > So I like the leg, and the sheepskin isn't bad. but the sheep is drawn in > the wrong style. The sheep is more of the classic style, than the base > style we've been trying to move towards, or use. [...] Curses, you've discovered my "secret" - I'm not a particularly good artist. I'll see what I can do with it, though. If I can manage to fix it up, I'll leave the original one and just rename it (sheep.clsc.131.png, etc.) and add the fixed one in its place. >[...] Whereas your > leg, definately has that wierd 3d effect I spoke of. Of course, that's because I just modified the already made "food" graphic to make it... :-) I did do the sheepskin from scratch, though. I think I can tune it up a bit with a few simple modifications. [...] > Also.. in the interest of gore.. you might add liver and heart to the sheep > treasures. If you do a goat.. it will definately need a head part, for > those evil rituals. > > You know.. a good brain bodypart might be kinda funny.. ....hmmmm, and with the new skill/alchemy system going in, a vital piece needed for making pet golems...(I say "pet golems" to distinguish them from "manual control golems" e.g. the "summon golem" spells.) Perhaps the new system could do something with "body-type = pet golem type" and "brain type = pet behavior" (e.g. sheep-brain = unagressive pet...) Good idea, actually. I'll come up with a couple of additional bodypart treasures. From emaillist+cfdev at dogphilosophy.net Tue Nov 12 12:25:44 2002 From: emaillist+cfdev at dogphilosophy.net (emaillist+cfdev@dogphilosophy.net) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:03 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Re: New races and spells. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200211121125.44919.emaillist+cfdev@dogphilosophy.net> On Tuesday 12 November 2002 02:10 am, Tim Rightnour wrote: > If we are going to be adding new spells, races, dieties, whatever.. I think > some thought needs to go into whatever we create. For example, > yet-another-area-effect-spell isn't all that interesting. In-and-of-itself, perhaps not, but since as far as I can tell the only way to get magic exp is to "kill monsters with it", a greater variety of available "damage types" and effects might help differentiate wizard-type characters from each other better. (It seems you don't get magic exp for killing monsters with scrolls or wands, at least not last time I checked...) I don't know that it's within my meager abilities to attempt the necessary coding, but one thought I had was to have a way of allowing spell-casters to "attune themselves" to a certain extent - wizards who learn a preponderance of cold spells, for example, ought to find they then have an easier time learning and casting cold-related spells in general. As I recall from what code-perusal and documentation-reading I've done so far, attunement is an "all or nothing" effect (i.e. you're either attuned to a path, or you're not [or the path is "denied" or "repelled"]) (can anyone give a good explanation of what attunement accomplishes? Reduced casting cost? Increased equivalent level when cast? Easier learning? All of the above?). (By "all or nothing" I mean you can't be "50% attuned" or "25% repelled" or whatever - not that there's really any reason to add that kind of complexity...). The "algorithm" I had in mind would be something like "if you have at least 3 spells of the same path and they make up at least 50% of your known spells, you are 'attuned' to that path" (or better, the 'attunement level' improves, e.g. a caster who is "repelled" from a path gets upgraded to normal for that path). The attunement would go away if the conditions changed (i.e. they have 3 frost spells and 3 other spells, and are as a result "attuned" to frost. They learn one more non-frost spell and lose their attunement.) Might also encourage a little more thought in spellcaster character development beyond "learn every random spell found." > Races are a > complex subject.. as it has to offer something new and unique to the game > to be really useful. What about a given race would make someone want to > play it, vs another race? The dragon race is an excellent example, as it > is a totally different gameplay aspect than other races. I for one would > want to know that a new race had been fully playtested before it went into > the game.. but I'm just one of many developers, don't rely on my word > alone. We often disagree. I do agree that races ought to be somewhat distinct from each other, but choice is always good. If we go TOO far into demanding coarse-grained differences, we'll have to go back and get rid of "Northmen" and "Gnomes" and "Half-Orcs" and "Halflings" as not being different enough from humans, dwarves, and elves...(this isn't such an issue for ME, though, since any races I personally come up with are likely to focus on the "middle ground" of difference between "boring old humanoids" and radically different creatures like dragons...[the Quetzalcoatl's are a good already-existing example of what I mean]) Here's yet another suggestion/request based on me not knowing how hard it would be to actually implement - how hard would it be to add a "class face change" specifier to the race arch's? That is, be able to specify a specific face (faces) for particular classes for a race? In the case of the lizard-people in my patch, one could adapt the "serpentman priest" graphics, and specify switching to that graphic for Sossaurian wizards, priests, monks, evokers, etc. (and by default staying "no class face change" for anything not listed). > 1) Weather related spells: [...] All very cool ideas. It'd be nice, wherever possible, if the functions generating the effects were relatively "generic" such that it'd be easy to extend them with new effects, too, much as the current "cone spell, bolt spell, ball and bullet spell" functions are. I need to try out the weather support on my system... [...] > 2) Other spells: > > Guided Missile: Magic Missile meets create bomb. A missle goes flying, > hits, and kaboom! I'll have to look at the way the functions are set out, but I MIGHT be able to do this myself, using the existing "seeking spell" functions. Of course, considering how prone the current seeking spells are to fly around loose and hit a wall/the caster... [...] > Do we have any kick-back spells? Like prismatic sphere, or aura of fire, > where things take a little damage when they hit you? Prismatic sphere > might be fun, as it has that random factor. [...] A generic "damage_shield" function that does damage to things that actually hit you (hitback?) would be a very nice addition to the current ball/bolt/bullet/etc spells...(as opposed to e.g. aura of fire which is really an "area of effect - 1 square radius" spell...) > > 3) Skills: > > Perhaps we can come up with some skills that might make people want to play > as a thief. Like a backstab skill, where if you are hiding, you can > backstab a nearby monster for mondo-damage. You would of course need to be > using a stab-weapon. Perhaps an "ambush" skill that works like hiding, but multiplies damage based on level on the first attack when coming out of hiding? > How about a bezerker rage.. where you go into a wild rage, killing > everything in sight, under computer control, until you can't see any other > targets, or wind up dead. perhaps you do extra damage while raging.. but > the danger is you can't stop if you are in too deep. Might also be able to simulate this with an increase to Str, Con, Hp (but not maxhp), and speed, and applying "confusion" at the same time... > Just some ideas.. [...] Good ones, I think... From temitchell at sympatico.ca Tue Nov 12 16:12:21 2002 From: temitchell at sympatico.ca (Todd Mitchell) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:03 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Re: New races and spells. References: <200211121125.44919.emaillist+cfdev@dogphilosophy.net> Message-ID: <000601c28a98$93725180$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> > > Here's yet another suggestion/request based on me not knowing how hard it > would be to actually implement - how hard would it be to add a "class face > change" specifier to the race arch's? That is, be able to specify a specific > face (faces) for particular classes for a race? In the case of the > lizard-people in my patch, one could adapt the "serpentman priest" graphics, > and specify switching to that graphic for Sossaurian wizards, priests, monks, > evokers, etc. (and by default staying "no class face change" for anything not > listed). > I also like this idea - dwarf in clothes vs dwarf in armour vs dwarf in robe kind of thing as mentioned above. This would be less work than an entire range of character/race faces. I was thinking for some time now that it would actually be really nice to get rid of the class faces and just use race face. This would liven up the scenery a bit and it makes more sense that your race is obvious while your class may not be. Class faces for each race would be ok, but it would be more work and it does not allow for the incognito factor - this would be especially neat for thieves to do away with class face. - this wouldn't be to hard to do at all. The other other idea is neat though if we can get some good graphics. From emaillist+cfdev at dogphilosophy.net Tue Nov 12 16:55:22 2002 From: emaillist+cfdev at dogphilosophy.net (Flying Pedestrian) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:03 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Sheep! Again! (patch 3.1kb) In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200211121555.22500.emaillist+cfdev@dogphilosophy.net> On Tuesday 12 November 2002 01:32 am, Tim Rightnour wrote: > On 12-Nov-02 Flying Pedestrian wrote: > > Okay, got no idea if I did this right, so if somebody could put some of > > these critters on a map somewhere and check them out, let me know how > > they work. > > So I like the leg, and the sheepskin isn't bad. but the sheep is drawn in > the wrong style. The sheep is more of the classic style, than the base > style we've been trying to move towards, or use. [...] You asked for it, you getted it. Probably. Attached is mark II of the sheep patch. I moved the original sheep graphic to "sheep.clsc.*" and tried to touch up a new version with a more isometric look. Hopefully it's a little better. I tweaked the sheepskin graphic a bit as well. I also updated the sheep treasures to include some additional body parts (heart, liver) and another food chance. Let me know how it works. Again, this should be a patch against current CVS (or at least, last night's CVS - I assume nobody's changed the treasures file in the last 12 hours or so) and a tarball containing the graphics and .arc's for the sheep and associated objects. As before, if somebody could slap some into a map somewhere and test them, let me know if they work correctly (I haven't looked at map-making yet...) -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: sheep.tar.bz2 Type: application/x-tbz Size: 3106 bytes Desc: SHEEP! BAAAaaaaaa! Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20021112/2112dc74/sheep.tar.bin From root at garbled.net Tue Nov 12 19:33:53 2002 From: root at garbled.net (Tim Rightnour) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:03 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] #define's that I want to just kill outright Message-ID: I've been working on cleaning up some of the gigantic maze of #ifdefs that litter the code today. While doing so, I hit a number of #defines I think should just go away entirely, and become default. * ALCHEMY - enables alchemy code * FULL_RING_DESCRIPTION - makes rings abilities show in inventory window * USE_SWAP_STATS - allows stat swapping for new characters SHOP_LISTINGS - does this even work? NO_AUTO_SKILL_SWITCH: /* To be removed soon (setable by player) */ /* IF this is set, then the range type will not switch to skill when * you use a melee weapon - this better emulates pre-skill code. */ WALL_CREDIT: players earn exp for killing with summon fog. * NO_CONE_PROPOGATE - makes cone spells stop at the first monster * USE_LIGHTING - enable light/darkness & light sources I'd like to get rid of these, and any more people can think of that I've missed. I'm working on converting some of the other ones to settings.. but these seem rediculous. Does *anyone* fiddle with these? --- Tim Rightnour NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS http://www.netbsd.org/ NetBSD supported hardware database: http://mail-index.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/hw.cgi From mwedel at sonic.net Wed Nov 13 02:08:45 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:03 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Re: New races and spells. References: <200211121125.44919.emaillist+cfdev@dogphilosophy.net> <000601c28a98$93725180$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> Message-ID: <3DD2088D.10103@sonic.net> > I also like this idea - dwarf in clothes vs dwarf in armour vs dwarf in robe > kind of thing as mentioned above. This would be less work than an entire > range of character/race faces. > I was thinking for some time now that it would actually be really nice to > get rid of the class faces and just use race face. This would liven up the > scenery a bit and it makes more sense that your race is obvious while your > class may not be. Class faces for each race would be ok, but it would be > more work and it does not allow for the incognito factor - this would be > especially neat for thieves to do away with class face. - this wouldn't be > to hard to do at all. > The other other idea is neat though if we can get some good graphics. Well, it's not just a simple matter of 'dwarf wizard should have robes' type of thing. After all, pretty much any race/class can use any weapon and armor. that priest could use a sword and plate armor and look indistinguishable from a fighter in terms of equipment. Monk and wizards might look very much alike. But it really isn't possible to support all of those combinations (how many armor * weapon * race combinatins are there? A lot ). If anything, since we tend to let players set their title, why not let players set their faces (animations), within reason? A fireborn would be stuck with a fireborn. A dragon would be stuck with a dragon face. But any of the 'humanoid' races could have a selection to choose from. This could be as basic or complex as desired. Player could choose face that they feel best matches their character. If desired (or someone submitted such faces), this could get as trivial as just different colored clothing. There would have to be an 'approved' list from which the player could choose from - you couldn't choose a 'blob' face for example. And a player could choose a face that doesn't really match their character (eg, choose an armored figured even if they were nothing, or whatever else). Players could re-choose as their characters change. From mwedel at sonic.net Wed Nov 13 02:23:23 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:03 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Request for formulae/art/maps References: <200211111226.08628.emaillist+cfdev@dogphilosophy.net> Message-ID: <3DD20BFB.1090707@sonic.net> Some quick comments - I agree with the idea that a general 'mechanism' for alchemy makes sense. Eg, dragon scales + other result in fire resistance, creature heart + arrow = slaying (or assassinating). I'm a little concerned about making those too automatic. I don't know if I really want it abstracted to the point where the player can make boots of fire resistance, cloak of fire res, ring, helm, ... all fire res. I think (from my perspective) would be to have the formula reflect some standard, but not necesarily have them be generic. Note the creationg of 'anything good' through alchemy type things should increase the item_power of the object. That code isn't currently enforced, but that is what we are moving to. Arguably, the alchemy code could be used to replace the current weapon enchantment method. Books - should make sure that only books that could randomly occur can be created. It'd otherwise be sort of pointless if the reward for some quest is some special spell, but once the person learned that spell, he can make books for everyone who wants it (the case still exists that someone could fetch the book from the quest for other people, but that is certainly harder than just scribing them). Food - I've often said that current body parts that litter the battlefield should go bad - like nethack, at some point, they become poisonous, and at some later point, they just decompose. You could add a 'canning kit', and people could preserve these parts if so desired (maybe have to pick up empty cans/bottles someplace?) Eg, leg + can = canned leg of .... That chicken + a fire should equal roast bird. Maps/images: the idea of fruiting trees where the player could go and potentially pick those apples and oranges would add least add some consistency to the game. Of course, one could really take this to the full extreme - also have things like wheat, grinding mills, ovens, etc. Other than color, I'm not really sure if this would be of much use. If we're on the topic of images, I'd prefer some more shop images - basically, right now there is armor, weapon, general, and magic. I'm pretty sure the alchemy shop uses the same as the magic shop, and there is another shop (range weapon shop?) that uses the normal weapon shop image. Would be nice to have those have their own faces. If a lighting emporium is added, then it having it's own face would also be nice. Same thing for workshops - could have bunch of workshop house images. From mwedel at sonic.net Wed Nov 13 02:28:35 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:03 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] #define's that I want to just kill outright References: Message-ID: <3DD20D33.20408@sonic.net> Tim Rightnour wrote: > I've been working on cleaning up some of the gigantic maze of #ifdefs that > litter the code today. While doing so, I hit a number of #defines I think > should just go away entirely, and become default. > > * ALCHEMY - enables alchemy code Can't see a reason not to have this (if DM thought it was really abusive, could just have an empty formula file). > * FULL_RING_DESCRIPTION - makes rings abilities show in inventory window Description out of date - really means full ring abilities are sent to the client. Can't see much reason not to make this standard. If not, this should certainly be a player config option. > * USE_SWAP_STATS - allows stat swapping for new characters Different topic of redoing entire character creation scheme. As it stands now, I don't know if anyone does not use this on their server - I would hope that isn't the case, as it would just mean the player doing more rolls for them to get their character. > SHOP_LISTINGS - does this even work? Only define I see for this is in init.c, so probably doesn't do anything/built in now. I _think_ I may have written that back in the day were almost any new feature was put in with a #ifdef in case it was buggy. The code is the shop menus in the shops, so it works, but the define isn't needed anymore. > NO_AUTO_SKILL_SWITCH: /* To be removed soon (setable by player) */ > /* IF this is set, then the range type will not switch to skill when > * you use a melee weapon - this better emulates pre-skill code. > */ Not sure on that one. It really depends on what server admins are using. > WALL_CREDIT: players earn exp for killing with summon fog. Didn't even realize that exists. > * NO_CONE_PROPOGATE - makes cone spells stop at the first monster It works, I don't know if anyone uses it - makes things a lot more difficult for spellcasters. > * USE_LIGHTING - enable light/darkness & light sources should be standard. From mwedel at sonic.net Wed Nov 13 02:28:35 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:03 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] #define's that I want to just kill outright References: Message-ID: <3DD20D33.20408@sonic.net> Tim Rightnour wrote: > I've been working on cleaning up some of the gigantic maze of #ifdefs that > litter the code today. While doing so, I hit a number of #defines I think > should just go away entirely, and become default. > > * ALCHEMY - enables alchemy code Can't see a reason not to have this (if DM thought it was really abusive, could just have an empty formula file). > * FULL_RING_DESCRIPTION - makes rings abilities show in inventory window Description out of date - really means full ring abilities are sent to the client. Can't see much reason not to make this standard. If not, this should certainly be a player config option. > * USE_SWAP_STATS - allows stat swapping for new characters Different topic of redoing entire character creation scheme. As it stands now, I don't know if anyone does not use this on their server - I would hope that isn't the case, as it would just mean the player doing more rolls for them to get their character. > SHOP_LISTINGS - does this even work? Only define I see for this is in init.c, so probably doesn't do anything/built in now. I _think_ I may have written that back in the day were almost any new feature was put in with a #ifdef in case it was buggy. The code is the shop menus in the shops, so it works, but the define isn't needed anymore. > NO_AUTO_SKILL_SWITCH: /* To be removed soon (setable by player) */ > /* IF this is set, then the range type will not switch to skill when > * you use a melee weapon - this better emulates pre-skill code. > */ Not sure on that one. It really depends on what server admins are using. > WALL_CREDIT: players earn exp for killing with summon fog. Didn't even realize that exists. > * NO_CONE_PROPOGATE - makes cone spells stop at the first monster It works, I don't know if anyone uses it - makes things a lot more difficult for spellcasters. > * USE_LIGHTING - enable light/darkness & light sources should be standard. From temitchell at sympatico.ca Wed Nov 13 13:30:33 2002 From: temitchell at sympatico.ca (Todd Mitchell) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:03 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Re: New races and spells. References: <200211121125.44919.emaillist+cfdev@dogphilosophy.net> <000601c28a98$93725180$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> <3DD2088D.10103@sonic.net> Message-ID: <000801c28b4b$23eae580$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> > Well, it's not just a simple matter of 'dwarf wizard should have robes' type > of thing. After all, pretty much any race/class can use any weapon and armor. > > that priest could use a sword and plate armor and look indistinguishable from > a fighter in terms of equipment. Monk and wizards might look very much alike. Ya - this is true, but for all intents and purposes you could get away with three faces per race and I don't think there would be too much complaint - heavy duty combat (full armour big sword), light duty(leather type and sword) and magic guy(robe and stick). Of course more is better but these would cover most tastes. Assigning the faces could be the subject for some debate however as you say. > > But it really isn't possible to support all of those combinations (how many > armor * weapon * race combinatins are there? A lot ). This is a problem for sure. Maybe we should sell Crossfire t-shirts and use the proceeds to hire a real artist -"work you art slave...work!" ;) > If anything, since we tend to let players set their title, why not let players > set their faces (animations), within reason? > I was going to suggest this but figured there would be opposition to it since it would be more work and someone would have to do it, so I suggested the other. I personally think it would be ok even just to dump the class faces and use the race ones. I am sure there are people who would disagree however. > There would have to be an 'approved' list from which the player could choose > from - you couldn't choose a 'blob' face for example. And a player could choose > a face that doesn't really match their character (eg, choose an armored figured > even if they were nothing, or whatever else). Players could re-choose as their > characters change. I think this is a good idea. If we got rid of the class/race face distinction and made a set of choosable arches for each race (with some overlap when body types are similar). Need a few more pictures here and there (some more elves, trolls, a halfling in full battle armour...maybe even a couple different dragon types, but they would be useful to reuse for npc's as well. It would be easier to have players pick from one big larger set, but I wouldn't want to see fireborn picking a halfling face, or a dwarf looking like a troll... From root at garbled.net Wed Nov 13 14:06:26 2002 From: root at garbled.net (Tim Rightnour) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:03 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] #define's that I want to just kill outright In-Reply-To: <3DD20D33.20408@sonic.net> Message-ID: On 13-Nov-02 Mark Wedel wrote: >> NO_AUTO_SKILL_SWITCH: /* To be removed soon (setable by player) */ > > Not sure on that one. It really depends on what server admins are using. it defaults to on. I'd be amazed if anyone ever shuts it off. >> * NO_CONE_PROPOGATE - makes cone spells stop at the first monster > It works, I don't know if anyone uses it - makes things a lot more > difficult for spellcasters. Again.. with alot of these.. I'm not doubting they work or not. Just that they are defined, default to on, and I can't imagine anyone takes the time to shut them off. Also on my list are: USE_CHECKSUM MAP_RESET MULTIPLE_GODS IMHO, those should go away, and just be left at the defaults, on. --- Tim Rightnour NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS http://www.netbsd.org/ NetBSD supported hardware database: http://mail-index.