[CF-Devel] New weather stuff, and bigmap thoughts

[Tim Rightnour]

On 29-Oct-02 Andreas Vogl wrote:
>
     
      1. In which kind is weather going to affect gameplay?
     
     
Initially, very slightly.  My initial thoughts were:

1) If it's really cold outside, you heal slower.
2) If it's hot and dry out, you consume food faster. (slightly)
3) lots of snow might make walking slower.
4) Maybe if the wind is really high, it will push items around a bit.
5) Heavy storms reduce visibilty.

More specific things could be done along those lines, but I have yet to
solidify any.  Perhaps fireborns heal faster in hot weather?  Cold dragons heal
great in the freezing cold?  I'm still mulling ideas over in my head.  I don't
want to introduce a zillion effects on the players at once, and just open up
chaos.

>
     
      2. Does weather change maps? When there is a tree for example,
     
     >
     
        and it gets dry. Will that three vanish? Is weather
     
     >
     
        going to change tiles like grass into desert?
     
     >
     
     
     >
     
        Or is it more like a new form of "animation", which is
     
     >
     
        able to change images according to weather conditions?
     
     
I realize this.  Per the discussion we had about this many many moons ago,  I
will not be just flipping the switch and letting all the map icons go hog wild.
I plan to hinge everything on the setting dynamiclevel.  In this way, the DM
chooses how much he wants weather to affect the game:

0:  No weather.  It's not even generated.
1:  Weather, no effect on the maps.  Minor gameplay effects.
2:  Weather, snow accumulates, puddles.  mostly eye candy.
3:  Poles/lakes freeze, flowers and herbs grow on the grass with the right
conditions.  New things grow and change, but no modification of the underlying
tiles.
4:  Weather controls the underlying tiles.  Forests die and dissapear, deserts
become forests, etc etc.

The DM will have complete control of how much, or how little, he wants the
weather to affect the game.  If he doesn't want the maps potentially being
screwed up by the weather, then he will probably choose 2 or 3.

>
     
      3. What you said makes the impression you want to add
     
     >
     
        additional layers of graphics (translucent puddles for example,
     
     >
     
        maybe clouds, raining animation... )?
     
     >
     
        AFAIK it is currently not possible to display more than 3 layers
     
     >
     
        of graphics. Are you aware of that? Do you plan to change the
     
     >
     
        fundamental rendering methods of CF?
     
     
I wasn't aware of the 3 part.. but I did know there is a limit to what you can
stack.  Really I just want to have a few different snow/puddle types..so I can
obscure the underlying tile somewhat in the snow.  I definately do not want
actual rain animation or clouds.  Those would be a significant kill on the
server bandwidth.  Basically, there will be no visual cue that it's raining,
other than the occasional puddle.. which should be no worse on bandwith than
walking into a dungeon filled with items.  I don't plan on rewriting the
graphics engine just to make the weather pretty.

The best way to describe it is:  Imagine if you walked into scorn one day, and
rather than the roads and grass, it was just white with snow.  Now admittedly
this would probably never happen, as it seems we put scorn in a tropical
climate.. but you get the idea.

>
     
      Generally I'm not against your work, although I know little
     
     >
     
      about it. However, I am slightly concerned about the way you
     
     >
     
      commit changes to CVS without asking for consent here
     
     >
     
      on the list.
     
     
I thought all this was discussed ages ago?  I've just been really lazy about
getting around to it.  And like I said, there really is no effect on the
gameplay whatsoever, unless you explicitly go and flip the lever.

---
Tim Rightnour <
     
     root at garbled.net
     
     >
NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS 
     
     http://www.netbsd.org/
     
     
NetBSD supported hardware database: 
     
     http://mail-index.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/hw.cgi