[CF-Devel] Fw: Diamonds

[crossfire-devel-admin at archives.real-time.com]

  It could be argued that -5 plate armor is armor that was very poorly made or 
has been damaged.  Having that cursed flag is a little odd.

  There is no doubt that there are examples that make sense.  But there are 
probably just as many, or more cases, where the different material makes 
little/no difference.  Your example for arrows is a good one - balsa ones are 
useful because they don't weight much.  But how much should I care if the arrow 
is oak, pine, yew, spruce, etc?  There are minor difference there, but more 
likely, having half a dozen of different types of arrows listed in your 
inventory/quiver is perhaps annoying.

  The issue of the material name being in the inventory is also just a point of 
annoyance.  There has always been the point of trying to get as much useful 
information in your inventory window as possible.  Including a material name you 
may not care about sort of defeats that goal.

  Perhaps one way to make this better is to do something like put (material) at 
the end of the name, and not at the start.  Thus, instead of '15 spruce arrows' 
you would get '15 arrows (spruce)'.  This way, the information you care about is 
at the start of the line.

  As for selecting material types, there are ways to do it.  Something better 
than the existing method is certainly needed in IMO.  The material selection for 
armor might very well be different than that for weapons, which could then be 
different than that chosen for something else.

  As it is now, there is one case where items don't get randomized types where 
they would cause the least annoyance - rings.  Rings, as is, tend not to stack, 
so to note if the ring is silver, gold, bronze, or whatever isn't likely to 
cause any extra annoyance.  Now the material type wouldn't make any difference 
for the rings (except maybe value)

  As I've said before, using the artifacts file to choose material types would 
have been ideal - that already has support to do match on very specific items 
(not just 'weapons' or 'armor).  One could specify exactly what the material 
does for that item.  Eg, a steel sword may have a bonus to hit and damage.  But 
a steel mace (vs iron) really doesn't have any advantage.

  I also don't like the material file in that order that the materials is listed 
in is relevant.  So the meaning of the chance field becomes non intuitive - a 
'chance 10' if at the end of the materials is pretty much a 10% chance.  But if 
you put that at the start, the chance of that material is now less than 10% - 
perhaps much less than 10% depending on the chance of the material that follow it.

  As an aside, the addition of material types adds more to item power inflation. 
   Eg, that snakeskin armor has 1 point AC more than I could have gotten before.



_______________________________________________
crossfire-devel mailing list
     
     crossfire-devel at lists.real-time.com
     
     
     https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/crossfire-devel