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/hw.cgi From emaillist+cfdev at dogphilosophy.net Wed Nov 13 11:19:50 2002 From: emaillist+cfdev at dogphilosophy.net (Flying Pedestrian) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:03 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Re: New races and spells. In-Reply-To: <3DD2088D.10103@sonic.net> References: <000601c28a98$93725180$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> <3DD2088D.10103@sonic.net> Message-ID: <200211131019.50277.emaillist+cfdev@dogphilosophy.net> On Wednesday 13 November 2002 01:08 am, Mark Wedel wrote: > > [...] Class faces for each race would be ok, but it > > would be more work and it does not allow for the incognito factor - this > > would be especially neat for thieves to do away with class face. - this > > wouldn't be to hard to do at all. > > The other other idea is neat though if we can get some good graphics. > > Well, it's not just a simple matter of 'dwarf wizard should have robes' > type of thing. After all, pretty much any race/class can use any weapon > and armor. [...] What I originally had in mind wasn't code to dynamically alter the appearance by equipment worn, but just to extend the existing scheme to allow "alternate" class faces be defined in race arch's. Right now, there is a choice of "change face to one of the human(oid) class faces" or "don't change at all". It makes sense that the Dragon and Quetzalcoatl and fireborn races should stay "no_class_face_change" since they're going to look pretty much the same no matter what they "wear" (since there's not much they CAN wear), but it might make sense to, e.g., create a generic "armed troll" graphic for troll players of one of the "mainly warrior" types, a "crudely robed troll" for anyone trying to play a troll wizard/priest type, and leave the "generic troll" for everything else. I was thinking support for tags like "class_face_paladin troll_warrior", "class_face_barbarian troll_warrior" (etc.) in the troll race arch, where if the player chose a class listed in there, the system would change the player's "face" as described (otherwise keeping the "no_class_face_change" behavior if not). Probably in most cases there'd only be one or two alternate "faces" for non-human races at most, with several similar classes specifying the same class face. (As to incognito thieves - perhaps there could be a "random" class face that one could use for e.g. thieves and ninja which would randomly pick one of the others. That'd make them indistinguishable at a glance from any other random class without a lot of extra code...) Just my thoughts. From root at garbled.net Wed Nov 13 17:02:04 2002 From: root at garbled.net (Tim Rightnour) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:03 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Re: New races and spells. In-Reply-To: <000801c28b4b$23eae580$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> Message-ID: On 13-Nov-02 Todd Mitchell wrote: > I think this is a good idea. If we got rid of the class/race face > distinction and made a set of choosable arches for each race (with some > overlap when body types are similar). Need a few more pictures here and > there (some more elves, trolls, a halfling in full battle armour...maybe > even a couple different dragon types, but they would be useful to reuse for > npc's as well. It would be easier to have players pick from one big larger > set, but I wouldn't want to see fireborn picking a halfling face, or a dwarf > looking like a troll... Personally.. I'm all for letting players choose whatever crazy picture they want.. within some amount of reason. The problem is, that you get on a server, and you see a pile of you's standing around talking. 1) Q. dragon, fireborn. They get what they got. Not much variety here. Though, I wouldn't object to a Q getting to pick his color. Maybe we could just run over a few of the Q pics with a color-switcher, and declare victory? 2) Elves, dwarves, ogres, trolls, half-orcs. Why not just let them pick from a pile of monster images? As well as the human images. 3) Huumies: Let them pick from any number of stupid human pictures. There are GOBS in the game. sages, shopkeepers, madmen, etc etc. Again, run a few over with a color switcher, and poof, you've added variety. (Like the elf image might look good in purple, or red) 4) Undead: If I'm a cool undead guy.. I want to go pick out a vampire or lich image. And the best part is.. you could probably do *all* of this without a single line of code. Just have a little shop, with a few separate areas. Some no-pass walls that prevent humans from wandering into orc pics. Perhaps you get in via a ticket that allows one person to pass. We give every starting player one as a startequip, and charge some hideous amount for new ones. Maybe even have a few different classes of them. Charge more for really cool pictures? Perhaps run the shop like the mana shop.. charge money for a one-shot-use changer square. Heck.. you could even make a quest out of it. Have it want some obscure item in exchange for access to a certain face. I'm pretty sure some form of the player changers will do this. If not.. I'm willing to make it happen in the code, but someone's gotta do the map, and make the list of acceptable faces. --- Tim Rightnour NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS http://www.netbsd.org/ NetBSD supported hardware database: http://mail-index.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/hw.cgi From root at garbled.net Wed Nov 13 19:40:27 2002 From: root at garbled.net (Tim Rightnour) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:04 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] #define's that I want to just kill outright In-Reply-To: <3DD20D33.20408@sonic.net> Message-ID: So an update on these. Please read. If you are wondering why I've got my panties all in a bind about this stuff.. it really is becoming a serious mess. There have been more than a few times I've been knee deep in the code.. and completely lost by a maze of ifdefs that don't even seem to be used anymore. Alot of these had meaning at one point, when they might have been buggy... but never got cleaned up. They will just keep piling up unless we do something about them. Unless nobody objects.. the following are going to die and become default. >> * USE_SWAP_STATS - allows stat swapping for new characters >> NO_AUTO_SKILL_SWITCH: /* To be removed soon (setable by player) */ These.. I think require some discussion: >> WALL_CREDIT: players earn exp for killing with summon fog. > Didn't even realize that exists. Apparently, if you build a bulletwall, or cast summon fog. You don't get any exp for what it kills. If you turn on WALL_CREDIT, you do. I believe we should just turn it on.. But I'd like to hear either way. If people are really divided on it, then I'll option it as a setting. >> * NO_CONE_PROPOGATE - makes cone spells stop at the first monster > It works, I don't know if anyone uses it - makes things a lot more > difficult for spellcasters. Does anyone want this to stay? If not.. I say we nuke it. SECURE is there any reason to keep this? Is it that unreasonable that the person who executes the server might want to change the libdir? I think this comes from a time when players actually played on a physical machine, owned by someone. I say we turn it on, and pull the ifdefs out. MULTIPLE_GODS - adds numerous gods to the game, with different powers As far as I'm concerned.. this is the default now.. and should just stay that way. DUMP_SWITCHES - is there any reason NOT to compile these in? Again, I think this goes back to the old days.. where people shared a machine. ENABLE_CHECKSUM/USE_CHECKSUM - This should either be the default, or not the default. I don't care which, but my gut instinct is to nuke the checksum. If a DM wants to run around editing his players. let him. If a person wants to play at home and cheat. let him. MORE_PRIEST_GIFTS- I'm pretty sure this is off by default. Nuke it? turn it on? *_DEBUG_* stuff- Lots of defines to make lots of noise debugging various things. I think DEBUG is on by default, but the various other ones are not. Perhaps we should have an levExtremeDebug and just nuke all the ifdefs. Or we could assume that the bugs are worked out of these, and nuke them.. PLUGINS - I think this define should go. If it compiles without Python libs, it should just be the default. LOSSY_ALCHEMY- Looks like this modifies the alchemy spell. It's off by default.. I don't think gold nuggets are a significant form of abuse. I say vaporize it. --- Tim Rightnour NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS http://www.netbsd.org/ NetBSD supported hardware database: http://mail-index.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/hw.cgi From emaillist+cfdev at dogphilosophy.net Wed Nov 13 20:50:44 2002 From: emaillist+cfdev at dogphilosophy.net (Flying Pedestrian) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:04 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Patch for new spell (2.8kb) "Wave of Sparks" Message-ID: <200211131950.44417.emaillist+cfdev@dogphilosophy.net> Okay, I THINK I've got it all worked out now... New spell is the first level "wave of sparks". Slow moving cone spell, very low damage (fire/electrical/magic) and long casting time, but generates a substantial amount of light and lasts for several seconds at a time. tarball, as with the previous ones, contains a .diff for the crossfire program files and the new arch files. It APPEARS to patch against current CVS as of a few minutes ago okay. If anyone gets a chance to try it out, let me know... -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: sparkwave.tar.bz2 Type: application/x-tbz Size: 2897 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20021113/d210185a/sparkwave.tar.bin From andi.vogl at gmx.net Thu Nov 14 05:51:49 2002 From: andi.vogl at gmx.net (Andreas Vogl) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:04 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Re: New races and spells. References: Message-ID: <25019.1037274709@www27.gmx.net> On 13-Nov-02 Todd Mitchell wrote: > > I think this is a good idea. If we got rid of the class/race > > face distinction and made a set of choosable arches for each > > race (with some overlap when body types are similar). Need a > > few more pictures here and there (some more elves, trolls, > > a halfling in full battle armour...maybe even a couple > > different dragon types, but they would be useful to reuse > > for npc's as well. It would be easier to have players pick > > from one big larger set, but I wouldn't want to see fireborn > > picking a halfling face, or a dwarf looking like a troll... > > Personally.. I'm all for letting players choose whatever > crazy picture they want.. within some amount of reason. This is mostly a matter of available art. The current system was chosen simply out of practical reasons: Player animations for classes exist only in humanoid shape. Due to the lack of non-humanoid class faces, such races must stick with their default race face. Extending the system would be nice - But it doesn't make a lot of sense while there is no art to support that. For a player animation you need faces in all four directions. You cannot just copy monster images because they don't support those directional facings. Of course one could argue: Let's just make the change, then people will automatically draw the art to support it. I don't have a problem with that philosophy, but past experience has shown that it doesn't work. I'd rather try to collect art before doing the change - then people might be better motivated to draw something, as they are eager to get the new feature. Andreas -- +++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more http://www.gmx.net +++ NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen! From temitchell at sympatico.ca Thu Nov 14 10:23:24 2002 From: temitchell at sympatico.ca (Todd Mitchell) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:04 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Re: New races and spells. References: <25019.1037274709@www27.gmx.net> Message-ID: <000601c28bfa$28e9efe0$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> Arg: I'm getting quoted out of context as a rabble rouser here. For the record, I am not advocating making hundreds of custom player faces for each weapon/armour/race combination, or of dumping in single or two directional faces into the player arch list. > > > I think this is a good idea. If we got rid of the class/race > > > face distinction and made a set of choosable arches for each > > > race (with some overlap when body types are similar). Need a > > > few more pictures here and there (some more elves, trolls, > > > a halfling in full battle armour...maybe even a couple > > > different dragon types, but they would be useful to reuse > > > for npc's as well. It would be easier to have players pick > > > from one big larger set, but I wouldn't want to see fireborn > > > picking a halfling face, or a dwarf looking like a troll... > > > This is mostly a matter of available art. The current system > was chosen simply out of practical reasons: Player animations > for classes exist only in humanoid shape. Due to the > lack of non-humanoid class faces, such races must stick > with their default race face. I suggest either dropping the class faces altogether and sticking with the current racial faces, or making the proper four directional faces to cover a variety of generic types for each race (heavy armoured, robed, lightly weaponed). Most of the class faces can double up for now and a new arch could use the same face. As new graphics get done, the arch can be changed to use a new animation. BTW, Is there a reason that player faces aren't animated? A reason I'm not for allowing players to choose any arch they want it just versimilitude, perhaps this is not a good enough reason. I like the roll playing and emmersive aspects of games and if you play an elf you should look like an elf. Then I can go 'hmm an troll, I don't like trolls' instead of 'hmmm another game player with a crazy getup on'. Again this is just a matter of taste. > Extending the system would be nice - But it doesn't make > a lot of sense while there is no art to support that. > For a player animation you need faces in all four > directions. You cannot just copy monster images because > they don't support those directional facings. > > Of course one could argue: Let's just make the change, > then people will automatically draw the art to support it. > I don't have a problem with that philosophy, but past > experience has shown that it doesn't work. > I'd rather try to collect art before doing the > change - then people might be better motivated to draw > something, as they are eager to get the new feature. I agree, but I think we can jumpstart it a bit by making the arches, planning out a direction to go and reusing some of the faces for the moment. We can, for example, make arch for elf-warrior (reuse paladin face) elf magician (reuse a mage face) and elf adventurer (regular elf face) and say there is the elf race choices. There will still be blanks, but it will let us know what needs to be drawn first. Then someone can actually work on a new face for the elf-warrior without holding up the parade. I think first off it would be good to make some alternate direction images for the less human body type races - say like the dwarf priest and dwarf mage images. That is if this is what we want to do. Planning is everything. From emaillist+cfdev at dogphilosophy.net Thu Nov 14 11:21:27 2002 From: emaillist+cfdev at dogphilosophy.net (Flying Pedestrian) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:04 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Re: New races and spells. In-Reply-To: <25019.1037274709@www27.gmx.net> References: <25019.1037274709@www27.gmx.net> Message-ID: <200211141021.27988.emaillist+cfdev@dogphilosophy.net> On Thursday 14 November 2002 04:51 am, Andreas Vogl wrote: > On 13-Nov-02 Todd Mitchell wrote: [...] > > Personally.. I'm all for letting players choose whatever > > crazy picture they want.. within some amount of reason. > [...] > Extending the system would be nice - But it doesn't make > a lot of sense while there is no art to support that. > For a player animation you need faces in all four > directions. You cannot just copy monster images because > they don't support those directional facings. > > Of course one could argue: Let's just make the change, > then people will automatically draw the art to support it. > I don't have a problem with that philosophy, but past > experience has shown that it doesn't work. > I'd rather try to collect art before doing the > change - then people might be better motivated to draw > something, as they are eager to get the new feature. Here's a thought, then - it looks like, when picking available races, the current system simply looks in the archetypes for whatever races are there, collects them, and makes them available. Perhaps if we settled on a naming convention for "race class facenames" we could similarly have Crossfire "set the face if it's available". Then, we could go ahead and enable the feature. The instant the artwork is created and added to the archetypes, it automatically becomes available as a feature - until then, it just stays at the default face. Instant gratification might help encourage more artwork submissions... From michael.toennies at nord-com.net Thu Nov 14 13:37:57 2002 From: michael.toennies at nord-com.net (Michael Toennies) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:04 2005 Subject: AW: [CF-Devel] Re: New races and spells. In-Reply-To: <000601c28bfa$28e9efe0$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> Message-ID: > Arg: I'm getting quoted out of context as a rabble rouser here. For the > record, I am not advocating making hundreds of custom player > faces for each > weapon/armour/race combination, or of dumping in single or two directional > faces into the player arch list. > > > > > I think this is a good idea. If we got rid of the class/race > > > > face distinction and made a set of choosable arches for each > > > > race (with some overlap when body types are similar). Need a > > > > few more pictures here and there (some more elves, trolls, > > > > a halfling in full battle armour...maybe even a couple > > > > different dragon types, but they would be useful to reuse > > > > for npc's as well. It would be easier to have players pick > > > > from one big larger set, but I wouldn't want to see fireborn > > > > picking a halfling face, or a dwarf looking like a troll... > > > > > This is mostly a matter of available art. The current system > > was chosen simply out of practical reasons: Player animations > > for classes exist only in humanoid shape. Due to the > > lack of non-humanoid class faces, such races must stick > > with their default race face. > > I suggest either dropping the class faces altogether and sticking with the > current racial faces, or making the proper four directional faces > to cover a > variety of generic types for each race (heavy armoured, robed, lightly > weaponed). Most of the class faces can double up for now and a new arch > could use the same face. As new graphics get done, the arch can > be changed > to use a new animation. > BTW, Is there a reason that player faces aren't animated? > Yes, the reason is that somewhere in the past the crossfire animation system was broken. The player animation system don't use the 'normal' animation system, they just hack the needed animations in (in server/player.c - where the player char socket input is calculated). Thats for example the reason why the doppelganger monster is taken out of game because this race had copied the player animation/faces to simulate the doppelganger skill - but because the player animation system is not anymore compatible to the normal animation system, it does not work. I had fixed this before i left, including a fancy extended, fully compatible animation system which included idle, moving & fighting animations. But the code was removed by garbled (and broken again) because he had at this time a less understanding about this code parts. The reason was that i fixed only the new parts of the animation system and as he saw the old, broken parts he thought this was from me and removed the stuff - now the code looks good again but it is logical broken. For Daimonin i have now finished the code and fixed some more problems hidden deep in the system. There are several problems in the animation code that you guys will find out when playing with it. For example is the use of "is_animated" faked, because this flag is automatically set when the loader.l reads in a animation - also, the anim_speed is not set & used in all arches AND it is chained to the object speed. But the internal "speed" value don't should be used as animation speed because this can have a different logical meaning. For example can there be a fire fountain which creates all "speed" events a fireball. But the fountain animation itself should be don't slower or faster when you manipulate this speed factor. I cut this in Daimonin, make the anim_speed counter be independent from the speed value. Even in normal monster animation you will notice a better look with it. The update of a animation in crossfire is always one frame/map update to late. When you play around with it, you will notice that a animation which changes direction (for example a monster, turning fomr north to south and moving one step down) will look for one map update in the wrong direction. That why the code first do the move and then update the animations later. Also, the animation system don't face external changes of the animation. When you run for example in a friendly object, you can push it. This push will change direction and facing of the object - and so the animation too. But this will not be calculated with the push - this will only be updated when the object ITSELF update his animations - what is still chained to the speed - but paralyze for example simply add a huge factor to speed (that was what i had wanted to change with the FLAG_PARALYZE) - so the animation is never be changed for a pushed, paralyzed object until it will move again. Only a example - you will find alot more of this bad effects when you think over some spell and object effects which depends on speed and animations. From edler at heydernet.de Thu Nov 14 11:24:02 2002 From: edler at heydernet.de (Bernd Edler) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:04 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Alchemy thoughts In-Reply-To: <3DAB9E25.2040909@sonic.net> Message-ID: On Mon, 14 Oct 2002, Mark Wedel wrote: > ... > But when I thought about this, I thought about refining alchemy more. So here > is my idea: > > Instead of the 'recipe' structure, put the formula into an object structure. > Some fields may need to get overloaded (or additional ones added to the object > structure) - fields I see (parens are current name in recipe file) > > other_arch (arch): was this formula creates > nrof (yield): max number this can create > recipe treasurelist (chance) - likelihood of formula appearing in books - > basically, make a treasurelist of all the recipes that you want to randomly > appear, and when a recipe book is made, it uses that to choose one > msg (ingred): Recipe (ingredients) for this. > is_used_up (trans): Converts an existing object as the base object > slaying (keycode): player must have force with matching slaying field to make > this recipe > > New fields as far as recipes: > exp: How much exp you get for making this item > > level: 'level' of the recipe - basic value to determine probability of making > this recipe. Eg, when you make it, it rolls a d20 and adds your alchemy level - > this has to be higher than the level of the recipe for you to succeed. In this > way, you could set up recipes that require a reasonable amount of exp to make. > > ... I'd like to have an additional value defining the minimum amount of items. Thus we could give a range for the yield. If i want a formula for e.g. arrows of something to produce 20 on average, i would rather have a range of 15-25 then 1-40. I think, getting only one potion/arrow out of a recipe is as frustating as a spell that backfires. You go hunting/questing for that rare ingredient and finally you get it but you only find 3 arrows in your cauldron. If you can cange the odds in you favour with a high alchemy skill, then forget what i said. (Last time i checked, it did not.) So a minimum amount would make alchemy more reliable/useful imho. Bernd Edler ---- "This is supposed to be fun." From leaf at real-time.com Thu Nov 14 17:56:44 2002 From: leaf at real-time.com (Rick Tanner) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:04 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Money issues In-Reply-To: Message-ID: Bringing up an old (unresolved?) discussion... Where do people stand on this? Should the price of the more common and useful stuff get lowered? How about reducing the cost of detect magic and detect curse altars? Judging by the number of times I see questions on IRC and other places people aren't aware of cursed items and their effects, accidently wear equipment or can't afford the detect curse price. Since garbled is on a roll with coding, perhaps we can get feedback or decision on this by 17-Nov-2002 ? - Rick Tanner leaf@real-time.com On Thu, 31 Oct 2002, Tim Rightnour wrote: > > On 30-Oct-02 Mark Wedel wrote: > > I tend to find that big money makers at low levels is all the +1 and +2 > > (and > > occasional +1 of lythander or what not) armor and weapons. So cost of > > scrolls > > and wands could be reduced without much effect. > > > > But yeah, if you get less for that +2 armor, means you are just as far away > > from buying that +2 shiled (if that's what your after). > > > > Reducing value (and cost) of armor/weapons does have some advantage in that > > money and gems found in the dungeon is now more valuable. Also, the delta > > for > > buy/sell could be decreased. > > I think Mark described it much better than I did. I don't mean to drop the > value of everything, just the more common, and useful stuff. What this would > mean is, that when you find a particularly valulable item, say a ring, where > you get 100plat.. you can afford more scrolls than you could have before. > > Also.. if the price of weapons and armor in the shops drop, then a player might > actually be able to afford a decent set of starting equipment with what we give > him to start. (which, I feel should be more) > > I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a warrior, to be able to get himself > a decent set of armor, and a nice stick to wave around, to start out with. > When he finishes the newbie training ground.. he should be able to afford a > full set of armor, and quite possibly a +1 