[CF-Devel] Materials (was FW: DIAMONDS)
crossfire-devel-admin at archives.real-time.com
crossfire-devel-admin at archives.real-time.com
Sun Apr 20 18:48:40 CDT 2003
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Or do you just mean convert the material file to archetypes (which
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wouldn't be hard), and have a special material type to denote this
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(sort of like skills are now). Thus, instead of having yet another
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file format, you could just have a 'materials' directory in the arch
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to customize/add new materials.
That was my thought, yes. Skills as archs, spell arches, ability
arches, treasure lists arches (kind of like the random map styles are
now...), material arches....
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The wood/non metal materials do pose some issues. OTOH, it also
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depends on how the creation is working - if magic is involved, not too
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hard to believe that you could turn 20 arrows into a spear or
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whatever. However, if your just working at a workbench, that isn't
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feasible - in that case, you'd have to determine if the donor item
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exceeds the material requirements for a new item (eg, a spear could be
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turned into some number of arrows, but not vice versa). But to do
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this, you'd need some tag in the material that says this is a material
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that can be reconstituted or not.
This is where I was imagining inheritance played a part. General class
characteristics inherited by the specific materials so you don't need to
configure every little setting (but you could...). Note imagine is the
operative word since this was speculation on my part.
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Problem more with this is balance. If you have a x-> gold
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translation, how do you do it? If the item weighs 9 kg, you get a 9
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kg gold item (ignoring density)? Or more properly, would that 9 kg
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turn into 15 kg or whatever the weight adjustement for gold is?
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The problem here is then in a full material system, player turns that
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non magical plate armor to gold - 100 kg of gold now. With his skill,
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he then turns it into gold ingots (or coins) and gets a lot more money
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for that item than it is normally worth. Talk about messed up economics.
Ya, but you could also have monsters turning gold to lead or steel into
tin. I knew steel to gold would be a provocative example, but it would
work both ways. Plus you can make these things prohibitive - iron to
gold abilities would be a heck of a lot less common than the steel to
tin abilities. Remember the disenchanter beast? How about a little
fellow that turns sangunite to lead?
I know you can do this otherways but, it nice when it's as simple as
twigging the material.
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One could certainly do something like that - to follow AD&D, warp
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wood - checks inventory of target, and warps some number of wood
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objects, making them unusuable. However, for this to really work, you
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then need to have some method of saying these are warped. Things like
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heat/cool metal are a lot trickier to track.
Not really you don't have to actually have heat or cold, just assign an
amount of damage per measure of iron. Now you want to wear that plate
armour when fighting fire elementals Pepe?
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I don't get the artifact thing I think - that is how I though that
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Tim had implemented the materials (with lists of what items could be
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generated out of which materials) and I didn't particularily like the
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idea and thought it very unmanagable and somewhat backwards. That is
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primarily why I objected in the first place. If I add a Widgit arch,
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I would have to add it to the artifacts file. If I remove the
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Widgit, I have to remember to update the file.
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There is no harm listing artifact combinations in the file that can't
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possibly exist.
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And if you don't, all that really happens is that your object won't
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appear with these new special abilities/materials. Your item will
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still continue to work.
no but it does get messy over time and you need to get into the server
files to make maps.
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You can even have a mix where there are types of materials and then
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other lists used to apply materials (like the treasures prehaps).
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To be, that is completely the point of the artifacts file - a way to
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modify objects without needing to make new arches.
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In addition, usage of artifact files allows for more sensible
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material bonuses.
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For example, I can see that a yew bow might be suprerior, and hence
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why it has a damage bonus. But why would a yew club be any better?
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Given the current code, there is no way to seperate that (yew has
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bonuses which apply to whatever object type it gets applied to).
That's interesting, material bonuses should be applicable for what ever
object they constitute. I didn't think of an example like this.
Either this type of bonus has to be taken out of the material code so it
works universally or pseudo-logic can be applied to say that Yew is
lighter but harder thus more the club weilder is more nimble, thus more
damage (since damage can be seen as factoring in chance to hit as well
as actual injury).
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However, with artifact code, I could do something like:
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Allow bow,crossbow
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materialname yew
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dam 2
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value ...
