[CF List] BIGworld

[Mark Wedel]

Todd Mitchell wrote:

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        It's fairly open.  Before doing something big, you should certainly send
     
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      a
     
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      message to the mailing list saying what you want to do and where on the
     
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      world
     
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      that would be.
     
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      The map mailing list or this one?  I do want to cut out a minor desert
     
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      (maybe 3x3 of maps worth) just northwest of Navar to build some ruins in.  I
     
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      will also try to dig up some nice documents on world landscaping that I have
     
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      found useful in the past - outlining good rules of thumb for
     
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      social-geographical design (like deserts usually sit on the opposite side of
     
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      mountains that the wind is hitting, dwelling usually are located near water
     
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      or a passable landscape feature such as a mountain pass.)  - this would be
     
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      nice to add to the map making documentation.
     
     
maps list is probably bettter, but probably doesn't make a lot of difference - 
as of now, I'm the only one that's done any work on the bigworld maps, so as 
long as I see it, thats all that really counts.


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      One problem I see with this is player a stirs up some monsters and player b
     
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      comes walking by on his way to newbie map Alpha and gets eaten alive.  One
     
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      way to deal with this I can think of is to make the main roads 'safe'.  The
     
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      main road could be widened to two tiles (to make it easier to move along)
     
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      and monster blocking could be done along the 'Imperial Highway' so that
     
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      players are generally safe from attack there.  (done with monster specific
     
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      directors to push them back, could possibly add in no-magic tiles to the
     
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      road as well) Of course not all roads would be like this - in fact most
     
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      wouldn't.  This could also be extended to some scattered inns and shrines
     
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      and an area of influence around cities (like a patrolled zone).
     
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      That would be pretty sweet - and make overland travel more fun if you wanted
     
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      to wander off the main route.  You could get some basic social structure out
     
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      of this idea as well - The Imperial Highway does not go there - it is a
     
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      strange and dangerous land.
     
     
  I don't see any reasoning that the roads have to be perfectly safe.  In most 
of human history, roads were the place bandits or others would prey upon others.

  It really depends on the monsters that show up, and the number.  If you figure 
a player is going to be at least level 5, and probably higher before they need 
to go overland to another city, certainly isn't much an issue if things like 
ogres or not really monsters sometimes show up on the roads.  Since players 
generally move faster than monsters, even if they see something, they are likely 
able to outrun it.

  Certainly, scattered buildings make a lot of sense - along some of the major 
road intersections, having a small town of a couple buildings could make sense, 
and just be convenient if there are also dungeons near buy (eg, a inn/food store 
to resupply).  Its not currently possible, but it would also be nice to add 
multipliers for prices (eg, that store in the middle of no where charges more 
for what it sells and pays less for what it buys).

  One of the ideas for the bigworld maps is for monsters to get 'randomly' 
generated in the terrain.  Eg, forests may produce occasional orc or whatever.



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      Well I think MT has a point - I bet I could fire an arrow form Scorn to
     
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      Navar if there were no water or wasteland between.  That could get dangerous
     
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      (although I think it kills the server eventually).
     
     
  While maybe not enforced right now, in theory, most things should have a 
maximum range.  an arrow should only go so many spaces, and not until it hits 
something.

  Thrown objects have a maximum range (stored in last_sp of the 'container' 
object that holds the thrown object). But yeah, the code as now could result in 
a shot arrow (or cast spell) travelling a very long area.

  It is certainly possible there are bugs in the code related to tiled maps - 
the diagonal map to map is something I need to look at.  Of course, there are 
bugs all over crossfire.  Until they get reported, its hard to fix them.




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      This is the obvious solution - but it isn't the most elegant way to handle
     
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      things since it really chops down on what you can do (if every area has to
     
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      be fenced in, there isn't much point to having very large tiled maps.)
     
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      That being said a lot of the mountains should be impassable and more rivers
     
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      would help here too.
     
     
  Rivers really need to get done on the new world map.  As part of the automatic 
generation, rivers were not made, so the only ones there are basically ones I've 
added for various reasons.

  Likewise, what is left to do is to place most of the dungeons that appeared on 
the old world map on the new one - pretty much all the towns (and dungeons they 
have) have been placed, but not individual things, like tower of stores, grukks, 
etc.



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      I think this is the real macoy here.  In fact while we are talking about
     
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      blocking, maybe we could figure out a way to beef up pass/blocking in
     
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      general to accommodate some more sophisticated conditions (oh no he's gonna
     
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      talk about flying again) - Blocks flying, blocks walking (but not
     
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      flying...), blocks magic (stops spell effects from propagating), blocks
     
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      player, blocks monster, blocks <slaying>?
     
     
  I think refining the blocked flags is a good idea.  Of course, there is a 
difference between a good idea and having the time to do it.

  Note that I don't think no magic actually blocks a spell from passing over it, 
it mostly prevents a spell from being cast on that space - there are some 
exceptions, things like dimension door make sure they aren't going through a no 
magic space.

  But there is a lot of refinement - with the tiled maps, ocean/water travel 
should be conceivable (you could literally fly to wolfsburg for example).

  So if this is going to get expanded, what is the wishlist of control 
attributes?  What we have so far:

no magic (wizardry) spellcasting
no cleric spellcasting.
blocksview (should be refined, see below)
no_pass (should be refined, see below)

  What I would suggest is setting some flags that contain the 'type' of travel 
that the space blocks in terms of both movement and visibility, eg:

no_walk_through
no_fly_through
no_swim_through

  As well as stuff like:
block_walk_sight
block_fly_sight
block_swim_sight

  Thus, something like a jungle would have block_walk_sight, but not 
block_fly_sight - if you fly above it, you see all around

  In addtion to those above, probably flags like:

block_player_pass
block_monster_pass

  To control where monsters can move to/from.

  Adding blocking on slaying or other attributes really would need to get done 
via movers or the like - the above values are all just bits set in a field, and 
are thus very quick to check (and basically get or'ed together for all the 
objects on the space).  Slaying is trickier, as now you need to do string 
combinations, as well as check against the object name and string for the space. 
  Guess not really hard to do - a string pointer can be added to the mapsace, 
and if it is non null, check it against the object moving onto the space. 
However, given how frequently that is likely to get needed, I think the use of 
movers is probably more appropriate.