sword. > > Perhaps the price to identify should be dropped as well. I mean really.. who > uses those beyond like level 5? > From leaf at real-time.com Thu Nov 14 18:08:30 2002 From: leaf at real-time.com (Rick Tanner) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:04 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] #define's that I want to just kill outright In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Wed, 13 Nov 2002, Tim Rightnour wrote: > > On 13-Nov-02 Mark Wedel wrote: > >> NO_AUTO_SKILL_SWITCH: /* To be removed soon (setable by player) */ > > > > Not sure on that one. It really depends on what server admins are using. > > it defaults to on. I'd be amazed if anyone ever shuts it off. > > >> * NO_CONE_PROPOGATE - makes cone spells stop at the first monster > > It works, I don't know if anyone uses it - makes things a lot more > > difficult for spellcasters. > For a very short time, NO_CONE_PROPOGATE was enabled on Metalforge and it was extremely difficult and annoying. It weakend cone spells to the point of being useless. Okay, enough ranting - I think this option should be disabled, all cone spells should propogate. > Also on my list are: > > USE_CHECKSUM > MAP_RESET > MULTIPLE_GODS > > IMHO, those should go away, and just be left at the defaults, on. > I agree. Since garbled is coding in leaps and bounds, perhaps we can get feedback or decision on this by 20-Nov-2002 ? - Rick Tanner leaf@real-time.com From leaf at real-time.com Thu Nov 14 18:29:15 2002 From: leaf at real-time.com (Rick Tanner) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:04 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] #define's that I want to just kill outright In-Reply-To: Message-ID: My comments are mixed within the original email... On Wed, 13 Nov 2002, Tim Rightnour wrote: > > Unless nobody objects.. the following are going to die and become default. > > >> * USE_SWAP_STATS - allows stat swapping for new characters > >> NO_AUTO_SKILL_SWITCH: /* To be removed soon (setable by player) */ I agree, remove them. > > These.. I think require some discussion: > > >> WALL_CREDIT: players earn exp for killing with summon fog. > > Didn't even realize that exists. > > Apparently, if you build a bulletwall, or cast summon fog. You don't get any > exp for what it kills. If you turn on WALL_CREDIT, you do. I believe we > should just turn it on.. But I'd like to hear either way. If people are really > divided on it, then I'll option it as a setting. I agree, turn it on. I have to admit I'm a little biased towards this since I always had this enabled and often used bulletwalls to level up my Magic EXP. ;) > > >> * NO_CONE_PROPOGATE - makes cone spells stop at the first monster > > It works, I don't know if anyone uses it - makes things a lot more > > difficult for spellcasters. > > Does anyone want this to stay? If not.. I say we nuke it. I commented on this earlier - nuke it. > > SECURE is there any reason to keep this? Is it that unreasonable that the > person who executes the server might want to change the libdir? I think this > comes from a time when players actually played on a physical machine, owned by > someone. I say we turn it on, and pull the ifdefs out. Agree. > > MULTIPLE_GODS - adds numerous gods to the game, with different powers > As far as I'm concerned.. this is the default now.. and should just stay that > way. I can't even imagine playing the game without this enabled. Make it the default. > > DUMP_SWITCHES - is there any reason NOT to compile these in? Again, I think > this goes back to the old days.. where people shared a machine. My vote is to leave it in (on?) > > ENABLE_CHECKSUM/USE_CHECKSUM - This should either be the default, or not the > default. I don't care which, but my gut instinct is to nuke the checksum. If > a DM wants to run around editing his players. let him. If a person wants to > play at home and cheat. let him. I am indifferent about this, I only partly understand it. =/ > MORE_PRIEST_GIFTS- I'm pretty sure this is off by default. Nuke it? turn it > on? How does this work, exactly? Is it different then getting Thorin's Plate Mail for Mostrai followers when they reach a certain level? > > *_DEBUG_* stuff- Lots of defines to make lots of noise debugging various > things. I think DEBUG is on by default, but the various other ones are not. > Perhaps we should have an levExtremeDebug and just nuke all the ifdefs. Or we > could assume that the bugs are worked out of these, and nuke them.. I am indifferent about this - only partially understand it. =/ > > PLUGINS - I think this define should go. If it compiles without Python libs, > it should just be the default. I am indifferent about this - only partially understand it. =/ > LOSSY_ALCHEMY- Looks like this modifies the alchemy spell. It's off by > default.. I don't think gold nuggets are a significant form of abuse. I say > vaporize it. So, to make sure.. Right now, players are able to cast alchemy over a pile of goblin parts and get gold nuggets. Will this feature continue or stop? Since this is a rather important topic, can get feedback or decision on this by 21-Nov-2002 ? - Rick Tanner leaf@real-time.com From root at garbled.net Thu Nov 14 19:29:04 2002 From: root at garbled.net (Tim Rightnour) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:04 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] #define's that I want to just kill outright In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On 15-Nov-02 Rick Tanner wrote: >> MORE_PRIEST_GIFTS- I'm pretty sure this is off by default. Nuke it? turn >> it >> on? > > How does this work, exactly? > > Is it different then getting Thorin's Plate Mail for Mostrai followers > when they reach a certain level? Apparently I was wrong.. It's hardcoded to being on by default. It gives you things like special flags (stealth, xray, etc) when praying. If anything.. I would definately pull this define out when pulling multiple gods.. as it's allready probably enabled on every server out there. >> LOSSY_ALCHEMY- Looks like this modifies the alchemy spell. It's off by >> default.. I don't think gold nuggets are a significant form of abuse. I say >> vaporize it. > > Right now, players are able to cast alchemy over a pile of goblin parts > and get gold nuggets. Will this feature continue or stop? Right. Instead, with lossy alchemy turned on (which it is not by default) randomly, you get less nuggets than you were supposed to. --- Tim Rightnour NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS http://www.netbsd.org/ NetBSD supported hardware database: http://mail-index.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/hw.cgi From temitchell at sympatico.ca Thu Nov 14 22:18:28 2002 From: temitchell at sympatico.ca (Todd Mitchell) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:04 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] #define's that I want to just kill outright References: Message-ID: <002001c28c5e$0c9e2360$0a02a8c0@kameria> > > PLUGINS - I think this define should go. If it compiles without Python libs, > > it should just be the default. > Whats this do? I would hate to see the python Plugin disabled since it has just started to work properly with the automake and gros is busy polishing this gem. From temitchell at sympatico.ca Thu Nov 14 22:49:00 2002 From: temitchell at sympatico.ca (Todd Mitchell) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:04 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Money issues References: Message-ID: <002101c28c62$50dc6560$0a02a8c0@kameria> > Bringing up an old (unresolved?) discussion... > > Where do people stand on this? > > Should the price of the more common and useful stuff get lowered? > > How about reducing the cost of detect magic and detect curse altars? > > Judging by the number of times I see questions on IRC and other places > people aren't aware of cursed items and their effects, accidently wear > equipment or can't afford the detect curse price. This isn't what you want to hear but I am of a different opinion on this: I'm all for raising prices on a lot of stuff, I don't know about lowering it. When I see level 12 characters spending a million platinum in an item auction on something he doesn't quite know what it is, I don't think that the prices are too high for scrolls and altars. I do think that the prices of skill scrolls and spell books are too low. I guess it all depends on how long you expect to play to get to what would be considered a high level. Then again if there weren't gobs of treasure lying around and a silver actually meant something, then you would be right in wanting lower prices. The whole thing is currently borked if you ask me. More quests and less non maintenance type items (potions of healing , life, food, someday lanterns and torches, and identify scrolls being maintenance type items) in shops - that is always a safe answer. Spell books should be a bit harder to find or more expensive. I think the answer to the cursed item issue is to put up a message in the newbie area saying 'hey there are a lot of cursed items out there - don't try out an item until you have gotten it identified or you'll regret it.' > > I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a warrior, to be able to get himself > > a decent set of armor, and a nice stick to wave around, to start out with. > > When he finishes the newbie training ground.. he should be able to afford a > > full set of armor, and quite possibly a +1 sword. kinda raises the bar on what us a useful item if +1 swords are a penny a pop. You need a +12 god biter just to get a smile out of people anymore. I mean the level life of some types of monsters like orcs and gnolls is already so short as to make them pretty well worthless. Give every level 3 player a full set of magic goodies and they will now even be worth while as spacers anymore. How about if it took a good week of semi regular play to get a +1 sword, then you would see some tension and reward back in the game. > > Perhaps the price to identify should be dropped as well. I mean really.. who > > uses those beyond like level 5? If it were harder to get identify spells and you had to find someone to identify stuff or use one of your few identify scrolls (instead of everyone being a one man band with a mountain of scolls for every occasion) then the identify altars would be pretty useful again and worth every penny. If a sword is to mean something then a magic sword should be pretty special. From mwedel at sonic.net Fri Nov 15 00:15:19 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:04 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Re: New races and spells. References: <000601c28a98$93725180$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> <3DD2088D.10103@sonic.net> <200211131019.50277.emaillist+cfdev@dogphilosophy.net> Message-ID: <3DD490F7.1090600@sonic.net> Various notes - Garbled ideas of using shop like mechanism to choose faces is a good one - it provides the most convenient mechanism to let players see what their choices look like. Inventory type checkers could be used to prevent only the proper races to certain selection points (eg, the halfling wing, dwarf wing, human ring, etc). The only downside on this is that it is sort of an odd approach to choose faces. But it does have the advantage that the player can't change their face on the fly (think of a case where you are trying to follow another player for whatever reason, and they instantly change their face to be that of surrounding players or whatever). The idea of special faces also being available is interesting. This could be yet another way for a character to show their status. I don't really like the idea of using a naming convention for available faces - just too much risk that someone will accidentally/unintentionally use a face of that naming convention. Player animations: MT listed most of the reasons. It probably wouldn't be too hard to have the player animation follow the same as everything else (and in fact, if done, would make things a bit simpler). I think some of the other reason is that work to animate players is more difficult - players have 4 facings, so to make animations is more faces than animations for some other objects. Not sure if special code is needed for theives. There are other classes/races out there that also have theiflike skills. But as said, I think it would be more appropriate for the races/classes to match what they look like - so the theif would typically use the lightly or medium armored image. From mwedel at sonic.net Fri Nov 15 00:31:17 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:04 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] #define's that I want to just kill outright References: Message-ID: <3DD494B5.3030906@sonic.net> Tim Rightnour wrote: > So an update on these. Please read. > > *_DEBUG_* stuff- Lots of defines to make lots of noise debugging various > things. I think DEBUG is on by default, but the various other ones are not. > Perhaps we should have an levExtremeDebug and just nuke all the ifdefs. Or we > could assume that the bugs are worked out of these, and nuke them.. Well, the code for this should be pretty simple and not make things too unreadable, eg: #ifdef SOME_DEBUG LOG(...) #endif The #ifdefs that toggle 30 or 40 lines of stuff are the ones that really get annoying. Personally, I'd rather keep the debug stuff in. You never know when you may work in some area and really want the debug it provides. The bigger issue is that the crossfire logging mechanism isn't very smart. Ideally, one of the parameters passed to LOG should be the type of message it is (alchemy, combat, map, etc), and then the LOG function sees if we should log those events. Thus, all the LOG functions would always be enabled, it just a matter of turning on which flags are interested. > > PLUGINS - I think this define should go. If it compiles without Python libs, > it should just be the default. I agree. Of course, server may not have plugin support if the system doesn't have the libraries. Given the work going on with plugins, at some point, running the server without plugins may disable a lot of good features. RE all the player save integrity stuff could probably go. EAsy to fake those anyways. And yes, there are lots of bits that are left over from when crossfire was potentially a setuid/setgid program that each user could run, and not the client/server approach currently in use. From mwedel at sonic.net Fri Nov 15 00:43:24 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:05 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Money issues References: <002101c28c62$50dc6560$0a02a8c0@kameria> Message-ID: <3DD4978C.7070108@sonic.net> A few notes - The identify and detect curse/magic altars were largely added to fix the problem of there not being scrolls around. Play on a busy server without those, and I think you'd find the shops would never have identify scrolls, as players would pick them up as soon as they show up. The detect magic/curse examine all the items in the players inventory. So it is obviously more efficient to use those altars when you have piles of goodies. The identify one is per item. If the problem with cursed items is just a knowledge issue, then perhaps that should be more prominent as said. I'm not sure the problem is lack of money as much lack of knowledge. As for other common objects - more difficult. Changing the base prices has two effects - players get less money for selling, but also pay less for buying stuff. In the end, it probably hurts the players (players send to sell a lot more than they buy). So in some sense, this may actually be a good thing. I'd like a more comprehensive list. OF course, prices changes is largely an archetype issue. From yann.chachkoff at mailandnews.com Fri Nov 15 02:25:36 2002 From: yann.chachkoff at mailandnews.com (Yann Chachkoff) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:05 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] #define's that I want to just kill outright Message-ID: <3DD4AE69@mailandnews.com> >===== Original Message From "Todd Mitchell" ===== >> > PLUGINS - I think this define should go. If it compiles without Python >libs, >> > it should just be the default. >> > >Whats this do? I would hate to see the python Plugin disabled since it has >just started to work properly with the automake and gros is busy polishing >this gem. > I'm not quite sure it is a 'gem'... Well, PLUGINS just defines if the server should be compiled with or without plugin support. The idea behind it was to still allow building the server if something went wrong with the plugin-related code. Since it seems that no big problems have been found with it for quite a long time, it can probably now be safely removed (with the default value of 'on' of course). Note that the code activated by PLUGINS contains nothing about Python - the server PLUGINS stuff only provides support for the external plugin libraries (CFPython being one of those libraries). If a problem arise with a specific plugin preventing your server to run, just remove that plugin (the server can run without any plugin libraries, even if PLUGINS is 'on') Y. Chachkoff ------------------------------------------------ Help supporting JXFire ! (http://jxfire.sf.net) ------------------------------------------------ From mwedel at sonic.net Fri Nov 15 02:31:06 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:05 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] skill musings. Message-ID: <3DD4B0CA.1060503@sonic.net> From a discussion on irc tonight with myself, cryo, and garbled. This is basically a small portion of all that was discussed, and not necessarily related to all the ideas. The main idea was to remove the idea of experience categories and have each skill have its own exp and level. In some sense, this actually makes the code much simpler. It also means that if at level 30, you finally learning smithery, your not an expert in it. It also means that finding an abuse in one skill, while it may help your overall level, doesn't help your other skills. The downside is that some skills will be very difficult to improve. Thoughts? The other main idea was to make it more difficult for players to learn new skills, so what they start with is much more relevant. Various ideas on how to do this: 1) Player only has skills they start with. At some point, they choose a new class, and get those new skills in addition to what they have. But when you choose a new class, your exp goes to zero. 2) Put something in that you can only learn a new skill every 10 levels or something. Problem with this is that some skills would likely be completely unused (I'm sure players would identify best starting race, followed by the best skills to learn after that point.) 3) Make skills available by completing quests. Level of quests can basically determine that you can get skill XYZ until your some level. This means players can still get all the skills, but may have to stick with what they start with until some point. Note to do points 1 & 3 require that skillscrolls get removed from shops and random treasures. Point #3 could still have them be in special quest hoards or the like. Thoughts? Other ideas? From yann.chachkoff at mailandnews.com Fri Nov 15 03:06:09 2002 From: yann.chachkoff at mailandnews.com (Yann Chachkoff) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:05 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Money issues Message-ID: <3DD4B7D7@mailandnews.com> >===== Original Message From Rick Tanner ===== >Bringing up an old (unresolved?) discussion... > >Where do people stand on this? > >Should the price of the more common and useful stuff get lowered? > My opinion: yes. >How about reducing the cost of detect magic and detect curse altars? > My opinion: no. As an adventurer, you've to be careful about what you're trying to use/wear/eat/drink. Reducing the cost of detect curse would also reduce the level of risk. >Judging by the number of times I see questions on IRC and other places >people aren't aware of cursed items and their effects, accidently wear >equipment or can't afford the detect curse price. > If people are not ready to take the risk that some unidentified items can turn out to be bad (cursed/damned) ones, why are they playing RPGs ? I see no reason to change anything around the cursed items - it would only result in making the game less dangerous (and thus less fun IMHO). Probably a better option would be to add better comments in the Crossfire Player's Guide about curse and damnation, so people would know by advance the risks related to the use of unidentified items. Y. Chachkoff ------------------------------------------------ Help supporting JXFire ! (http://jxfire.sf.net) ------------------------------------------------ From temitchell at sympatico.ca Fri Nov 15 09:36:56 2002 From: temitchell at sympatico.ca (Todd Mitchell) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:05 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] skill musings. References: <3DD4B0CA.1060503@sonic.net> Message-ID: <000f01c28cbc$d58b1f40$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> > The main idea was to remove the idea of experience categories and have each > skill have its own exp and level. > In some sense, this actually makes the code much simpler. It also means that > if at level 30, you finally learning smithery, your not an expert in it. <> > The downside is that some skills will be very difficult to improve. This could be very good. If skills are too hard to improve to be useful or are not being used very much in the game then this would be good to know in any case. Also if you had to do special quests to get certain skill improvements that were hard to get during regular play, then that might not be a bad thing at all. > > The other main idea was to make it more difficult for players to learn new > skills, so what they start with is much more relevant. > > Various ideas on how to do this: > 1) Player only has skills they start with. At some point, they choose a new > class, and get those new skills in addition to what they have. But when you > choose a new class, your exp goes to zero. > Not sure I like this as I don't like the class idea in general except as a starting point. Class based skills are not so much fun as the mix and match customizaton - I think the trend in roleplaying games was towards skills over classes as people respond better and have more fun. > 2) Put something in that you can only learn a new skill every 10 levels or > something. Problem with this is that some skills would likely be completely > unused (I'm sure players would identify best starting race, followed by the best > skills to learn after that point.) Not sure I like this - all skills are not created equally useful. This would kill some of the marginal ones. > 3) Make skills available by completing quests. Level of quests can basically > determine that you can get skill XYZ until your some level. This means players > can still get all the skills, but may have to stick with what they start with > until some point. This is my choice for a direction to go in. It would not have to be a wholescale switch, but I think it more fun and rewarding if skills required more of an investment than just buying a skill scroll. Not all these quests have to be crazy hard, some could be as simple as 'go train with Ing, the woodsman to learn woodlore and remember to bring him a bear skin'. Some little tasks would ensue. The quests for magic or melee type skills should be pretty stiff however as they add so much to your abilities. Even if just some of the more powerful skills like melee, magic, sense magic were a bit harder to get it would be an improvement. I know the answer to this will be- someone will have to come up with these quests. When they do come up with one, we could remove the skillscroll from the general circulation. > Note to do points 1 & 3 require that skillscrolls get removed from shops and > random treasures. Point #3 could still have them be in special quest hoards or > the like. From andi.vogl at gmx.net Fri Nov 15 10:22:44 2002 From: andi.vogl at gmx.net (Andreas Vogl) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:05 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] skill musings. References: <3DD4B0CA.1060503@sonic.net> Message-ID: <7573.1037377364@www12.gmx.net> > > From a discussion on irc tonight with myself, cryo, and garbled. > > The main idea was to remove the idea of experience categories and > have each skill have its own exp and level. I believe this is a most excellent idea. This will improve the skill system substantially because players then really need to train those skills which they are going to use: E.g. can't reach literacy level 100 without actually using it. That means *all* skills can be really balanced and used, not only the monster-killer-skills. I've always hoped this kind of improvement would happen someday. So... go for it. :-) > Various ideas on how to do this: > 1) [...] > 2) [...] > 3) [...] I vote for number 3. Making skills available through quests seems by far most interesting and enjoyable for me. Maybe it can be combined though with some sort of maximum limit how many skills a player can learn per level. But the limit should definitly not be too restricting. Andreas -- +++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more http://www.gmx.net +++ NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen! From emaillist+cfdev at dogphilosophy.net Fri Nov 15 14:12:37 2002 From: emaillist+cfdev at dogphilosophy.net (Flying Pedestrian) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:05 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] skill musings. In-Reply-To: <3DD4B0CA.1060503@sonic.net> References: <3DD4B0CA.1060503@sonic.net> Message-ID: <200211151312.38528.emaillist+cfdev@dogphilosophy.net> On Friday 15 November 2002 01:31 am, Mark Wedel wrote: [...] > The main idea was to remove the idea of experience categories and have > each skill have its own exp and level. > > In some sense, this actually makes the code much simpler. It also means > that if at level 30, you finally learning smithery, your not an expert in > it. [...] I kind of like this idea, though my personal ideal would be to take a slightly different approach - get rid of the "overall level", and keep the "categories" (ALSO keeping the individual levels for individual skills - I like that idea. The "Category Level" would