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and so on
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And only have yew show up in bows and crossbows. If I want it to
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show up in clubs, I could make an appropriate entry, but not give it a
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'dam 2' value. But given the current implementation, there is no way
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to do that, and I consider that wrong.
But if the artifact file randomly changes the items randomly after the
map has been created (when somone enters it presumably) then you have no
control over specific implementation. In this case if you wanted a ruby
club particularly how would you do it without creating a new arch?
Of course you could claw back some of those sort of bonuses from
material type while leaving basic modifiers such as value, weight and
saving throws.
Really I haven't got an answer for this - there seems to be a
particle/wave thing going on here.
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I would say thet there isn't a need for the special key words[...]
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I disagree a bit here.
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I think the general material terms should be the general material.
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EG, materialname stone could be valid if you want the item made of
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general non descript stone (ie, basically, always that general stone,
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and not a specific type of stone). There should be some way to say
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that is always the case. If you want a random material, I'd much
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rather that be noted in the name. You mention about difficulty of
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knowing what to do. IMO, it is much clearer from a design standpoint
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that if you see 'materialname random_stone', that you know it would
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choose a random stone type, comared to if you just say 'materialname
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stone'.
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Also, having a general name that may be valid that also matches and
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end product is a really bad idea. If you load a map and see
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'materialname stone', how do you then know if that has already been
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processed, or if it will be randomized that next time by?
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Also, I see no disadvantage to having those special keywords - the
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only real disadvantage might be the extra 8 characters to type in the
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materialname.
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See I would tend to never actually have a general material used in an
object. This is why I suggested changing iron to metal and such. The
material would always be specific. You could have an item with no
material, but never an item of 'wood' (it would always resolve to be a
type of wood) for example.
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The idea of having a colour and changing the image based on this
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colour comes form some old discussion of how this is done in other
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games. [...]
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That's why it was more a wishlist thing.
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this is a non trivial change. it is much eaiser to just have
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different images for the different colors.
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Ya, it would be a lot of work for sure making a standard 8 bit palette
and redoing most of the arches to use it - I didn't imagine I would live
to see it. Then again if we implement a standard 8 bit pallete now for
new graphics, some day our grandkids will thank us for it.
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Items with Multiple Materials-
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well items with multiple materials. how about allowing an item to
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have multiple items in equal proportions. So an item like a normal
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axe is say wood, metal (50-50) a stone axe wood, stone (50-50) a more
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complex item might be metal, wood, stone (33-33-33). If the
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materials are not of equal proportion (by weight I suppose) then they
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aren't factored in is all. Toughness would be the same as it works
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now (how does it work now with the saving throws?) with bitmask items
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or perhaps when you fireball or otherwise deconstruct that ruby axe
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you burn away the 50% weight (the wood) and get a ruby.
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That works - presume if the material has multiple types, they are
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equal by weight.
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You could list multiple types even if not 100% equal, but close
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enough (eg, a 60/40 real life, you might still list it as two
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materials which would be 50/50, as its a close approximation).
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As for saves, probably be fairest way is to look at the material
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which has the worst saving throw for that object. Eg, if you have an
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iron/wood saving against fire, you'd use that wood saving throw.
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However, if you have that same object against acid, you'd use the iron.
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I'd try not to get too tricky on what happens when an object fails
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saves. That is another can of worms.
Ya lowest. The other can of worms would be related to item
deconstruction of which I know only rumours... Wood ash is a prime
ingrediant in some recipies, there are examples of other items which
have partially survives massive trauma (
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Well I don't want walls or buildings or other such landscape features
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to have material in general, nor forests or mountains or swamps (I
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can see having special tree or mountain arches that would, like a
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mine arch, also there is code already for random plant placement so
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mineral placement is simply a few lines to this.) This is along the
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lines of secret passages - Players shouldn't be expected to try every
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terrain square to see if it breaks burns or gives milk.
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Monsters or other living things should not have material types.
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to an extent, I agree. However, if you allow random harvesting of
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materials, how do you do that? I should be able to go into a forest
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and chop down a tree and get wood, but what wood would I get?
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Well this tree arch in question would have had a materialname set when
it was placed (by man or machine). If it was set to 'wood', you would
get a random wood, if it was set to 'oak' - you would get oak.
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