[CF List] BIGworld

[Mark Wedel]

  It should be noted that the current bigworld maps are certainly just a 
starting point, and not a finished project.

  I agree that there should be more blocking terrain.  The bigworld maps do have 
a lot more wasteland (which blocks movement) than the old map did.  This does 
mean that you can't march of major mountain ranges.

  However, the bulk of terrain is crossfire allows you to move through freely - 
jungle, swamp, hills, forest, etc, just impose a move penalty - none of those by 
default say you can't physically go through them.  For some things, that should 
be the case.  The movement penalties can be argued that it takes extra time to 
hack through forest, scale mountains, or whatever else.

  Maybe most of the slow move stuff just isn't signifcant enough to really 
notice.  Maybe the fact that you know what you want is 'in that direction' means 
it is faster to go straight their rather than to try and circumvent the 
forest/mountains/whatever.

  The reduction by 4 in the penalty also makes most of the slow penalties 
irrelevant - the slow penalty in objects is basically the number of extra ticks 
it takes to get through (or conversely, how much slower it is - if it has a 
slow_move of 4, it takes 5 times longer to move through.  However, if you have 
the appropriate skill, slow move is now 1, so it only takes twice as long to 
move through (this n+1 is because there is still the 1 tick always imposed to 
move a space).

  So if your speed is pretty quick, yes, it slows you down to 50% the rate, but 
that is still pretty dang faster (move every other tick).  If your speed is 
slow, this seems very severe (might go from 1 every 3 ticks to 1 every 12 ticks 
of movement).

  The following ideas were some of the things postulated for the new world map:
1) Weather effects - not sure exactly what they were going to be, garbled was 
going to work on that.
2) Random plants showing up based on various factors (elevation, weather, type 
of terrain).  Thus, if you that belladonna root for alchemy, you might search 
the appropriate place and find some.
3) Paths/trails getting made as people wander in certain areas, with some decay 
rate.  Actually, not that hard to do - just need to store a counter on each 
space for the number of times a player visits it.  If it is beyond some number, 
you look at the surrounding spaces to see if any of those are also above that 
count, and choose the appropriate arch the has trails going in the right 
directions.  As part of the weather, these visited values go down, and if the go 
below some point, trails get removed.

  As for monsters, various thoughts:
1) Value in map header could determine if random monsters get generated at all 
on that map, and if so, how powerful they are.  This provides an easy way to get 
basic monster power on the map (ones nears city wouldn't gen monsters for example).

2) Type of monster might get based on terrain.  Monsters may have favored 
terrains (elves like woods for example), and thus would typically not leave 
them.  In some sense, this would control monster movement, as well as what shows 
up.  Thus, roads through grasslands would be pretty safe, roads through 
mountains could be dangerous.

  If such a scheme is well known by the players, then as they see those 
mountains loom closer, they may rethink their travel plans - maybe I shouldn't 
go there after all, maybe I should go around them, maybe I should pay the 
dwarves some gold and they let me travel through their safe cave system instead, 
etc.

3) While I can understand the worry of hoards of monsters congregating outside 
the gates of the town, I'd rather not worry about that until it really happens. 
  Right now, the same can in theory happen in dungeons (eg, player gets in over 
their head, leaves, but now a whole bunch of monsters right by the exit), but I 
don't hear about that happening very often.

  More interesting than roads being 'magically' safe, might be more interesting 
to make patrols - if you give the guards the 'friendly' flag, monsters will come 
and attack them, and they will attack in return.  I wonder how hard it would be 
to write some basic scripts, eg, for a guard outside of town, go to space X,Y, 
then X+20,Y, then X+20,Y+20, then X, Y+20, then X,Y.  Or basic road following 
scripts for guards.