just be a "cap" on the maximum effective level of any one skill in that category e.g. if your "overall physique" level is 5, even if your "melee weapons" skill is 7 it acts as 5 until the category level rises to meet it.). That would let us leave, e.g., "Hit Points" tied to the physique category, spellpoints tied to "magical", and grace tied to "wisdom". It would also make possible a broader range of exp awards for things other than killing monsters. It would also help the plight of the poor 1st-level schmuck who ends up with 2 sp and spells that cost 5 xp each to cast (which goes up to 7 as the character ends up at "overall level 6" from Physique as he hacks his way through monsters in a vain search for a Tome of Magic Missile or Magic Bullet so he can kill monsters to get his sp up to where he can cast the spells he started with...) Yes, this would mean that someone who focuses exclusively on magic use will tend to stay at fairly low HP...unless we introduce Physique-exp quests (an idea I like, obviously.) A quest that involves pushing a lot of boulders around (whether it also includes killing a lot of monsters or not) ought to be worth some Physique "Quest Comletion Experience", for example. The reason for why I'd want such a strange thing is below: > The other main idea was to make it more difficult for players to learn > new skills, so what they start with is much more relevant. I have a personal dislike of "heavy-handed" means of limiting character development, so an outright ban or extremely strict controls on new skills seems a bad fit - especially as the system as it stands seems to be quite flexible in its ability to deal with things. Heck, the code already seems to be implemented in Crossfire such that we could (if we really wanted to) completely eliminate "class" as a concept - in the game, these are just canned collections of starting skills, abilities, equipment, and stat modifications. An alternative (requiring, as far as I can tell, "merely" making the character creation map be a series of "shops" with starting skills and abilities and so on, and having new characters custom-make their "starting class" with their choice of starting skills, abilities, and equipment (and, e.g., Dragon characters could even start with a "pick which elemental focus you want to start with" choice by going through a particular teleporter or door.) (I wouldn't necessarily actually GET RID OF the existing "hall of selection", perhaps just add a "customize your character's background" path to the existing "canned" classes.) If it COST experience from the "appropriate" category to learn a new skill (the experience cost being dependent on current level, number of skills in that category already known, and "how useful" the skill is), skill development would be 'self-limiting', without actually preventing someone determined to generate a 'sage'-type of character. The experience cost would reflect the temporary distraction from your other skills necessary to learn the new one (I say "temporary" because of course the character will eventually earn more experience to replace that "spent"). The idea reducing or eliminating randomly-appearing skill scrolls but making new skills available as a result of quests is a good idea I think though. (Hmmmm...."vocational college" maps, anyone?) Crossfire already seems to be developing nicely away from a simplistic "kill monsters, get treasure, see who can get the biggest level number" approach - a lot of the quests and maps seem to have been developed with intricate puzzles and interesting storylines that go beyond "there's a bunch of monsters here, kill them" - if this trend continues (in my opinion that'd be a good thing) it'll be nice to be able to support a wider variety of character types. (Yeah, yeah, I know - I pop in out of nowhere and start harassing all the people who have already done a lot of work on the system with my crazy and/or heretical ideas. I can't help it. :-) ) From yann.chachkoff at mailandnews.com Fri Nov 15 14:10:08 2002 From: yann.chachkoff at mailandnews.com (Yann Chachkoff) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:05 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] skill musings. Message-ID: <3DD67850@mailandnews.com> >===== Original Message From Mark Wedel ===== > From a discussion on irc tonight with myself, cryo, and garbled. > > This is basically a small portion of all that was discussed, and not >necessarily related to all the ideas. > > The main idea was to remove the idea of experience categories and have each >skill have its own exp and level. > > In some sense, this actually makes the code much simpler. It also means that >if at level 30, you finally learning smithery, your not an expert in it. > > It also means that finding an abuse in one skill, while it may help your >overall level, doesn't help your other skills. > > The downside is that some skills will be very difficult to improve. > > Thoughts? > Basically, I'm a supporter of the "per skill" experience scheme. But as you said, some skills would be much harder to improve. > The other main idea was to make it more difficult for players to learn new >skills, so what they start with is much more relevant. > > Various ideas on how to do this: >1) Player only has skills they start with. At some point, they choose a new >class, and get those new skills in addition to what they have. But when you >choose a new class, your exp goes to zero. > I disagree with this. I don't like the idea of 'classes restrictions' - this is an old souvenir from ancient RPGs from the 80'. It is not only counterintuitive, but also quite frustrating. It also lacks flexibility. >2) Put something in that you can only learn a new skill every 10 levels or >something. Problem with this is that some skills would likely be completely >unused (I'm sure players would identify best starting race, followed by the best >skills to learn after that point.) > Again, that sounds quite artificial. I don't like that either. >3) Make skills available by completing quests. Level of quests can basically >determine that you can get skill XYZ until your some level. This means players >can still get all the skills, but may have to stick with what they start with >until some point. > Much better. Probably you could hire a teacher to get a new skill, too. Sounds also much less artificial than propositions 1 and 2 above. > Note to do points 1 & 3 require that skillscrolls get removed from shops and >random treasures. Point #3 could still have them be in special quest hoards or >the like. > > Thoughts? Other ideas? Skills dependencies. Some skills may require knowledge of other skills to become accessible; some skills could also be uncompatible. Well, all this is somewhat interesting. But I'm not sure it is the best thing to change right now. I tend to think that finding better ways to count experience gained by players (it is quite hard/boring/useless to try to get experience with some skills already) or rebalancing relative powers of all skills would give more positive returns than another massive change of the rules. Y. Chachkoff ------------------------------------------------ Help supporting JXFire ! (http://jxfire.sf.net) ------------------------------------------------ From jshelley at brainsurgery.net Fri Nov 15 15:11:38 2002 From: jshelley at brainsurgery.net (Johnny Shelley) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:05 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] skill musings. In-Reply-To: <3DD4B0CA.1060503@sonic.net> Message-ID: On Fri, 15 Nov 2002, Mark Wedel wrote: > In some sense, this actually makes the code much simpler. It also > means that if at level 30, you finally learning smithery, your not > an expert in it. I think this makes a lot of sense. > The downside is that some skills will be very difficult to improve. I don't see that as a negative thing. IMHO the harder the game is, the better. I wouldn't mind seeing more things being difficult to improve, wisdom and melee come to mind first. > The other main idea was to make it more difficult for players to > learn new skills, so what they start with is much more relevant. Again, I think this is a very good thing. The current system is rather broken in this respect. Players tend to end up nearly identical - same armour, weapons, skills and spells regardless of race or class (with a few exceptions for the more exotic classes). > 1) Player only has skills they start with. At some point, they > choose a new class, and get those new skills in addition to what > they have. But when you choose a new class, your exp goes to zero. I like this idea to some extent. Destroying a characters levels / effectiveness w/ his ucrrent skills because he learned something new is really illogical. My change to this idea would be to let the player join a new class at any time and gain the new skills. The trade off is that while they can use all their old abilities, they can't actually get any experience with them. They can only earn experience using their current class's skill set. Additionally, it would be nice to be able to break down weapons and armour so that while wizards still get 'melee' as a skill, they'll be stuck wearing robes and wielding daggers. This should help offset the benefits of starting your wizard class after 10 levels of barbarian. This can be justified a few ways.. some of which are already in the game. (equipment too heavy to cast properly, your god forbids all but blunt weapons etc). Perhaps one way to do this without much in the way of significant changes would be to just raise the spell failure levels considerably and apply them to priests as well but at a lower rate. > 2) Put something in that you can only learn a new skill every 10 > levels or something. Problem with this is that some skills would > likely be completely unused (I'm sure players would identify best > starting race, followed by the best skills to learn after that > point.) Right.. this smells of encouraging players to powergame rather than roleplay (to what extent thats possible in cf). > 3) Make skills available by completing quests. Level of quests can > basically determine that you can get skill XYZ until your some > level. This means players can still get all the skills, but may > have to stick with what they start with until some point. Of the three proposed ideas, I like this one best, however it doesn't seem terribly different from the current system. All it really accomplishes is making the scrolls more expensive (but GUARANTEED). One further suggestion I'd make is limiting how far a character can advance in a skill based on his original class. This would allow lots of variation in character development and still allow characters to eventually learn most of the skills. For instance, wizards are limited to 15 or 20 in melee, barbarians to 5 or 10 in some of the current 'mental' skills. Thieves never reach a high level in the personality skills. Some of the classes will be fairly balanced, while others will lean heavily towards melee or magic with serious weaknesses. Yes, the barbarian will be able to cast healing and burning hands, but forget about face of death and colorspray. Perhaps have one or two of the minor things that can never be learned by a class. Say, thieves can never learn woodlore, or wizards just can't seem to get the hang of singing, barbarians never learn to write, etc. I'll be the first to admit that balancing this kind of thing will be pretty hard, but the code for it shouldn't be too complex and I think it'd be a vast improvement over the current situation where there is nothing more than a different image for diversity after a few levels. And implementing it will be quite a bit easier than my counter proposal for #1.. which sounds like a royal pain to do properly. johnny PGP Public Key available from: http://www.keyserver.net:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x17BF1DD3 From jshelley at brainsurgery.net Fri Nov 15 16:17:00 2002 From: jshelley at brainsurgery.net (Johnny Shelley) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:05 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] skill musings. Message-ID: On Fri, 15 Nov 2002, Mark Wedel wrote: > In some sense, this actually makes the code much simpler. It also > means that if at level 30, you finally learning smithery, your not > an expert in it. I think this makes a lot of sense. > The downside is that some skills will be very difficult to improve. I don't see that as a negative thing. IMHO the harder the game is, the better. I wouldn't mind seeing more things being difficult to improve, wisdom and melee come to mind first. > The other main idea was to make it more difficult for players to > learn new skills, so what they start with is much more relevant. Again, I think this is a very good thing. The current system is rather broken in this respect. Players tend to end up nearly identical - same armour, weapons, skills and spells regardless of race or class (with a few exceptions for the more exotic classes). > 1) Player only has skills they start with. At some point, they > choose a new class, and get those new skills in addition to what > they have. But when you choose a new class, your exp goes to zero. I like this idea to some extent. Destroying a characters levels / effectiveness w/ his ucrrent skills because he learned something new is really illogical. My change to this idea would be to let the player join a new class at any time and gain the new skills. The trade off is that while they can use all their old abilities, they can't actually get any experience with them. They can only earn experience using their current class's skill set. Additionally, it would be nice to be able to break down weapons and armour so that while wizards still get 'melee' as a skill, they'll be stuck wearing robes and wielding daggers. This should help offset the benefits of starting your wizard class after 10 levels of barbarian. This can be justified a few ways.. some of which are already in the game. (equipment too heavy to cast properly, your god forbids all but blunt weapons etc). Perhaps one way to do this without much in the way of significant changes would be to just raise the spell failure levels considerably and apply them to priests as well but at a lower rate. > 2) Put something in that you can only learn a new skill every 10 > levels or something. Problem with this is that some skills would > likely be completely unused (I'm sure players would identify best > starting race, followed by the best skills to learn after that > point.) Right.. this smells of encouraging players to powergame rather than roleplay (to what extent thats possible in cf). > 3) Make skills available by completing quests. Level of quests can > basically determine that you can get skill XYZ until your some > level. This means players can still get all the skills, but may > have to stick with what they start with until some point. Of the three proposed ideas, I like this one best, however it doesn't seem terribly different from the current system. All it really accomplishes is making the scrolls more expensive (but GUARANTEED). One further suggestion I'd make is limiting how far a character can advance in a skill based on his original class. This would allow lots of variation in character development and still allow characters to eventually learn most of the skills. For instance, wizards are limited to 15 or 20 in melee, barbarians to 5 or 10 in some of the current 'mental' skills. Thieves never reach a high level in the personality skills. Some of the classes will be fairly balanced, while others will lean heavily towards melee or magic with serious weaknesses. Yes, the barbarian will be able to cast healing and burning hands, but forget about face of death and colorspray. Perhaps have one or two of the minor things that can never be learned by a class. Say, thieves can never learn woodlore, or wizards just can't seem to get the hang of singing, barbarians never learn to write, etc. I'll be the first to admit that balancing this kind of thing will be pretty hard, but the code for it shouldn't be too complex and I think it'd be a vast improvement over the current situation where there is nothing more than a different image for diversity after a few levels. And implementing it will be quite a bit easier than my counter proposal for #1.. which sounds like a royal pain to do properly. johnny PGP Public Key available from: http://www.keyserver.net:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x17BF1DD3 From temitchell at sympatico.ca Fri Nov 15 18:09:33 2002 From: temitchell at sympatico.ca (Todd Mitchell) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:05 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] skill musings. References: Message-ID: <000601c28d04$716623a0$0a02a8c0@kameria> > Of the three proposed ideas, I like this one best, however it doesn't > seem terribly different from the current system. All it really > accomplishes is making the scrolls more expensive (but GUARANTEED). Any one say that there would be a guarantee once you do find a skill scroll? Would it be mean spirited not to, or would it be prudent not to guarantee getting the skill on completion of a quest? I just thought we should make them harder to find/get, but leave the scrolls as they are. Good question? From mwedel at sonic.net Fri Nov 15 23:31:08 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:05 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] skill musings. References: Message-ID: <3DD5D81C.9040807@sonic.net> It seems that breaking skills off the exp categories is a go - didn't see any dissents on that. Skills from quests - I had mentioned in irc (but not in the mail) that perhaps skills learned there are automatic - it would be frustrating to do the quest only to not learn the skill. The other idea was to perhaps change skill learning away from the skill scroll and instead an item (or npc script for that matter). OTOH, I know there are some quests to get whatever spellbook, and no guarentee you'll learn the spell. I just think it may be a bit frustrating/tiring to have to repeat a quest numerous times to learn the skill. Also, right now learning skills is based simply on int/literacy. That in itself may not make a lot of sense. Having players learn skills via quests would mean high level characters would learn all the skills. I don't have a really big problem with that - no matter what, most high level characters are going to look pretty similar because of the items they get. The main point from my side is to make it so for the first X levels will be pretty unique for each class. Re armor/weapons: I know various RPG's says xyz can't use such weapons. From a realism standpoint, that isn't that good. Me, as a person living on 2002 earth, can pick up a longsword and put on chain mail. I may not be able to do much in it, but nothing preventing me from picking those up. One thought could be to add some idea of different weapon proficiences (as skills). Thus, you may have 'axe', 'sword', 'dagger', 'mace/hammer' skills. You can always use a weapon, but if you don't have the skill, you have a pretty terrible penalty - terrible enough that you probably don't want to do so. OTOH, if you found a really good artifact weapon, may still be worthwhile to use it. I'd hate to limit mages to only using daggers and wearing robes - how many quests does that now make it pointless for them to go on (since the reward is weapon or armor)? The only problem with weapon proficiencies is that the 'sword' is probably the best one. But it creates an interesting situation if that player finds a really great axe - do I start using it or not? I wouldn't get too fined grained on weapon proficiencies - not too many more than above, but I'm sure I missed some. As for armor, could add proficiences with a similiar idea - if you don't have the proficiency, the speed penalty for wearing it is worse, as is perhaps the sp regen penalty and casting penalty (just not comfortable in wearing it). Such armor proficiency penalties (light/medium/heavy) would actually advance in level, but could be used to prevent that mage from deciding to wear plate armor. Other random ideas: For skills that let you identify items, we could key iin on the item_power (whenever it gets fully debugged). If the item_power is higher than your skill level, you can't identify it. This is better than the random approach right now. Also, the exp you get would depend on your level relative to the item_power of the item. Eg, if your skill level is 5, and item_power is 5, you get much more exp for that item compared to if its item_power was 1 (eg, more interesting item = more exp). Should really add a way to award exp to specific skills (via some method on map). In this way, quests could award exp to specific categories. Thus, you could make a 'literacy' quest which gets you exp, but isn't just a matter of reading a whole bunch of books. Hp/mana/grace: mana and grace are already derived from your level in the appropriate skill category - I would think that should be the same. I think keeping overall level for hp (and other things like how much item_power you can wear) is fine. Way back when, it was tried with hp being from physical exp. End result is everyone then has to get a fair amount of physical exp in order to survive. If anything, I think we want to try and encourage skill specialization, eg, you can focus on wizardry all you want, but you'll still have decent HP and being able to use decent (magical) equipment. If skills have their own exp, I'm not sure I still want the idea of exp categories - that complicates the code. OTOH, it could be interesting to have some idea where skills evolve. Maybe at level 10 of wizardry, you can now sense magic in items, just because you are now so in tune with magical forces. Maybe after going on some quest, you get some 'expert armor' skill, which lets you wear armor with less penalty, etc. From root at garbled.net Sat Nov 16 10:04:23 2002 From: root at garbled.net (Tim Rightnour) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:05 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] skill musings. In-Reply-To: <3DD5D81C.9040807@sonic.net> Message-ID: On 16-Nov-02 Mark Wedel wrote: > It seems that breaking skills off the exp categories is a go - didn't see > any > dissents on that. Yah.. I don't disagree with that really.. But I was brainstorming with some fellows again on IRC yesterday, and came up with something else.. One thing I would like to say though.. is lets not be too hasty about fiddling around here. This is a really complex subject, and we do it no justice by solving it too quickly. Anyhow.. I had the idea of implementing a system where you build your character from scratch. Similar to some other RPG's I've played, you are given a number of lets say "skill gems". With these gems, you wander around the hall of selection, and bascially purchase your starting character. So the first thing I would do, is shoot bargaining in the head. Blam. No more "charisma is a useless stat" skill. Second, I would break melee into multiple weapon diciplines. I think the best way to break this up would be by the attacktype, pierce, bludgeon, slash, etc, though some hackery might be needed for the things that attack with fire/cold/etc. Third, I would break magic into it's component disciplines. Fire, Ice, Lightning, Turning, Protection. Finally, each skill can be learned in either minimum, medium, or maximum "attunement". As an example, minimum might mean that you gain exp in that skill at 33% of the normal rate, and your maximum level caps out around 35 or so in that skill. medium == 66%, maximum == 100%. Now, we start the character off with his chosen race, give him some set number of "skill gems" and let him loose in this virtual shop of character goodies. In here, he not only purchases which skills he wants, effectively allowing a player to build his own class to taste, but he buys other things, like his maximum stats, and starting stats. For example, a player might start with a maximum dex of 18, but he could go stand on the altar, and push a button that lowers his maximum natural dexterity to 17, in exchange for an extra skill gem. The values for each of the skills would have to be calculated out, and balanced against one another and the statistics.. but what I envision, would be a system where a player could choose to be knowledgeable in every skill, but excellent at none of them, or he could pick a few things he is really good at. Perhaps one thing he could buy is really high level attunement in a particular skill, so you essentially get the benefit of wearing a ring of fire and being attuned Fire permanently. In this way, we still have the concept of classes, but there is no "you are a thief, thieves have these set skills, live with it" stigma. Obviosuly for newbies, we would still offer a few pre-designed classes, as not everyone would want to go through the whole character creation maze just to try out the game. Anyhow.. it's just one of many ideas.. and it needs refinement obviously.. but any comments? --- Tim Rightnour NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS http://www.netbsd.org/ NetBSD supported hardware database: http://mail-index.