[CF List] BIGworld

[Todd Mitchell]

Mark Wedel:
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        I don't see any reasoning that the roads have to be perfectly safe.  In
     
     most
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      of human history, roads were the place bandits or others would prey upon
     
     others.
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Certainly, but I was thinking of emulating the effects of civilization.
Most roads would not be safe at all, such as the road to Brest.  Most
roads would fall into this catagory since they would be part of the general
area the map anyway,
but to have the 'Imperial Road' or 'King's Hiway' or the 'Yellow Brick Road'
which would partly protect travellers
by blocking monsters (missile weapons would still be a problem and custom
encounters could still occur) might be a good idea.  This would just be the
main overland route between major cities (the yellow road between Scorn,
Navar, Santo D...) and some waystations and a small area around certain
cities.  This would expand the area that low level players can roam without
hobbling higher level players from their explorations (a bunch of orcs in
the forest would likely be more annoying than entertaining since you would
be level 5 or so before you went out anyway, but a bunch of giants in the
forest would be too nasty if they wandered onto the road.  This way you
could still create nifty encounters while allowing those of lower levels to
have a small measure of safety (they would still be subject to missile
attack, but they couldn't be surrounded anyway and would have a better
movement rate than the monsters who couldn't get on the road to follow
them.)

  It really depends on the monsters that show up, and the number.  If you
figure
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      a player is going to be at least level 5, and probably higher before they
     
     need
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      to go overland to another city, certainly isn't much an issue if things
     
     like
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      ogres or not really monsters sometimes show up on the roads.  Since
     
     players
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      generally move faster than monsters, even if they see something, they are
     
     likely
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      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,
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      and just be convenient if there are also dungeons near buy (eg, a inn/food
     
     store
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      to resupply).
     
     
>
     
     
     >
     
        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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As a related thought - you could extend this a bit further if you could
block monsters by level, then you could have expanding rings of difficulty
depending on how far you were from a 'civilized' area.  Then you could have
some random dragons or other nasty monsters out there in the wild, trolls
and giants could get a little closer, and finally orcs and gnolls fairly
close to these 'civilized' areas.  This would give more freedom for random
encounters and would be pretty easy to implement if the blocking arches were
available.  An Imperial Highway would be a way to connect these small
islands of civilization.  Building in encounters in these areas would be a
matter of
determing the area 'level range', Random encounters could be a lot more
variable since you wouldn't have to worry so much about nastier creatures
getting away (hey it is supposed to be dangerous out there).  It would be a
guide to dungeon placement as well.

>
     
      Its not currently possible, but it would also be nice to
     
     add
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      multipliers for prices (eg, that store in the middle of no where charges
     
     more
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      for what it sells and pays less for what it buys).
     
     
Ya it would be good to have higher prices in the outlands, this same type of
code could also
be used to give members of certain guilds preferential prices at guild
stores (making it better to belong to a guild)

Of course, there
are
>
     
      bugs all over crossfire.  Until they get reported, its hard to fix them.
     
     
Well I for one appreciate the work done to fix bugs, no complaints there on
the job being done, since I imagine it is not so much fun as working on your
own ideas.

>
     
        Rivers really need to get done on the new world map.  As part of the
     
     automatic
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      generation, rivers were not made, so the only ones there are basically
     
     ones I've
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      added for various reasons.
     
     >
     
     
     >
     
        Likewise, what is left to do is to place most of the dungeons that
     
     appeared on
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      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.
     
     
Well here is something I can help with anyway.

>
     
        I think refining the blocked flags is a good idea.  Of course, there is
     
     a
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      difference between a good idea and having the time to do it.
     
     
Totaly understood.  No need for haste as this should probably be hashed out
so that the soluton is widely applicable.

>
     
     
     >
     
        Note that I don't think no magic actually blocks a spell from passing
     
     over it,
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      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
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      magic space.
     
     
I was thinking along the lines of blocking the effects of spells (like the
flame from a fireball).  THis could also provide a nice spell in itself -
antimagic shield or antimagic wall by invoking this arch.  This wouldn't
block spell-like effects, just magic.
This was just a thought and I have no idea how good or practical it is.


>
     
        But there is a lot of refinement - with the tiled maps, ocean/water
     
     travel
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      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
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      that the space blocks in terms of both movement and visibility, eg:
     
     >
     
     
     >
     
      no_walk_through
     
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      no_fly_through
     
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      no_swim_through
     
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        As well as stuff like:
     
     >
     
      block_walk_sight
     
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      block_fly_sight
     
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      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:
     
     >
     
     
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      block_player_pass
     
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      block_monster_pass
     
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        To control where monsters can move to/from.
     
     
Sounds great

Mountain climbing could be changed to actually allow movement through
mountains, but not all instead of just speeding up movement by adding in
no_walk_through to some of the mountain arches and block_all to others.
Some monsters could climb, some couldn't.
Creatures who can only swim could be let loose in the water and couldn't
come ashore.  Maybe there could be 'deep swiming' and shallow swimming for
the day when boats are available and seamonsters roam the oceans...