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/hw.cgi From michael.toennies at nord-com.net Sat Nov 16 16:50:29 2002 From: michael.toennies at nord-com.net (Michael Toennies) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:05 2005 Subject: AW: [CF-Devel] skill musings. In-Reply-To: <3DD5D81C.9040807@sonic.net> Message-ID: I have finished for Daimonin some weeks ago a single skill exp system plus different weapons skills (cleave, slash,...) + special used skills like 2h or polearms. If you guys want look at it, the pre-beta test is here http://mids.student.utwente.nl/~michtoen/d/ The package includes all about daimonin and full win32 exes. I compiles without warnings under win32 and linux (linux make is full working and tested for client & server). Even streaming music works fine on my mashine (ogg vorbis support now). This is work in progress and was used for testing the package on other OS - but it will work fine. > > It seems that breaking skills off the exp categories is a go - > didn't see any > dissents on that. > > Skills from quests - I had mentioned in irc (but not in the mail) > that perhaps > skills learned there are automatic - it would be frustrating to > do the quest > only to not learn the skill. The other idea was to perhaps change skill > learning away from the skill scroll and instead an item (or npc > script for that > matter). OTOH, I know there are some quests to get whatever > spellbook, and no > guarentee you'll learn the spell. I just think it may be a bit > frustrating/tiring to have to repeat a quest numerous times to > learn the skill. > > Also, right now learning skills is based simply on > int/literacy. That in > itself may not make a lot of sense. > > Having players learn skills via quests would mean high level > characters would > learn all the skills. I don't have a really big problem with > that - no matter > what, most high level characters are going to look pretty similar > because of the > items they get. The main point from my side is to make it so for > the first X > levels will be pretty unique for each class. > > Re armor/weapons: I know various RPG's says xyz can't use such > weapons. From a > realism standpoint, that isn't that good. Me, as a person living > on 2002 earth, > can pick up a longsword and put on chain mail. I may not be able > to do much in > it, but nothing preventing me from picking those up. > > One thought could be to add some idea of different weapon > proficiences (as > skills). > > Thus, you may have 'axe', 'sword', 'dagger', 'mace/hammer' > skills. You can > always use a weapon, but if you don't have the skill, you have a > pretty terrible > penalty - terrible enough that you probably don't want to do so. > OTOH, if you > found a really good artifact weapon, may still be worthwhile to use it. > > I'd hate to limit mages to only using daggers and wearing robes > - how many > quests does that now make it pointless for them to go on (since > the reward is > weapon or armor)? > > The only problem with weapon proficiencies is that the 'sword' > is probably the > best one. But it creates an interesting situation if that player > finds a really > great axe - do I start using it or not? I wouldn't get too fined > grained on > weapon proficiencies - not too many more than above, but I'm sure > I missed some. > > As for armor, could add proficiences with a similiar idea - if > you don't have > the proficiency, the speed penalty for wearing it is worse, as is > perhaps the sp > regen penalty and casting penalty (just not comfortable in > wearing it). Such > armor proficiency penalties (light/medium/heavy) would actually > advance in > level, but could be used to prevent that mage from deciding to > wear plate armor. > > Other random ideas: > > For skills that let you identify items, we could key iin on the > item_power > (whenever it gets fully debugged). If the item_power is higher > than your skill > level, you can't identify it. This is better than the random > approach right > now. Also, the exp you get would depend on your level relative to the > item_power of the item. Eg, if your skill level is 5, and > item_power is 5, you > get much more exp for that item compared to if its item_power was > 1 (eg, more > interesting item = more exp). > > Should really add a way to award exp to specific skills (via some > method on > map). In this way, quests could award exp to specific > categories. Thus, you > could make a 'literacy' quest which gets you exp, but isn't just > a matter of > reading a whole bunch of books. > > Hp/mana/grace: mana and grace are already derived from your level in the > appropriate skill category - I would think that should be the same. > > I think keeping overall level for hp (and other things like how much > item_power you can wear) is fine. Way back when, it was tried > with hp being > from physical exp. End result is everyone then has to get a fair > amount of > physical exp in order to survive. If anything, I think we want > to try and > encourage skill specialization, eg, you can focus on wizardry all > you want, but > you'll still have decent HP and being able to use decent > (magical) equipment. > > If skills have their own exp, I'm not sure I still want the idea of exp > categories - that complicates the code. OTOH, it could be > interesting to have > some idea where skills evolve. Maybe at level 10 of wizardry, > you can now sense > magic in items, just because you are now so in tune with magical > forces. Maybe > after going on some quest, you get some 'expert armor' skill, > which lets you > wear armor with less penalty, etc. > > > > _______________________________________________ > crossfire-devel mailing list > crossfire-devel@lists.real-time.com > https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/crossfire-devel From pstolarc at theperlguru.com Sat Nov 16 16:50:39 2002 From: pstolarc at theperlguru.com (pstolarc@theperlguru.com) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:06 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] skill musings. In-Reply-To: References: <3DD5D81C.9040807@sonic.net> Message-ID: Pardon the length of this post. Rough outline is intro, code changes, map design for char creation. On Sat, 16 Nov 2002, Tim Rightnour wrote: (quoted text trimmed in areas with "...") >But I was brainstorming with some fellows again on IRC yesterday, and came up >with something else.. One thing I would like to say though.. is lets not be >too hasty about fiddling around here. This is a really complex subject, and we >do it no justice by solving it too quickly. > >Anyhow.. I had the idea of implementing a system where you build your character >from scratch. ... break melee into multiple weapon diciplines. ... >break magic into it's component disciplines. > >Finally, each skill can be learned in either minimum, medium, or maximum >"attunement". As an example, minimum might mean that you gain exp in that >skill at 33% of the normal rate, and your maximum level caps out around 35 or >so in that skill. medium == 66%, maximum == 100%. ... >Anyhow.. it's just one of many ideas.. and it needs refinement obviously.. but >any comments? After the conversation, I put quite a bit more thought into this. (All numbers are made up and will probably need tuning.) This system could be implemented with not that many code changes. I think all it needs is some changes to creators, to the skill objects, and to the experience gain system. HallOfSelection remains where it is, just as it is now, but we add a special "advanced character creation" room. To enter the room, the player needs to read a sign, and say a word from the sign. If they say the word, a gate opens, and they step forward on to a player creator. The player creator changes their image to that of a child, gives them their gems, and sends them to the character creation room. **** Now for the interesting bit. The changes that would be required to implement this thing. Firstly, creators. Add a flag to the creator object that will place the item created in a character's inventory (if the character is standing on top of the creator.) This change is necessary in order to add invisible items into a player's inventory. (I can think of other uses for this, but they are beyond the scope.) My second change to creators isn't quite required, but it would be really nice from a mapmaker's point of view. If a creator has "other_arch none", the item in the creator's inventory (if it exists) is used rather than other_arch. The item would be duplicated, not just dropped, to allow "lifesave 1" to work logically. I think the alternate uses for this change are quite obvious. OK, the other areas I would change code are intermingled in their effect. Skill objects and the experience system. By default, a player can't learn any skills. (The spell type fuckery is treated the same way as a skill. ie the "cast fire-spell skill".) If a player has a certain skill object, and that object is "identified 0", then the player is allowed to learn that skill, (but does not have the skill.) Some skills (ie. literacy) every character starts out being able to learn. Then we add a new concept called skill attunement. A player can be attuned to a certain skill, representing a natural talent, or the lack thereof for a skill. If they get this attunement, they might get 110% experience in that skill. Or they may only get 75% experience. This information is stored in the skill object, and handled in the experience gaining code. Finally, we add experience caps to the skill objects. Each skill object contains the maximum possible experience for that skill. (similar to hp and maxhp). When the player reaches this cap, they no longer gain experience in that skill. (These caps should be at level boundaries.) **** And now for my take on how the character class creation room would look. The player steps into the room. They are a child. They can choose to entire garbled's school of weaponry, mwedel's school of hard knocks, etc. Once they enter a school, it's a small map with altars. Each altar is connected to a creator that's underneath it. The creators insert various things into the character's inventory. The altars are labeled with their cost, and what they give. If the character drops gems on the altar, the other altars for that skill become blocked, and the creator inserts a skill object into the char's inventory. There would be three altars per skill. One is low, 30% of max level, and only 75% experience gained. One is medium, 70% of max level, and 100% experience gained. The third is maximum, 100% of max level, and 110% experience gained. Or the character can press the "sacrifice dex point" button, and two "insert object" creators are triggered. One inserts a force object that has dex -1, and the other inserts a skill gem. Minor cold vulnerability (-10%) for a skill gem? sure! Major cold vulnerability (-50%) for two skill gems? No problem. Crippled, and can only use one arm? Why, that's good for a skill gem or two! OK, that's it. Thanks for taking the time to read this. -Philip From pstolarc at theperlguru.com Sun Nov 17 04:31:14 2002 From: pstolarc at theperlguru.com (pstolarc@theperlguru.com) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:06 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] skill musings. In-Reply-To: References: <3DD5D81C.9040807@sonic.net> Message-ID: On Sat, 16 Nov 2002 17:50:39 -0500, pstolarc@theperlguru.com wrote: >On Sat, 16 Nov 2002, Tim Rightnour wrote: > >(quoted text trimmed in areas with "...") >>Anyhow.. I had the idea of implementing a system where you build your character >>from scratch. ... break melee into multiple weapon diciplines. ... >>break magic into it's component disciplines. >> >>Finally, each skill can be learned in either minimum, medium, or maximum >>"attunement". As an example, minimum might mean that you gain exp in that >>skill at 33% of the normal rate, and your maximum level caps out around 35 or >>so in that skill. medium == 66%, maximum == 100%. My previous long winded message is largely superceded by this long winded message. It's not that well organized, but oh well. Enjoy. This is a brief outline of IRC discussion on this issue, and how things stand currently. My prior message assumed that players merely selected the ability to gain new skills, but didn't actually get those skills. Tim Rightnour said that players choose skills, and only get skills through the skill gem system. (Skill scrolls are entirely removed from the game.) A player either starts with a character class, or (for the advanced user) starts with a quantity of skill gems. As a player gains levels, they gain additional skill gems. Something along the lines of one skill gem every level, and some bonus skill gems at various milestones, (ie. every 5 levels.) The player can go into the training room, to use the skill gems to gain new skills. This is done with a new object. In this new object, other_arch gets removed, and contr->inv gets inserted. We need to handle removing multiples of an item (ie. 6 skill gems.) This method of payment is to prevent players from swapping skill gems. Each skill has a proficiency level associated with it. (stored in nrof) low proficiency means that the character can use the skill, has a low level cap (ie. can only get up to level 30 in that skill), and gains a reduced amount of experience (ie. 75%). Medium proficiency has a medium skill level cap (ie. 70), and an average amount of experience (ie. 100%). Expert proficiency means that the character can reach the maximum level in that skill, and gets a slight bonus to experience gained in that skill (ie. 115%). We should probably lower experience requirements for the first 10 levels, because characters are mostly going to have low proficiency in all skills, and will gain less experience overall. Oh, and in case I didn't make it clear, players can gain new skills later on in life by spending skill gems earned in the course of adventuring. Either by gaining levels, or through a limited number of "do only once" skill gem quests. The formula for increasing your skill level was proposed as: d = difficulty of the skill (ie. sword use is harder than cooking.) d = [1..3] or [1..4] Increase skill from unknown to basic costs (1* d) skill gems Increase skill from basic to medium costs (2 * d) skilll gems Increase skill from medium to expert costs (3 * d) skill gems Say, basic is 3 gems, medium is 6 and max is 9.. to get to max they have to pay 18 gems There will also be additional options available to the player during character creation only. (ie. reduce max dex by 1 for a skill gem. Pay a skill gem to increase max dex by 1.) We don't want players changing these things from quest to quest, depending on what the quest calls for, but they can add flavour. ( I especially like the "missing an arm & finger" penalty. ) Anybody with those gods that restrict skill use or with meditation that pays for a proscribed skill will just be SOL. Please note that this new skill system is a work in progress, numbers are largely made up and not at all tested for balance, and that comments are more than welcome. -Philip From pc-crossfire at crowcastle.net Mon Nov 18 13:46:20 2002 From: pc-crossfire at crowcastle.net (Preston Crow) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:06 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] bugs Message-ID: <200211181946.gAIJkKY4006205@lol1120.lss.emc.com> I've noticed several bugs while playing at metalforge with gcfclient: When running, especially when entering a new map, the client often leaves behind a copy of yourself. In other words, when you move, the icon for your character is left on the square you were just on. My guess is that this is some sort of race condition where you move to the next square before the server has told the client everything about your view at your previous square. This happens quite frequently. If you play with split windows, and try to manually enter a command, like: 'tell Friend Need any help? it works just fine if your focus is on the info window (the window where the input text box is), as you would expect. However, if you do this with your cursor in any other window (assuming you're using pointer focus, which I expect most Unix users are), the apostrophe is interpreted correctly, but the rest of the text seems to be ignored, and the client crashes on the first space. This is 100% repeatable. If you have trouble reproducing it, I'll rebuild (my binary is stripped) and get a stack trace in gdb. When you save the window positions and then restart, all the windows shift down by the height of the titlebar, at least if you're using twm as your window manager (I haven't tried anything else). In my case, I just edited the file by hand to subtract 19 from each y coordinate. That's not something we should expect people to need to do. When I have a container open and want to remove the top item, I instinctively hit the comma key. This results in some error message about the container not fitting in itself instead of moving the item from the container to my inventory. After applying a chest, the apply and examine commands ignore the items that were just revealed. The workaround is to either click on the item in the look window or step off and back on the square. When killing monsters in some pass-through walls (like the undead level of the training tower in Lake Country), items from slain monsters show up under the wall. Such items are ignored by the active pickup mode and can only be picked up by clicking on the individual objects. Something seems to be messed up with the Enchant Armour scrolls. I'm told that I'm not powerful enough to enchant things that I think I really should be able to enchant. This may be related to when I issue the 'skills command and see some message about having something like 28473 out of 13 improvements (or whatever that message is; I can't bring it up from here). At the very least, it would help if it would tell me something useful, like "You must attain level 20 before improving this item." --PC From pc-crossfire at crowcastle.net Mon Nov 18 13:54:04 2002 From: pc-crossfire at crowcastle.net (Preston Crow) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:06 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Money issues Message-ID: <200211181954.gAIJs4CK006228@lol1120.lss.emc.com> Is it clear where players with absurd amounts of money are obtaining it? Everything in this thread seems to just assume that the economy if broken, but there may be some particular loopholes that can be closed to eliminate a large portion of the problem. I remember making tons of money with the different gp:pp ratio in pupland. I'm guessing that's where players with >1M pp came up with the cash. [Yes, the economy probably is fundamentally broken, but not until you get fairly powerful unless you're abusing the system somehow.] --PC From jshelley at brainsurgery.net Mon Nov 18 14:57:44 2002 From: jshelley at brainsurgery.net (Johnny Shelley) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:06 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] bugs In-Reply-To: <200211181946.gAIJkKY4006205@lol1120.lss.emc.com> Message-ID: On Mon, 18 Nov 2002, Preston Crow wrote: > I've noticed several bugs while playing at metalforge with gcfclient: > Something seems to be messed up with the Enchant Armour scrolls. I'm told > that I'm not powerful enough to enchant things that I think I really should > be able to enchant. This may be related to when I issue the 'skills > command and see some message about having something like 28473 out of 13 > improvements (or whatever that message is; I can't bring it up from here). > At the very least, it would help if it would tell me something useful, like > "You must attain level 20 before improving this item." This one at least isn't a bug. Enchant armour scrolls add a +1 enchantment and may be applied like so: 1 at level 1, 1 every 10 levels therafter. I suspect the problem you're having is related to the armour value however. Basically, for every scroll you read, an armour value is added to the equipment as well as the enchantment bonus. IIRC, this is roughly your level / 10. The limitation is that you can never enchant armour to have a higher value than your current level or 90, whichever is lower. So if you have a +0 item w/ armour of 20, you need to be at least level 21 (or 22.. I forget excatly how this works) to enchant it to +1. Then at about 23 or 24, you could enchant it to +2 (and ~24 armour). Finally around level 26, you could enchant it to +3. Then no further enchantments until you reach level 30. So to double check this, verify that your level is >= the armour's current enchantment * 10. And verify that your level is greater than the armour's current armour value + your level / 10. johnny PGP Public Key available from: http://www.keyserver.net:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x17BF1DD3 From mwedel at sonic.net Mon Nov 18 23:31:10 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:06 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Money issues References: <200211181954.gAIJs4CK006228@lol1120.lss.emc.com> Message-ID: <3DD9CC9E.6060907@sonic.net> Preston Crow wrote: > Is it clear where players with absurd amounts of money are obtaining it? > > Everything in this thread seems to just assume that the economy if broken, > but there may be some particular loopholes that can be closed to eliminate > a large portion of the problem. > > I remember making tons of money with the different gp:pp ratio in pupland. > I'm guessing that's where players with >1M pp came up with the cash. I think the main issue is this - At level 10-15 or so, there really isn't much left to buy in the stores (not that the stores are empty, just that there isn't much of interest for the characters to buy). So what this means is that any dungeon they go through, basically they keep all the treasure they find as money (in terms of coinage, as well as selling items they found). As you get higher levels, the monetary gain from dungeons increase - more likely to find piles of really good stuff worth good amount of money. And hence starts the discussions of recurring expenses for high level characters and what not to use up some of that money. From mwedel at sonic.net Tue Nov 19 00:49:58 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:06 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] skill musings. References: <3DD5D81C.9040807@sonic.net> Message-ID: <3DD9DF16.1010505@sonic.net> More musings: 1) It seems unlikely that everyone will agree what the best/proper way to do a skill system is. Thus, keeping it extensible is probably the way to go, so people can do whatever customizations to have it fit what they want to do. 2) There is already the expmul variable in the object structure - this can easily be used to adjust exp awards for the skill. Thus, if you want it more difficult to learn in a skill, this could be set accordingly. 3) Personally, I think lowering exp requires for first 10 levels is a bad idea. Especially for the first 5, which I already can get to in within an hour. Ok, I'm an experienced player, but the mechanism for this isn't that hard - if you clear out the newbie dungeon, that gets you level 3-4 right there. 4) Given where this discussion is, I think talking specific numbers or use of what variables to use is premature. I think first we need to decide what the general idea for skills should be. 5) While not writing new code may be desirable, I think trying to avoid that in all cases in wrong if the way to do it makes things even more convoluted. There are some parts of the game that are so basic that they should be in code. 6) While the idea of skill attenuation has merit, if it is done, I think the cast of going from no skill to beginner to medium to expert should all be the same (eg, 1 gem in each case). If you make going from medium to expert cost 18 times what it would take to just learn a new skill, the end result is that probably most all characters will just get basic in all the skills, and if they get enough gems, make some of the medium, and probably make all of them medium, and then perhaps make some of the expert. I say this for a few reasons - unless the max level for beginner is very low, getting to level 30 is going to be sufficient for most aspects. And having a bunch of choices in terms of spells or attacktypes is almost certainly going to be more useful than being really good in just one or two skills. that said, the main issues seem to be: 1) Starting skills - still have classes that determine skills, or completely customizable 2) Gaining new skills - get one every X levels, quest completion, completely fixed based on what you start with 3) Skill particulars - max level allowed in some skills? Different rates of gaining exp in different skills (attenuation?) Linked skills (gaining exp in one skill means you gain some portion in another related skill) 4) Number of skills - how finely divided should the skills be. From jshelley at brainsurgery.net Tue Nov 19 12:21:33 2002 From: jshelley at brainsurgery.net (Johnny Shelley) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:06 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] skill musings. In-Reply-To: <3DD9DF16.1010505@sonic.net> Message-ID: On Mon, 18 Nov 2002, Mark Wedel wrote: > > More musings: > > 1) It seems unlikely that everyone will agree what the best/proper > way to do a skill system is. You can say that again. > 3) Personally, I think lowering exp requires for first 10 levels is > a bad idea. I would tend to agree with you here. IMHO, the harder the game is, the better (up to a point). The counter argument though is that most players will be coming into level 1 gaining only a percentage of the current experience they would gain. If that percentage is 33%, its going to take them 3 times as long to level. This does however provide them incentive to improve a combat skill quickly. > 4) Given where this discussion is, I think talking specific numbers > or use of what variables to use is premature. I think first we need > to decide what the general idea for skills should be. Tim, Phil and I have been kicking this around a bit in IRC and email. I think we are close to something that at least the three of us can agree on. Personally, I would rather have a well thought out proposal ready to present to the development list rather than have too many ideas all at once which makes the overall design too complicated. > 6) While the idea of skill attenuation has merit, if it is done, I > think the cast of going from no skill to beginner to medium to > expert should all be the same (eg, 1 gem in each case). If you make > going from medium to expert cost 18 times what it would take to just > learn a new skill, the end result is that probably most all > characters will just get basic in all the skills, and if they get > enough gems, make some of the medium, and probably make all of them > medium, and then perhaps make some of the expert. I would have to disagree with you on this, but also I think you may have misunderstood the example Phil gave. The example he gave cited '18 total skill points' to progress from a denied skill to expert level with a cost of 3 points for basic, an additional 6 for medium and 9 more for expert. The reason for this is mostly character differentiation. Simply put, people will have to decide what skills are worth advancing and which aren't. I think its perfectly reasonable to have a perfectly balanced character, but while they are well rounded, they won't be nearly as effective in many situations as a specialized character. Similiarly an over-specialized character will have a lot of problems in situations that call for skills they have ignored. Another key factor here is that various skills will have a lower base cost. Something like 'sword use' may start at 4 skill points for basic compared to literacy which may start at 1. Assuming you have both of these at 'basic' it will cost another 2 points to go to 'low mid range' in literacy or 8 points for sword use. This is a tough choice to make, as it really boils down to 'spend 2 levels to be able to read high level spellbooks' or 'hold off for 8 levels so I can really whack things with my sword and gain more skill points'. In this respect, gaining skill levels works quite a bit like the experience system - its harder to improve than it was to start. > I say this for a few reasons - unless the max level for beginner > is very low, getting to level 30 is going to be sufficient for most > aspects. Well, the current model (which isn't out of review yet =) is looking at a cap of '10' for a basic skill and 4 levels of proficiency. This makes those 'low cost' decisions even tougher, probably leading to quite a bit of specialization. I think you'll end up seeing a LOT of specialization in some of the current 'mental' skills and most extremely high level characters ending up with 1-3 'high mid range' combat skills or 1 'expert' skill and 2 'low mid range' combat skills. > And having a bunch of choices in terms of spells or attacktypes is > almost certainly going to be more useful than being really good in > just one or two skills. Spells are something we're looking at currently and while we still haven't agreed on a definate model, the consensus seems to be that characters will start as DENIED in all spell paths and have to pay to unlock them. Additionally, they will have to pay to improve them to a point where they are effective. Exactly how is something we're fighting out in committee. > 2) Gaining new skills - get one every X levels, quest completion, > completely fixed based on what you start with This is a key point. Players will no longer be 'expert at everything' because they can't afford the skill points. I think pretty much everyone that has replied to this thread agrees on this. > 3) Skill particulars - max level allowed in some skills? I think this is something everyone pretty much agrees on with many people wanting the freedom to improve a skill all the way to 110. We're trying to address both aspects by allowing a character to do so at the cost of improving other skills. Under the (still in committee) draft, a character that wanted to advance 'sword use' to 110 would have to spend around 44 skill points on it. To reach expert in either praying or spell casting would cost 22 skill points. Additionally, they will have to pay from 1-3 as a base cost for spell paths (on a 3 step scale). Generally useful combat spells tend to be 2 or 3 as a base cost. If we take (out of thin air) 30 starting skill points and 1 per level, theres a total of 129 points available. Under the very rough draft of skill / attunement costs, it would take 196 points to reach expert in prayer, spell casting, 'sword use' and be able to cast every spell path as 'normal attunement'. To reach expert in the above skills and cast every spell as 'repelled' would cost 124 skill points. To cast everything as 'attuned' would cost 304 skill points. Also, you have to take into account that players will almost certainly need things like disarm traps. Given some of the benefits being added in item creation (revised alchemy) theres a lot to be said for paying for those skills and even advancing them. > Different rates of gaining exp in different skills (attenuation?) This was proposed because there was an opinion that people should advance slowly in a skill that they will be limited in. Additionally I think it adds quite a bit of choice for the player in deciding just how they want to advance their character. > Linked skills (gaining exp in one skill means you gain some portion > in another related skill) This is something we need to look at. I can definately see a case for linking find traps / disarm traps / lockpick all into a single category. > 4) Number of skills - how finely divided should the skills be. This may be a bit of a point. Our current model is looking at a separate category for each current skill - somewhere around 25-30 skills. Some of these aren't improvable and just bought at a base cost (mountaineer, jumping, meditation, etc). While its a lot of skills, I don't think we're likely to hit any problems where its necessary to raise the size of maxexp due to the built in limitations. What I see this system likely to do is make it quicker to 'max out' a character, but leave many things undone - encouraging a player to try a new character and optimize it differently. Ok, sorry for being so damn long winded. After saying all of the above, I'm afraid I've mostly just confused people that haven't seen a copy of the base system we've been kicking around the past few days. I think we're very close to a point where we have a workable system and some rough base costs. No doubt many of the skill costs will need tweaking to get rid of the 'super characters' currently wandering around crossfire servers, but at least we'll have a place to start from. I would like to have a draft proposal ready to present to the list in the next day or two, at which point I'm sure there will be lots of feedback and a few firebombings. johnny PGP Public Key available from: http://www.keyserver.net:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x17BF1DD3 From temitchell at sympatico.ca Tue Nov 19 14:50:32 2002 From: temitchell at sympatico.ca (Todd Mitchell) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:06 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] skill musings. References: <3DD5D81C.9040807@sonic.net> <3DD9DF16.1010505@sonic.net> Message-ID: <001401c2900d$4e98b340$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> First off I'd like to say I don't think there is anythning fundementally wrong with the current way skills are acquired. Skill scroll and a chance to learn the skill based on a stat is perfectly fine way to deal with this IMHO. I do think that these scrolls are too easy to come by however and if it is a difference between making them easier to get or easier to learn - I guess I would side with make them easier to learn but harder to find. Thing is that if a scroll is rare and wonderful players will use rings and potions to increase their chances of learning it. If you already have the skill and do find one, you now have a valuable item to sell. BTW I think this same argument should apply to more spellbooks too. I don't care really if someone sells a skill scroll to another player for 50000 pl, or a dragon horde contains a scroll of sense magic, but I do think they shouldn't be store items and should be fairly rare (depending on the skill of course - literacy could be cheaply available at the libraries certainly). It could be an idea to make the chance of learning the skill based on different appropriate stats. > 1) Starting skills - still have classes that determine skills, or completely > customizable > > 2) Gaining new skills - get one every X levels, quest completion, completely > fixed based on what you start with I have no problem with the class system for starting out (except the faces...) since people like it (remembering back to the PM on this one - he mentioned that most people choose a class even though the option is there not to) and it helps speed up character generation. Also with the classes you can mixup the good and not so good so that everyone does not just pick the most useful skills for new players and dump the others when starting out. Once that is aside and the character created though, I think that players should be able to get any skill they want so that they can develop however they like. I don't think however that they should be able to get all skills by level 30 and I don't think that all the skills they get should necessarily useful for them in particular. If you pick a class with no magic and then want to get the 'magic' skill then I have no problem making it a pretty tough road (or roads) to get that skill (the dread Tower of Wizardly thought, the secret marsh of the shamen, sometimes dropped by a Djinn)- there are always amulets and the like as well for the fainter of heart. I don't see a need for a complex system for this - just redeployment of some of the resources (this is more an economy issue that a code issue I guess I'm trying to say) now as for skills themselves: > 3) Skill particulars - max level allowed in some skills? Different rates of > gaining exp in different skills (attenuation?) Linked skills (gaining exp in > one skill means you gain some portion in another related skill) How about: how are xp gained for different skills? Having the skills share xp however is something that would be good to do away with as it: a: makes it too easy to get good skills (since they automatically are the level of the other similar skills) b: keeps many skills pretty wimpy for reason a: I do think that it would be a good idea to break out the skills so they do not share xp as this would make them and players more interesting and allow increasing powers in skills without so much game balance upset. This would only work if there were reasonable ways to gain xp in these skills (training allows you to dump some xp into the skill from your total, or getting skill xp for specific actions (quest rewards), and there were clear and useful skills with increasing benefit (not 100 small one off kind of skills). > 4) Number of skills - how finely divided should the skills be. I guess this would depend on what a skill gives you. There should be a difference between skills that grow with xp and skills that give you a specific ability. How much use is having 60 levels of literacy anyway? Even if it was really cheap skill it would be a pain for mapmakers to mixup that many books. It would be nice if at certain levels of a skill you would get some additional abilities, like for example - magic lore as a skill would give you sense magic, then the ability to identify some items, then the ability to make some items all based on the level you have in that skill. This would be one way to handle different 'one-off ' skills by incorporating them into an actual Skill. Missile weapons skill could give you bowyer skill at a certain level. Unarmaed combat could contain both jumping and karate. Making a distinction between a capital S 'Skill' with 'minor skills' would allow for some measure of Skill development while still not screwing too much with lots of racial and specality skills. That being said, the skills would have to be modular enough to support the race/class type distinctions (or some of them anyway) without overlap (or maybe some little overlap). Also I add - no rush, lets talk and figure out the best soluton. From temitchell at sympatico.ca Tue Nov 19 21:20:45 2002 From: temitchell at sympatico.ca (Todd Mitchell) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:06 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] skill musings. References: Message-ID: <000c01c29043$d0ab6fe0$0a02a8c0@kameria> > Ok, sorry for being so damn long winded. After saying all of the above, > I'm afraid I've mostly just confused people that haven't seen a copy of > the base system we've been kicking around the past few days. I think > we're very close to a point where we have a workable system and some > rough base costs. No doubt many of the skill costs will need tweaking to > get rid of the 'super characters' currently wandering around crossfire > servers, but at least we'll have a place to start from. > > I would like to have a draft proposal ready to present to the list in > the next day or two, at which point I'm sure there will be lots of > feedback and a few firebombings. > Ok - lets trot it out - sounds more interesting than some vague references to skill gems > This may be a bit of a point. Our current model is looking at a separate > category for each current skill - somewhere around 25-30 skills. Some of > these aren't improvable and just bought at a base cost (mountaineer, > jumping, meditation, etc). Some of these skills could be made improvable. I would try to avoid marginalizing skills if they could be fixed or incorporated into other skills. Hate to waste one of those funky gems if it was a one shot skill. From jshelley at brainsurgery.net Tue Nov 19 23:05:15 2002 From: jshelley at brainsurgery.net (Johnny Shelley) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:06 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New Skill System (Draft) Message-ID: Unfortunately, the ad hoc committee for skill restructuring has been unable to reach full consensus on a proposed new skill system. The main problem is in how to deal with the magic system and schools. I will post one system as a follow up to this thread and Tim will post a second view. We leave it to the list members to decide on which method is the preferred route. What follows is what we have been able to agree on minus the implementation details. The basic idea is that a character will start with no skills (barring a few awarded by race) and buy them w/ an as yet undetermined number of 'skill points' during character creation (or pick a pre-designed class). As characters progress in level, they will be awarded with additional skill points and may buy new skills or advance already known skills. A rough estimate here is 1 skill point per level attained. By advancing a skill, players gain two benefits: they earn experience with that skill faster and they can reach a higher level in it. Skill advances are bought incrementally such that they increase in cost to advance every level. This reflects the increased effectiveness of skills fairly well, although probably not perfectly. The biggest contribution it makes is encouraging character differentiation as players choose skills that they really find useful to advance. Certainly if this system is adopted, the costs will need to be adjusted, but we think this is a reasonable starting point. Skill cost breakdown: Skills ------ All currently existing skills (except bargaining) level 1 = 1x base cost, level 10, 33% experience level 2 = 2x base cost, level 30, 66% experience level 3 = 3x base cost, level 70, 100% experience level 4 = 4x base cost, no level limit, 115% experience Non-improvable (bought at minimum level) -- mountaineer - base cost 2 meditation - base cost 15 jumping - base cost 3 sense magic - base cost 2 /* these give small experience, but do not improve */ sense curse - base cost 2 base cost 1 (non combat - single purpose) -- hiding literacy disarm traps lockpicking (start at level 2, skill object gives level 1) inscription "" "" "" singing oratory find traps base cost 1 -- use magic item (will award experience but will not scale) base cost 2 (non-combat identification and item creation) -- bowyer woodsman smithery jeweler alchemy thaumaturgy base cost 1 (sissy fighting) -- throwing punching base cost 2 (weak physical combat) -- karate flame touch /* fireborn start w/ this.. dont let anyone else have it */ missile weapons base cost 3 (weaker melee weapons) -- bludgeoning (hammers, maces, quarterstaffs) piercing (spears, polearms, daggers(?)) base cost 4 (most powerful artifacts / common weapons) -- slashing (swords, axes, katanas) Ways to start with extra skill points ------------------------- Maiming - 5 points for any body part (that the race actually has) Lowered max stat - 1 for 2 lowered resistances - 2 points for -10%, 5 points for -30%, 10 points for -100% (only a few common attack types.. no reason to allow characters to say 'ok, i'll take -100 to half a dozen very rare types'. Only one level of lowered resistance may be chosen per attack type) Racial Improvements ------------------- Increased max stat - 2 for 1 Increased resistance - 4 points for +10%, 10 points for +30% (as above regarding limited number of attack types. Only one level of raised resistance may be chosen per attack type) johnny PGP Public Key available from: http://www.keyserver.net:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x17BF1DD3 From jshelley at brainsurgery.net Wed Nov 20 00:19:09 2002 From: jshelley at brainsurgery.net (Johnny Shelley) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:06 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Re: New Skill System (Draft - magic system) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On Wed, 20 Nov 2002, Johnny Shelley wrote: > Unfortunately, the ad hoc committee for skill restructuring has been > unable to reach full consensus on a proposed new skill system. > > The main problem is in how to deal with the magic system and schools. I > will post one system as a follow up to this thread and Tim will post a > second view. We leave it to the list members to decide on which method > is the preferred route. The idea behind this method of handling spell paths is that every path starts as denied, requiring characters to pay in increasing amolunts to reach repelled, standard and attuned status in a path. In this system, a characters overall praying / spell casting skill would be used to determine how well they cast spells, then modified by their attunement status in a particular spell path. The major benefits of this method are a simple method to calculate max spell points and grace and not having to determine a method for awarding experience to 'non combat' spells. What this method does not allow is the high level of differentian by making each spell path a separate skill category as Tim's system would. Regardless of which method is eventually chosen (if either) the spell paths need to be cleaned up a bit.. some of the spells just make no sense in their current path or have no path at all. Spellcasting Skills ------ level 1 = 1x cost, level 10, 33% experience level 2 = 2x cost, level 30, 66% experience level 3 = 3x cost, level 70, 100% experience level 4 = 5x cost, no level limit, 150% experience base cost 2 (spell casting - cheaper than melee but requires buying attunements) -- wizardry praying Attunements ----------- These all start at Denied and progress through: repelled, standard and attuned repelled: 1x cost standard: 2x cost attuned: 3x cost base cost 1 (weak / not commonly used spell paths) -- transmutation mind self information light detonation (only create bomb, rune of blasting and vitriol - god gift) base cost 2 (commonly used spells) -- Null - any spell without a spell path teleportation abjuration electricity creation missiles fire summoning protection transferrence restoration death frost base cost 3 (very powerful and commonly used spells) -- turning wounding johnny PGP Public Key available from: http://www.keyserver.net:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x17BF1DD3 From root at garbled.net Wed Nov 20 02:01:56 2002 From: root at garbled.net (Tim Rightnour) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:06 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New Skill System (Draft) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: On 20-Nov-02 Johnny Shelley wrote: > The main problem is in how to deal with the magic system and schools. I > will post one system as a follow up to this thread and Tim will post a > second view. We leave it to the list members to decide on which method > is the preferred route. My idea, is to break each of the magic paths into it's own skill, and leave the concepts of attuned/repelled alone. In this way, Fire magic would be it's own skill. So when you learned, and cast a fire spell, it would contribute exp to the fire path, and your casting level would be your level in the fire path. I don't have a big chart like cryo does.. as I don't think I'm ready to even think about assigning values to each skill yet, however under my idea, I would basically have to sit down and look at each spell path: 1) Paths that have no method of gaining experience, would either have to be combined with other paths, or dealt with in some other manner. 2) Some paths have only 2-3 spells in them. These paths are likely going to need to be combined with other paths, to keep them from being totally worthless vs the cost to purchase. --- Tim Rightnour NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS http://www.netbsd.org/ NetBSD supported hardware database: http://mail-index.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/hw.cgi From andi.vogl at gmx.net Wed Nov 20 03:21:04 2002 From: andi.vogl at gmx.net (Andreas Vogl) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:07 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New Skill System Message-ID: <22545.1037784064@www49.gmx.net> A lot of nice and interesting things have been proposed for the new skill system now. Anyways, I think this is a pretty big thing and as such we'll have to implement it step by step. The first step to do is seperating all skills from their cathegories, so that every skill has it's very own level. I think we have all agreed on this. It can be implemented independantly from whatever else may follow - and it's really required in order to clear the path for further improvements. So, the very first thing to do would be creating own exp- and level-values for each skill. I think this is rather easy to realize. The second thing to do is removing all skill cathegories (or do we like to keep them?). This step already requires some serious work, as all occurrences of skill cathegory levels need to be replaced by single skill levels. Third step IMO would be to revise the formulae for calculating the "overall level". (I assume we want to keep the overall level? Removing it would be a nightmare as it is used in so many ways. Besides, in some cases - like calculation of hitpoints - an overall measure of the player's level is needed anyways). To sum up all the exp from every single skill won't be the way to go any longer: The overall level would rise far too quickly. A while ago Mark already proposed a system where each skill had a percentage value that defines to which extent it adds to the overall level. I suggest we could apply that. Andreas -- +++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more http://www.gmx.net +++ NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen! From yann.chachkoff at mailandnews.com Wed Nov 20 03:35:20 2002 From: yann.chachkoff at mailandnews.com (Yann Chachkoff) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:07 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New Skill System (Draft) Message-ID: <3DDCB77D@mailandnews.com> >What follows is what we have been able to agree on minus the >implementation details. The basic idea is that a character will start >with no skills (barring a few awarded by race) and buy them w/ an as yet >undetermined number of 'skill points' during character creation (or pick >a pre-designed class). As characters progress in level, they will be >awarded with additional skill points and may buy new skills or advance >already known skills. A rough estimate here is 1 skill point per level >attained. > I don't understand why we should start playing with a point-buying system. It sounds more like a walk in the classical AD&D solution than a real improvement. It makes the system more complex without having a significant impact on the results. >Non-improvable (bought at minimum level) >-- >mountaineer - base cost 2 >meditation - base cost 15 >jumping - base cost 3 >sense magic - base cost 2 /* these give small experience, but do not improve */ >sense curse - base cost 2 > Cannot see why sense magic and sense curse couldn't be improved. >base cost 1 (non combat - single purpose) >-- >hiding >literacy >disarm traps >lockpicking (start at level 2, skill object gives level 1) >inscription "" "" "" >singing >oratory >find traps > >base cost 1 >-- >use magic item (will award experience but will not scale) > Cannot see why using a magical item should reward you any experience at all. After all, it is the object that makes the job, not you. >base cost 2 (non-combat identification and item creation) >-- >bowyer >woodsman >smithery >jeweler >alchemy >thaumaturgy > >base cost 1 (sissy fighting) >-- >throwing >punching > >base cost 2 (weak physical combat) >-- >karate >flame touch /* fireborn start w/ this.. dont let anyone else have it */ >missile weapons > I find it rather strange that missile weapons is classified under 'weak physical combat'. >base cost 3 (weaker melee weapons) >-- >bludgeoning (hammers, maces, quarterstaffs) >piercing (spears, polearms, daggers(?)) > >base cost 4 (most powerful artifacts / common weapons) >-- >slashing (swords, axes, katanas) > I've difficulties to understand why slashing weapons skills would cost more than bludgeoning and piercing weapons (Clearly, spear is a weapon more difficult to master than a sword or an axe). Cannot understand why a bow should be considered an 'easier' weapon - I'd tend to say it is a more difficult one. >Racial Improvements >------------------- >Increased max stat - 2 for 1 >Increased resistance - 4 points for +10%, 10 points for +30% > (as above regarding limited number of attack types. Only one level of > raised resistance may be chosen per attack type) > When are those supposed to apply ? Only once (when creating the character) or each time you gain some improvement points ? I have no problem if they apply only at the start. I do have one if they can be applied later (How are you supposed to 'racially improve' yourself ?) This sounds very complex and much more AD&D-ish than the current system. And if it's to make another AD&D rules variation, there are better alternatives available. I think we should try to improve the system we currently have instead of re-inventing the wheel. Y. Chachkoff ------------------------------------------------ Help supporting JXFire ! (http://jxfire.sf.net) ------------------------------------------------ From yann.chachkoff at mailandnews.com Wed Nov 20 04:03:56 2002 From: yann.chachkoff at mailandnews.com (Yann Chachkoff) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:07 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New Skill System (Draft - Magic system) Message-ID: <3DDCC208@mailandnews.com> >===== Original Message From Tim Rightnour ===== >On 20-Nov-02 Johnny Shelley wrote: >> The main problem is in how to deal with the magic system and schools. I >> will post one system as a follow up to this thread and Tim will post a >> second view. We leave it to the list members to decide on which method >> is the preferred route. > Proposal I. >My idea, is to break each of the magic paths into it's own skill, and leave the >concepts of attuned/repelled alone. > >In this way, Fire magic would be it's own skill. So when you learned, and cast >a fire spell, it would contribute exp to the fire path, and your casting level >would be your level in the fire path. Sounds an interesting way. It keeps the current system, only extending it. >1) Paths that have no method of gaining experience, would either have to be >combined with other paths, or dealt with in some other manner. > It is indeed the most important problem to solve. Probably each spell that doesn't give any experience points when successfully cast should be examined to check which options are available. >2) Some paths have only 2-3 spells in them. These paths are likely going to >need to be combined with other paths, to keep them from being totally worthless >vs the cost to purchase. > Probably some Wizardry paths should be removed, or maybe some new spells created to fill them a little. Doesn't sounds like an impossible job to me. ------------------------------------------ Proposal II. >The idea behind this method of handling spell paths is that every path >starts as denied, requiring characters to pay in increasing amolunts to >reach repelled, standard and attuned status in a path. > An interesting idea. Basically, the formula you use would be something like: Casting Lvl = (Skill Lvl) + f(Spellpath Lvl). Comparing this with the Garbled's system: Casting Lvl = Spellpath Lvl So, the only significant difference is that in Garbled's system, there's no global skill anymore for Wizardry. >The major benefits of this method are a simple method to calculate max >spell points and grace > This is just an implementation argument, not a gaming one. >and not having to determine a method for awarding >experience to 'non combat' spells. > I don't understand why it wouldn't require a method to award experience with non-combat spells. Spellcasters would have to be rewarded for their work in some way (getting points allowing them to move from Repelled to Attuned in a magical school). How are they supposed to buy upgrades of their magical skills ? >What this method does not allow is the high level of differentian by >making each spell path a separate skill category as Tim's system would. > True indeed. >base cost 1 (weak / not commonly used spell paths) >-- I don't like the idea of splitting spellpaths into such cost levels. It looks way too artificial, because it is only based on playbalance, and not on an 'in-game' justification (Why should some magical schools be considered weaker than others ? Do you really want to angry the Master Mages of such schools ?) > >base cost 2 (commonly used spells) >-- >Null - any spell without a spell path No spell should be allowed to be 'Null' IMHO. ---------------------------------------- Well, I'd tend to prefer the first system here. Of course, it doesn't have a global wizardry skill, but I think it is its only drawback. It is flexible and it reuses current game mechanisms instead of recreating them. It also doesn't impose an artificial differenciation between magical shools, relying only on the experience gain system to maintain playbalance. Y. Chachkoff ------------------------------------------------ Help supporting JXFire ! (http://jxfire.sf.net) ------------------------------------------------ From temitchell at sympatico.ca Wed Nov 20 12:04:40 2002 From: temitchell at sympatico.ca (Todd Mitchell) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:07 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New Skill System (Draft) References: <3DDCB77D@mailandnews.com> Message-ID: <000601c290bf$4cf3e200$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> "If you have a lot of special cases then the design is wrong" - old programmer I think that there are a lot of different special cases here - could some of these be cleaned up? It would be good to have most skills work in a similar way rather than have some skills non-improvable and some single purpose - even if this means rewriting lots of the skill it would be worth it. Some things like literacy and inscription, or find/remove traps could be merged - others could be part of a bigger skill (punching, kicking and karate could be hand-to hand combat) Things that give only one ability like jumping are really abilities - not skills, and maybe shouldnt be in here. This also applies to all the racial type 'skills' that are not improvable (and maybe even to the ones that are which sould be strictly level based anyway like fire-touch or flying and the like.) Also - don't take away classes - I think most people would like a quick character generation system and even if they did have the option to go from scratch, most people would choose a 'class like' skillset anyway. > > >Non-improvable (bought at minimum level) > >-- > >mountaineer - base cost 2 > >meditation - base cost 15 > >jumping - base cost 3 > >sense magic - base cost 2 /* these give small experience, but do not improve > */ > >sense curse - base cost 2 > > > Cannot see why sense magic and sense curse couldn't be improved. Certainly - sense magic, sense curse and meditation could all be improved to scale with level. Any kind of terrain movement skill (jumping, mountaineer, swim...) might be better as an ability rather than a skill > >base cost 1 (non combat - single purpose) > >-- > >hiding > >literacy > >disarm traps > >lockpicking (start at level 2, skill object gives level 1) > >inscription "" "" "" > >singing > >oratory > >find traps > > > find/remove traps could be one bigger skill, or if you wanted to get fancy you could have two distinct thief type skills - hiding/stealing and find/remove-traps/lockpicking literacy and inscription could be merged, or changed into to abilities. I hate having different levels of literacy since it means you have to set upteen levels of books for different literacy levels and this is just not going to be sustainable. Now if you had literacy/inscription and some lore type identify thing as a skill this would be cool - you can read stuff at lowest level, but if you spend the points you get better at inscribing and identifying stuff. > >base cost 1 > >-- > >use magic item (will award experience but will not scale) > > > Cannot see why using a magical item should reward you any experience at all. > After all, it is the object that makes the job, not you. ya use magic item isn't a real skill and I don't think it really adds anyting to the game - especially with ego around to manage some of the greater magic items. I say drop this one altogether. Or make it an ability so you can block it in certain characters. Enev then it would be better if use magic item was a player force that modified somehow the sucess of using a magic item (rod,staff,wand,scroll). Say trolls, dwarves and half-orcs had a negative modifier when using wands and scrolls and dragons and elves had a slight positive modifier. > >base cost 1 (sissy fighting) > >-- > >throwing > >punching > > you think hand-to hand combat is sissy fighting and yet you flounce around with 3 feet of steel between you and your opponent? > >base cost 2 (weak physical combat) > >-- > >karate > >flame touch /* fireborn start w/ this.. dont let anyone else have it */ > >missile weapons > > > I find it rather strange that missile weapons is classified under 'weak > physical combat'. I find this strange as well - seems to me that missile combat gets the worst rap in this game when it could be so cool and encourage multiplayer (or non brute play) so much. I vote for a big missile combat revival. Make it a primary dexterity skill and add damage (due to accuracy effects). This would require some new blocking codes to allow more open maps where missile combat could be more effective (instead of the maze/door approach to ) but would be way worth it. > > >base cost 3 (weaker melee weapons) > >-- > >bludgeoning (hammers, maces, quarterstaffs) > >piercing (spears, polearms, daggers(?)) > > > >base cost 4 (most powerful artifacts / common weapons) > >-- > >slashing (swords, axes, katanas) > > > I've difficulties to understand why slashing weapons skills would cost more > than bludgeoning and piercing weapons (Clearly, spear is a weapon more > difficult to master than a sword or an axe). Cannot understand why a bow > should be considered an 'easier' weapon - I'd tend to say it is a more > difficult one. > I don't know if you really need to seperate the weapon damage types into different skills - seems a bit nitpicky to me since the play effect is the same really. I could see a skill difference between one and two handed weapons? How about shield use? From pstolarc at theperlguru.com Thu Nov 21 10:13:18 2002 From: pstolarc at theperlguru.com (pstolarc@theperlguru.com) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:07 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New Skill System (Draft) In-Reply-To: <000601c290bf$4cf3e200$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> References: <3DDCB77D@mailandnews.com> <000601c290bf$4cf3e200$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> Message-ID: Something I wrote up while we were discussing the new system. It's a bit terse, but explains why we felt a new system was necessary, and what goals we hope to fulfill, as well as some goals that are fulfilled by the current system, which the new system would have to fulfill as well. What are the goals of changing the experience system? * character differentiation (high level chars all end up looking identical) * allow characters to learn & develop secondary skills as well as their primary skill. (ie. no one trick ponies) * encourage team play through varied competencies *have differentiation show up at lower levels, and not just once players start hitting the level caps. (in regard to different skill levels) *not to dictate from the start what characters can and can't do in "absolute" terms. *encourage use of some of the under-utilized skills. *gaining new skills shouldn't be something you buy in a random store. *increase replay value And also, we don't intend to remove classes. We think classes can coexist with a more complex system. If you choose a class, you simply choose a template to use, rather than picking every skill individually. -Philip From root at garbled.net Thu Nov 21 13:17:07 2002 From: root at garbled.net (Tim Rightnour) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:07 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New Skill System (Draft) In-Reply-To: <3DDCB77D@mailandnews.com> Message-ID: On 20-Nov-02 Yann Chachkoff wrote: > I've difficulties to understand why slashing weapons skills would cost more > than bludgeoning and piercing weapons (Clearly, spear is a weapon more > difficult to master than a sword or an axe). Cannot understand why a bow > should be considered an 'easier' weapon - I'd tend to say it is a more > difficult one. There seems to be some disagreement over the concept of a points system, and the reasoning behind making things cost differing amounts of points than other things. 1) Why a points system? How else do you propose we dish the skills out? I personally would love to say "spend three months as an apprentice and you can learn 'foo'" but thats just not very realistic in our game environment. I think the points system is the best way to represent the concept of someone wanting to learn a skill, and having to spend some amount of time practicing his arts in order to do so. The points system also lets us arbitrarily give them out not only for levels, but an occasional one-time-only quest. I don't think it makes any less sense than telling someone he has to go kill the blue dragon, who is the only person in the universe who has the scroll of jumping. It gives us a very customizable, basically classless system, where people can advance over time, and constantly learn new skills throughout the game, rather than all up front. Right now, you go collect all the skills, and there is nothing new to learn in the game really. With this, there would be a constant feeling of "I'm achieving something" or "one more level and I can learn fire magic". That really inspires players. The basic problem is.. this is a computer game, and we have to figure out a way to present things that doesn't require writing a million lines of code for an AI engine. 2) Why do some skills cost more than others? It's not realistic! You are correct. It's not really realistic that swords are going to cost more to learn than bludgeoning. However, play the game, I'll bet you dollars to dimes you are running around with a sword, because all the cool artifacts are swords. There are lots of skills in the game, that while really neat on paper, just don't work out well mechanically. Look at bows. I mean, bows are nice, and you can collect piles of arrows, but realistically, they are used very seldomly, and only in wierd one-off situations. If someone were to wave a magic wand of coding, and fix bows so they were truely on-par with other forms of combat, then I would have no problem making them equal cost. And thats not something that would be restricted. If a skill was modified in some way to make it more useful, if anything it's points cost should be edited to reflect that. But until someone goes and balances all this stuff out, we need to balance it by being realistic about the cost. And the reality is, if bows cost the same as swords, nobody would buy them. --- Tim Rightnour NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS http://www.netbsd.org/ NetBSD supported hardware database: http://mail-index.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/hw.cgi From yann.chachkoff at mailandnews.com Thu Nov 21 19:11:40 2002 From: yann.chachkoff at mailandnews.com (Yann Chachkoff) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:07 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New Skill System (Draft) Message-ID: <3DDE179F@mailandnews.com> >There seems to be some disagreement over the concept of a points system, and >the reasoning behind making things cost differing amounts of points than other >things. > >1) Why a points system? > To summarize your points here : 1.1 - Impossible to spend weeks to learn a skill with a teacher; 1.2 - Points allows a better representation of a per-skill learning; 1.3 - It is flexible and customizable; 1.4 - It is classless; 1.5 - It is better than just getting skill scrolls randomly in shops. My answers to the following points are: 1.1 - You're right about this. I never said spending weeks to progressively learn a skill with a teacher would be a good thing. It is very difficult to implement in a way players don't get quickly bored. 1.2 - I fail to understand why a points-based system would be better than an experience-based one. The only difference between using experience points and skill points is the 'granularity' of the progression. I see no clear reason to change the current system, since the same results could be achieved using exp. points. 1.3 - It is, but not more than a simple upgrade of the current system (assigning experience and levels to specializations as well as to group of skills). 1.4 - So is the current system already (The classes are mostly a 'starting template' that can be completed and modified over the time to fit the player's taste). 1.5 - True indeed - I find skill scrolls quite unnatural. However, the way new skills are learned (by finishing quests, getting enough knowledge in a base skill, or finding an 'old sage' that could reveal you the secret of a lost art) isn't really linked to the underlying scoring system - these are completely different problems. >2) Why do some skills cost more than others? It's not realistic! > Summarizing your thoughts here: 2.1 - Some skills are used more often than others, explaining a strange classification of their costs; 2.2 - Rebalancing could be done later, if someone finds a solution. I think I have been misunderstood here somewhat. What I'm not liking at all in the new scheme is the fact it tries to impose a completely artificial set of constraints on the game mechanisms. What is the current problem ? Some skills are not useful enough. The correct solution would be to find an answer to "How can we make them useful ?". The proposal doesn't answer that at all. Instead, it focuses only on the level/experience balance, giving more weight to some skills over others. Retaking the bow example: bows are not often used because they're less powerful than other weapons or ranged spells; would lowering the costs for the 'missile weapons' skill make it more interesting and fun to play ? I don't think so, since the weapons themselves will not change at all. The only result would be that players will have to wait a little longer to get points in the 'sword' skill, giving a slower level progression than before. In summary: 1. I don't believe a more complex system would change anything at all about the most important problem ('useless' skills); 2. I don't think a differential progression scale (different costs for different skills) would have any influence on the interest and fun of using 'useless' skills; 3. The new system is a nearly complete breakdown with the current one, and as such will require heavy modifications on the server code, for an effectiveness that has yet to be proven. ------------------------- The proposal made by AndreasV. about skills (step-by-step extension of the current skill scheme) seems much more realistic to me; it has the advantages of being coherent with the current experience ruling, and has the same extensibility potential. It also doesn't require any artificial exceptions and per-skill adjustments. Y. Chachkoff ------------------------------------------------ Help supporting JXFire ! (http://jxfire.sf.net) ------------------------------------------------ From mwedel at sonic.net Fri Nov 22 02:13:12 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:07 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New Skill System References: <22545.1037784064@www49.gmx.net> Message-ID: <3DDDE718.1080706@sonic.net> Andreas Vogl wrote: step by step. > > The first step to do is seperating all skills from their > cathegories, so that every skill has it's very own level. > I think we have all agreed on this. > It can be implemented independantly from whatever else may > follow - and it's really required in order to clear the path > for further improvements. Yes - own level and own exp. Doing this should be quite easy. > > The second thing to do is removing all skill cathegories > (or do we like to keep them?). This step already requires > some serious work, as all occurrences of skill cathegory > levels need to be replaced by single skill levels. I think this goes with #1 above. If skills have their own exp/level total, then use of the skill is used instead of the experience categories. If you have both exp categories and skills with their own level and exp totals, I'm not sure how they would mesh at all. > > Third step IMO would be to revise the formulae for > calculating the "overall level". Yes - I think we need overall level. Note that I'm not sure that adding exp for all the skills would make it go too high too fast - presuming players are not able to gain exp any faster in the new system, it shouldn't be any different than it is now. I think the significant difference will be with skills broken apart, it is more likely the players different skills won't advance as before (player may still have 10,000 exp, but instead of being split in 5 skill categories, it is now spread across 10 skills). However, I think there are various ways to deal with this: 1) Retain overall exp total for player. When player gains exp, skill gets credited, and some amount gets added to this total. 2) Players overall level is same as playest highest level skill. In some sense, this would inspire players to focus on specific skills more (spread your exp across those 10 skills and your not going to have a very high overall level, and thus very high hp). Could be others. But ideally, you want something that is quick (execution wise) when adding exp. I was thinking something like taking the characters top 3 exp categories, or even doing something like diminishing returns (highest exp total + .5 * second higest + 0.25 * third highest). But all these tend to require examing all the players skill, which wouldn't be a good thing. From mwedel at sonic.net Fri Nov 22 02:35:57 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:07 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New Skill System (Draft) References: <3DDE179F@mailandnews.com> Message-ID: <3DDDEC6D.3070908@sonic.net> Some quick notes: I think balancing any new system is going to be tricky. If you have differing costs for differing things, I think this will be very difficult. Clever players will quickly realize that while slashing may be better than bludgeoning, for the extra cost, it isn't - better to be master in bludgeoning vs expert in slashing for example. I'd much prefer to just use expmul - that provides a much higher granularity than just three skill competencies. It is also much simpler. At some level, the KISS approach probably applies. This is after all just a game - the point is to have fun, and not mimic real life or make things so convoluted that people need to spend hours trying to min/max the points they get for their character to the best advantage. In some sense, that is why I think a very forgiving skill system is good - it lets players correct 'mistakes' they may have made in making their character. One of the things that annoys me the most about some games is that you play it for a while only to realize the decision you made 20 hours of game play ago was wrong, and you need to start over. I know one of the points mentioned that all high level characters look the same and that isn't desired. IMO, that is more a player issue - I have a feeling that with a point system, all the high level characters may not be expert in all the skills, but those that know how to play/abuse the system will probably end up having the same set of skills, so all high level characters now look the same in that approach. It is up to the players to to decide how they want to play the game. Right now, there are several special races that are significantly different to play, as well as different religions. I'm not sure what my point is here. Maybe just to try and keep things in perspective - we should try to make it so things are more fun. Having complicated systems tend not to be fun. As for spells - I wouldn't mind seeing perhaps some more subdivisions, but these divisions should be balanced. IMO, splitting each spell path into a skill just isn't going to work, so now you start combining multiple paths into the skill, and doing other oddities. One thing to keep in mind is how to award exp for these different spells/skills. Basically, the spells provided need to be able to kill things - things like protection spells will never really be able to give the player exp. There is already a flag in the spellist.h file that says cleric/wizardry. It wouldn't be hard to make that into a bitmask - you could then add another category or two - could add something like a 'nature' path (with the bigger outdoor map, this may be more useful - could include some summon animal spells, as well as daylight/nightfall, and maybe some more of the outdoorsy like spells). For another, you could perhaps add a 'elemental spell category - this would include the summon fire/earth/water/air, as well as some of the protection to those things. I don't think in any case you can realistically get more than 4 or 5 viable split spell categories (just go down the list and see how many damage spells there are) - having more functional divisions instead of fire/protection/cold makes more sense to me. It would also IMO help with the problem of the growing number of spells - move some of the useful spells to nature or summoning, and now players have to think if they want to pick up (and improve) those skills or not. Could perhaps limit players to some number of spellcasting skills (3 out of the 4 or something) so they can't be an expert in everything, but what they are missing, they can probably pick up in scrolls, potions, or wands. Would put those back into more use again. RE exp for wands, scrolls, and other magic - while it can be said it is the magic of the item that is doing the killing, you could start to make the same argument in lot of other places (it is the fact that I had a resist fire potion that I was able to kill that big dragon, etc). The fact is the player knew to use the item in the right circumstance - that should be worth something just like knowing to use potions lets you defeat some otherwise really tought monsters or whatnot. Also, giving exp for these things might actually inspire people to use them. Maybe they shouldn't get full exp, and it probably should just go into a misc (overall total) category, but saying they should get nothing for using magic items to kill creatures is a bit extreme I think. From pc-crossfire at crowcastle.net Fri Nov 22 10:05:34 2002 From: pc-crossfire at crowcastle.net (Preston Crow) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:07 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New Skill System Message-ID: <200211221605.gAMG5YFk020142@lol1120.lss.emc.com> >The first step to do is seperating all skills from their >categories, so that every skill has it's very own level. >The second thing to do is removing all skill categories Or consider instead taking a shortcut. Make a separate category for each skill. This would probably be just a few table adjustments, right? You would want to clean up a few display issues (like the output of the 'skills command and some client issues). --PC From pc-crossfire at crowcastle.net Fri Nov 22 10:13:40 2002 From: pc-crossfire at crowcastle.net (Preston Crow) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:07 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New Skill System Message-ID: <200211221613.gAMGDekv020173@lol1120.lss.emc.com> As to how skills are learned, as a player I think the best suggestion was to have skill scrolls as quest items. Some sort of point system is fine for starting skills, but I'm not happy about having different competencies withing a skill in addition to experience level in the skill. --PC From pc-crossfire at crowcastle.net Fri Nov 22 10:22:32 2002 From: pc-crossfire at crowcastle.net (Preston Crow) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:07 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New Skill System Message-ID: <200211221622.gAMGMWD5020197@lol1120.lss.emc.com> About breaking up the magic skill into different spell paths, I think this is a great idea. I'm not sure how you would advance in non-combat categories, but that's a separate issue. I'm thinking one spell path per element for wizzards, one other for physical attacks (bombs, bullets, and earth walls), and one for non-combat spells (how to advance?). This could be really useful for monsters. Imagine giving monsters that are immune to an attack type spell casting only in the corresponding path. The path of a spell could even be used in the internal logic to determine whether a monster wants to use a given wand or scroll (so as to avoid wasting non-combat magic). And for players, it would mean that if you want to advance in all the categories (who doesn't?), you would have to learn to use a range of skills. --PC From pc-crossfire at crowcastle.net Fri Nov 22 10:23:53 2002 From: pc-crossfire at crowcastle.net (Preston Crow) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:07 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] rod bug Message-ID: <200211221623.gAMGNrES020208@lol1120.lss.emc.com> I just noticed my rod of create earth wall was shooting bullets. I think that the trick to do this is to ready the rod, leave the game, come back, and fire the rod. If I unready and re-ready the rod, it works fine. --PC From pc-crossfire at crowcastle.net Fri Nov 22 10:00:53 2002 From: pc-crossfire at crowcastle.net (Preston Crow) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:07 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New Skill System (Draft) Message-ID: <200211221600.gAMG0raE020124@lol1120.lss.emc.com> > RE exp for wands, scrolls, and other magic - while it can be said it is >the magic of the item that is doing the killing, you could start to make >the same argument in lot of other places (it is the fact that I had a >resist fire potion that I was able to kill that big dragon, etc). The fact >is the player knew to use the item in the right circumstance - that should >be worth something just like knowing to use potions lets you defeat some >otherwise really tought monsters or whatnot. Also, giving exp for these >things might actually inspire people to use them. Maybe they shouldn't get >full exp, and it probably should just go into a misc (overall total) >category, but saying they should get nothing for using magic items to kill >creatures is a bit extreme I think. I completely agree on this point. I remember using wands and rods regularly back before the skill system when they added to my experience point total. Now I never bother with them, except for non-combat rods (e.g., create earth wall). If I could get experience in the "use magic item" category, that would change. Just set a low experience multiplier if you think it's an abusive way to get experience. And maybe someday someone will come up with a use for the "use magic item" skill level. Perhaps some items can't be used at low levels (like scrolls that require higher litteracy levels to use). Suppose your favorite rings had level restrictions. Suppose that if your "use magic item" level is high enough, you can remove weaker cursed items. --PC From mwedel at sonic.net Fri Nov 22 22:57:02 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:07 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New Skill System References: <200211221622.gAMGMWD5020197@lol1120.lss.emc.com> Message-ID: <3DDF0A9E.9050804@sonic.net> Preston Crow wrote: > This could be really useful for monsters. Imagine giving monsters that are > immune to an attack type spell casting only in the corresponding path. The > path of a spell could even be used in the internal logic to determine > whether a monster wants to use a given wand or scroll (so as to avoid > wasting non-combat magic). Note that monsters don't currently use skills at all. For what spells they cast, that is determined by what abilities they have (typically determined by treasure list). Some will learn spells from spellbooks, but arguable that is a bad idea, as they tend not to have any clue about using those effectively (if it is something like fireball, it works ok, but if something like show invisible, they may just burn up their sp casting that). > And for players, it would mean that if you want to advance in all the > categories (who doesn't?), you would have to learn to use a range of > skills. Only issue is that I don't think all the paths are currently balanced. The bigger problem with this is that you need some form of progession in each path. All paths would need a level 1 spell that gains them exp. If the first spell available that gains them exp in level 3, they will never be able to use it. Second point is that you need a range of spells. Magic bullet is fine for first level wizards to use to gain some exp, but I think most players would agree that at higher levels, you need something a bit more to be able to get exp at any rate. I think the same would be true with all the spell paths. From temitchell at sympatico.ca Wed Nov 27 23:33:37 2002 From: temitchell at sympatico.ca (Todd Mitchell) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:07 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] CVS nov28 Message-ID: <002d01c2969f$b37ee700$0a02a8c0@kameria> I am getting this error running CF from tonights (nov 28) CVS build: does normal log stuff.... reads skill_params...then: initialize new client/server data error on bind command: Address already in use error on bind command any ideas? Build looks normal to my untrained eye, I ran it a few times through to see if I had missed something. From root at garbled.net Thu Nov 28 01:45:48 2002 From: root at garbled.net (Tim Rightnour) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:08 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] CVS nov28 In-Reply-To: <002d01c2969f$b37ee700$0a02a8c0@kameria> Message-ID: On 28-Nov-02 Todd Mitchell wrote: > any ideas? Build looks normal to my untrained eye, I ran it a few times > through to see if I had missed something. I see this on NetBSD all the time. usually I have to wait 1-2 minutes for the old sockets to close out. Unfortunately, CF uses SO_REUSEPORT.. which in netbsd: bind(2): SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS bind() was changed in NetBSD 1.4 to prevent the binding of a socket to the same port as an existing socket when all of the following is true: o either of the existing or new addresses is INADDR_ANY, o the uid of the new socket is not root, and the uids of the cre- ators of the sockets are different, o the address is not a multicast address, and o both sockets are not bound to INADDR_ANY with SO_REUSEPORT set. This prevents an attack where a user could bind to a port with the host's IP address (after setting SO_REUSEADDR) and `steal' packets destined for a server that bound to the same port with INADDR_ANY. Perhaps other OS's have done the same more recently? --- Tim Rightnour NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS http://www.netbsd.org/ NetBSD supported hardware database: http://mail-index.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/hw.cgi From froese at gmx.de Thu Nov 28 16:05:31 2002 From: froese at gmx.de (Edgar Toernig) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:08 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] mailman.real-time.com: No route to host Message-ID: <3DE6932B.CA4D0550@gmx.de> Hi, I don't know when it started but for a couple of days now I've noticed that I can't reach https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/crossfire-devel nor any of the other hosts (www, lists, mail, ...) or ports. Always the same result: No route to host (icmp: host unreachable - admin prohibited filter). Offending router is 144.228.52.126 (sl-rtent-1-0.sprintlink.net). Some firewall playing games here?!? Ciao, ET. From temitchell at sympatico.ca Thu Nov 28 20:03:30 2002 From: temitchell at sympatico.ca (Todd Mitchell) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:08 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] CVS nov28 References: Message-ID: <001301c2974b$837c54a0$0a02a8c0@kameria> Turned out to be a permission thing and my own stupidity. Thanks for the pointer. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tim Rightnour" To: Sent: Thursday, November 28, 2002 2:45 AM Subject: RE: [CF-Devel] CVS nov28 > > On 28-Nov-02 Todd Mitchell wrote: > > any ideas? Build looks normal to my untrained eye, I ran it a few times > > through to see if I had missed something. > > I see this on NetBSD all the time. usually I have to wait 1-2 minutes for the > old sockets to close out. Unfortunately, CF uses SO_REUSEPORT.. which in > netbsd: > bind(2): > SECURITY CONSIDERATIONS > bind() was changed in NetBSD 1.4 to prevent the binding of a socket to > the same port as an existing socket when all of the following is true: > o either of the existing or new addresses is INADDR_ANY, > o the uid of the new socket is not root, and the uids of the cre- > ators of the sockets are different, > o the address is not a multicast address, and > o both sockets are not bound to INADDR_ANY with SO_REUSEPORT set. > > This prevents an attack where a user could bind to a port with the host's > IP address (after setting SO_REUSEADDR) and `steal' packets destined for > a server that bound to the same port with INADDR_ANY. > > Perhaps other OS's have done the same more recently? > > --- > Tim Rightnour > NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS http://www.netbsd.org/ > NetBSD supported hardware database: http://mail-index.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/hw.cgi > _______________________________________________ > crossfire-devel mailing list > crossfire-devel@lists.real-time.com > https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/crossfire-devel > From mwedel at sonic.net Fri Nov 29 20:01:26 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:08 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] mailman.real-time.com: No route to host References: <3DE6932B.CA4D0550@gmx.de> Message-ID: <3DE81BF6.7050700@sonic.net> Edgar Toernig wrote: > Hi, > > I don't know when it started but for a couple of days now I've noticed > that I can't reach > > https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/crossfire-devel > > nor any of the other hosts (www, lists, mail, ...) or ports. Always > the same result: No route to host (icmp: host unreachable - admin prohibited > filter). Offending router is 144.228.52.126 (sl-rtent-1-0.sprintlink.net). > Some firewall playing games here?!? Bob Tanner can probably say more, but I recall there were DOS attacks against real-time coming from a German ISP. That German ISP apparantly didn't take actions to stop it, so the alternative was just to block all the traffic from that ISP to real-time. From mwedel at sonic.net Fri Nov 29 22:16:39 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:08 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] rod bug References: <200211221623.gAMGNrES020208@lol1120.lss.emc.com> Message-ID: <3DE83BA7.4070209@sonic.net> Preston Crow wrote: > I just noticed my rod of create earth wall was shooting bullets. I think > that the trick to do this is to ready the rod, leave the game, come back, > and fire the rod. If I unready and re-ready the rod, it works fine. This is now fixed in CVS (server side issue). From mwedel at sonic.net Sat Nov 30 00:52:41 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:08 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] bugs References: <200211181946.gAIJkKY4006205@lol1120.lss.emc.com> Message-ID: <3DE86039.40708@sonic.net> Note - when I say 'fixed in CVS', below, that may not literally be true - I still need to commit the changes, but that will likely happen in the next day or so after I make sure everything is working properly with no side effects. Preston Crow wrote: > I've noticed several bugs while playing at metalforge with gcfclient: > > When running, especially when entering a new map, the client often leaves > behind a copy of yourself. In other words, when you move, the icon for > your character is left on the square you were just on. My guess is that > this is some sort of race condition where you move to the next square > before the server has told the client everything about your view at your > previous square. This happens quite frequently. I used to see this occasionaly, but was unable to reproduce it with the latest code. I don't know if something was inadvetertently fixed, if I'm just unable to reproduce it, or something else I didn't see it that often - I also need to dig further to see where the issue really is (in the server not calculating correct information, or is the client just not updating something properly because it is getting a new map command). > > If you play with split windows, and try to manually enter a command, like: > 'tell Friend Need any help? > it works just fine if your focus is on the info window (the window where > the input text box is), as you would expect. However, if you do this with > your cursor in any other window (assuming you're using pointer focus, which > I expect most Unix users are), the apostrophe is interpreted correctly, but > the rest of the text seems to be ignored, and the client crashes on the > first space. This is 100% repeatable. If you have trouble reproducing it, > I'll rebuild (my binary is stripped) and get a stack trace in gdb. This is now fixed in CVS. > > When you save the window positions and then restart, all the windows shift > down by the height of the titlebar, at least if you're using twm as your > window manager (I haven't tried anything else). In my case, I just edited > the file by hand to subtract 19 from each y coordinate. That's not > something we should expect people to need to do. Works properly with fvwm (that is, windows re-appear where specified). I remember seeing something someplace that twm did something not quite right in that regard. As of now, I'll just attribute this to a bug in twm. > > When I have a container open and want to remove the top item, I > instinctively hit the comma key. This results in some error message about > the container not fitting in itself instead of moving the item from the > container to my inventory. > There are two bugs in this area: 1) Server is trying to pick up the container into itself. I made a trivial change so that it now will pick up the object in the containers inventory. However, the client is free to re-arrange the order compared to what the server things (and in fact, the unix clients do just that - they alphabetize it), so on to point #2 2) I've enhanced the clients 'take' command to have some smarts, and if the player has an open container, it will send a command move the top object as the client displays it to the players inventory. AT some level, the entire container issue on the client could get cleaned up. At a basic level, all the server should need to know is what container(s) to put objects into that are picked up via auto pickup modes (and this is currently done by a container being applied). The server really shouldn't need to know if a container is open so that objects dropped go into the container - in practice, that should all be handled by the client (move item from inventory to container). Server will complain if move can't happen. This woudl also allow more complex handling - no reason why you couldn't have to open containers and just move stuff between them for example. This requires the client to be a bit smarter, but not that much so. > After applying a chest, the apply and examine commands ignore the items > that were just revealed. The workaround is to either click on the item in > the look window or step off and back on the square. It wouldn't surprise me if there are other commands with similar issues. This was 'broken' when it was changed that the order of objects on the space isn't quite as important as long as we know the order to show them to the player. Thus, whenever something changes on a space the player is on, he isn't automatically removed and re-inserted on top (making this change, as related to others, saves a bunch of cpu when talking about tons of spells flying about). I've put some code into the server so that objects from opening a chest go beneath the player, so it works properly. However, there may be other cases where an object gets put on top of a player (like arrows). The right thing would be for the client to always specify exactly what it wants to operate on. > > When killing monsters in some pass-through walls (like the undead level of > the training tower in Lake Country), items from slain monsters show up > under the wall. Such items are ignored by the active pickup mode and can > only be picked up by clicking on the individual objects. Fixed in CVS. The stacking was a bit odd RE spaces that blocked view. > > Something seems to be messed up with the Enchant Armour scrolls. I'm told > that I'm not powerful enough to enchant things that I think I really should > be able to enchant. This may be related to when I issue the 'skills > command and see some message about having something like 28473 out of 13 > improvements (or whatever that message is; I can't bring it up from here). > At the very least, it would help if it would tell me something useful, like > "You must attain level 20 before improving this item." I've updated the message to tell you what level you need to be to be able to improve that armor piece. From root at garbled.net Sat Nov 30 08:34:26 2002 From: root at garbled.net (Tim Rightnour) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:08 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Graphical continutiy in the new maps Message-ID: So.. as some of you might know.. I've been mucking with some code that reformats the world via the weather system. This is giving me the opportunity to see a few problems, and correct a few on the fly.. but I'm running into something thats really bugging me.. There is a wierd lack of scale on the worldmaps.. 1) There are two types of trees on the map. Really big trees, that take up a whole tile, and little trees that look like a mini forest. (evergreen vs evergreens). These look bizzare when placed together. 2) The mountains and hills match the scale for the little trees, but don't match the scale for walls and houses in the town. You end up with this wierd montage where streetlamps are the same size as a high mountain peak. I don't think mountains and hills are really fixable.. and I know there is a general "scale isn't relevant" thing in crossfire, I'm ok with that, but I'd like us to pick a style for the worldmaps and stick with it. Either: 1) All trees on the worldmap will be of the small variety. 2) All trees on the worldmap will be of the big variety. I can honestly make arguments either way. Once you get out of town.. the smaller trees really do look better. Unfortunately, the cobblestone roads kinda blow that sense of scale away. If the roads were more like the river tile, it would work better.. but we made them 2 wide for a reason. The bigger trees hold the sense of scale better with the town and roads.. but you end up with trees being bigger than houses. We have more variety with the bigger trees though, and with some of my newer code to handle seasons and whatnot, we can do alot more detail with them. They also look less out of place WRT your character standing next to them. Visually.. I like the smaller trees.. It looks more like a map. Conceptually.. I like the larger ones. They look better with the characters/monsters/towns.. and I can work with them a bit easier. I think my vote would probably be for the larger ones, though admittedly I started this email out intending to say the smaller ones. If we did go with larger trees.. one thing I would like to see is the tower image redone to be about twice as large. It looks really out of place in town. Either way. the mixture is what really drives me nuts. Does anyone have an opinion on this? --- Tim Rightnour NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS http://www.netbsd.org/ NetBSD supported hardware database: http://mail-index.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/hw.cgi From tanner at real-time.com Sat Nov 30 11:12:39 2002 From: tanner at real-time.com (Bob Tanner) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:08 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] mailman.real-time.com: No route to host In-Reply-To: <3DE81BF6.7050700@sonic.net> References: <3DE6932B.CA4D0550@gmx.de> <3DE81BF6.7050700@sonic.net> Message-ID: <200211301112.40759.tanner@real-time.com> On Friday 29 November 2002 08:01 pm, Mark Wedel wrote: > > https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/crossfire-devel > > > > nor any of the other hosts (www, lists, mail, ...) or ports. Always > > the same result: No route to host (icmp: host unreachable - admin > > prohibited filter). Offending router is 144.228.52.126 > > (sl-rtent-1-0.sprintlink.net). Some firewall playing games here?!? > > Bob Tanner can probably say more, but I recall there were DOS attacks > against real-time coming from a German ISP. That German ISP apparantly > didn't take actions to stop it, so the alternative was just to block all > the traffic from that ISP to real-time. Anyone else NOT able to get to this url? What is the source IP address? -- Bob Tanner | Phone : (952)943-8700 http://www.mn-linux.org, Minnesota, Linux | Fax : (952)943-8500 Key fingerprint = AB15 0BDF BCDE 4369 5B42 1973 7CF1 A709 2CC1 B288 From mwedel at sonic.net Sat Nov 30 21:16:40 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:08 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Graphical continutiy in the new maps References: Message-ID: <3DE97F18.7070409@sonic.net> Tim Rightnour wrote: > > 1) All trees on the worldmap will be of the small variety. > 2) All trees on the worldmap will be of the big variety. > > I can honestly make arguments either way. Once you get out of town.. the > smaller trees really do look better. Unfortunately, the cobblestone roads > kinda blow that sense of scale away. If the roads were more like the river > tile, it would work better.. but we made them 2 wide for a reason. My personal thought is this: Both types of trees can exist, they just shouldn't be mixed with each other. I like the small tree images because they give a much better feel of there being a forest, as they tile together well. However, I really don't think those images work very good solo or in small quantities. Thus, in town, or lown trees scattered here or there, the larger image works better. The larger trees might also work better for organized plantings, like orchards. So in summary, for large forest areas, the small images that tile together nicely look better and should be used. For towns or where there is just a couple trees, the big trees probably look better. IMO, you can never get the scale in crossfire to really be right. We still have two scales - indoor and outdoor. However, there is only one set of images for this stuff. IMO, the scale for indoor is probably pretty good in terms of all the misc objects, doors, monsters, etc. However, when those objects get moved to outdoors, the scale is odd (is a titan really the size of several buildings? Certainly not). However, to have two sets of images would be too much work, and wouldn't be interesting (having items be proper scale for outdoor would mean that basically you couldn't see them). So in some sense, I would probably say do whatever looks better, and worry less about scale being proper for outdoors, since that can never really happen anyways. From andi.vogl at gmx.net Sun Nov 10 06:40:05 2002 From: andi.vogl at gmx.net (Andreas Vogl) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:33 2005 Subject: [CF List] New New Experience Scheme... References: <17801.1034715290@www26.gmx.net> Message-ID: <7395.1036932005@www36.gmx.net> Please don't wonder about this email. I've sent it two weeks ago. A copy of the original mail already got delivered to this list long time ago. Somehow the mailserver decided to deliver this ancient original email today - it's not my fault, please ignore it. > Mark Wedel wrote: > > > The 'best' thing to probably do is make characters overall > > exp independent of skill exp. > > > > Without that, it will never be possible to maximize all your > > skill levels to the same (or even close) to your overall level. > > I think this is a great idea. > > If the overall skill exp was seperated from the "specialized" > cathegories, that would have a great benefit: > We could create a lot more specialized skill cathegories. > Currently we can't do that because every new cathegory > would make it significantly easier to gain overall levels. > > It would be a LOT better to have seperate cathegories > for things like thievery, alchemy, literacy, trap-skills etc. > > With overall exp seperated, some "specialized" cathegories > could give less overall exp, others even none. For example: > Melee combat could give melee exp and overall exp at equal > ratio 1:1. Also magic and wisdom. > A "rogue" skill cathegory (thievery, hiding, lockpicking) > could give only half overall exp, ratio 1:2. > Literacy and alchemy for example might not give any overall > exp, only the specialized exp. > > This would mean skills which don't give overall exp are > less rewarding to train - but they still have their own use. > When literacy skill has it's very own cathegory, that means > players actually have to *read* something to gain levels there. > This again would imply that literacy level 50 really > means *something*. So there could also be maps which > seriously reward having a high literacy skill. This again > would motivate players to train literacy... and so on. > > Besides, with more skill cathegories there's more work to do > in general, because there are more different skill-cathegories > to train. It also allows more exciting character development. > > > AndreasV -- +++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more http://www.gmx.net +++ NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen!