[CF-Devel] Materials (was FW: DIAMONDS)

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

Ok two more, then I'm done...
One:

Mark said:
 > This idea seems a little odd - in 'real life', it isn't all that 
difficult to
 > convert gold chainmail to liquid gold. Well, more to the point of 
metals, most
 > likely to do anything interesting with them, your 'tools' need to be 
able to
 > melt them, so in practice, you'd break off enough pieces of that gold 
armor to
 > melt down to do what you want.
 >
 > However, I don't have any big issue with the above method - presuming 
the
 > converter methods are somehow appropriate.

I would hope that gold chainmail is not so common that people are lining 
up outside the 'gold refinery' and that it would upset the economy. The 
problem with using extreame cases is the images it brings to mind. I 
think gold as a material is much more likely to turn up in couns and 
tiny nuggets and the *vast* majority of refining would be to turn these 
little bits into big bits than vise-versa. It might even take some 
metals out of commission if you made enough big items like statues 
(impress your friends and neighbours - drop 1000lb of gold for a statue 
of yourself)

 > >
 > > Its not unreasonable to have yew clubs.. just that it gives the dam 
bonus is
 > > possibly wrong. This could be solved with the current system 
without alot of
 > > work, and without doing something ugly. The current materials file 
could
 > > easily be extended to have something similar to the only-for in 
archetypes.
 > > Whatever way you wanted to go with it..
 >
 > I agree that yew clubs isn't wrong, its just doing the extra damage 
is a bit
 > odd. And I'm sure people could come up with other examples (would a 
steel
 > hammer really be much better than a magic hammer, for example? Given the
 > material has it lighter, it should probably do less damage in fact). 
These are
 > minor issues, but just oddities which sort of bug me.
 >

Not so minor, combat modifiers come about as a result of a material 
being applied to an item (not from material alone.) There should be 
lists similar to the artifacts file where items are given bonuses or 
penalties based on material. You could even have certain material - This 
shouldn't be used in place of the material field in the arch however.


 > > IMHO it is counter-intuitive to have the system apply bonuses to 
items I have
 > > manually set to being of a specific material. If I make a mithril magic
 > > sword.. I don't want the system auto-changing that on me. The 
mapmaker should
 > > know what he is doing.
 >
 > Well, yes and no. If the map maker knows sufficiently what he is 
doing, he
 > can then clear the flag which says 'adjust this items bonuses based 
on material
 > at load time'. If, however, the hope is you have non developers 
making maps, it
 > should be easy for them to make mithril shields and not need to read the
 > materials file to see what the appropriate bonuses/penalties are (and 
in fact,
 > since the server isn't a required part of making maps, very possible 
map makers
 > won't even know what this is).

This is it exactly. Placing a golden hammer on the map shouldn't be as 
hard as it is where you have to guess the value, guess the weight and 
set the bitmask for soft_metal. Certainly you can call something a 
golden hammer, but the 'gold' carries no intrinsic game information to 
work with. If you take the hammer arch (not a golden hammer arch, but a 
hammer arch' and set the material to gold and it adjusts the value 
(based on material, not utility), the weight, then you have a benefit. 
The fact that it reacts more uniquely by virtue of it being gold and not 
just a 'soft_metal' (by having different saving throws than say tin) is 
even better IMHO.
The fact that you could use this material value to do other things is 
even better. Certainly you can write code to manipulate objects based on 
finding the word 'gold' in the name or some such, but if 'gold' is a 
material you can use/compare/modify you can write better and more 
flexable code to do it. This is how it works already, with item saving 
throws, - this is an expansion of the same idea which would likely make 
it easier to add say magnetism or decomposition or prevent players with 
iron objects from entering the elven city, fight a lycanthrope with a 
silver candlestick, make golems out of straw or out of mithril.

The fact that a silver bow makes a real lousy weapon, but silver arrows 
are useful is apparent to you and me, but not something you can predict 
so you have to apply *those* type of modifiers using some sort of list 
however. Really I could give a tinkers damn about a gold sword being -3 
to hit but +3 damage - I mean that is adding realism and all and is a 
great idea too, but in my mind is almost a seperate discussion. Also 
certainly a well crafted bow of yew will fetch more than a shoddy bow of 
pine, but come on, a gold bow that is unusable will still fetch so much 
more that the difference between the others good bow and the crappy one. 
I realize that in the game usefullness is more of a cost consideration 
than in the real world, but we still have coinage based on precious 
metals and therefore the gold bow is worth more by weight. That being 
said I am not proposing adding randomly generated gold bows to the game 
thus throwing off the economy... I am proposing that the material system 
be made more flexable and slightly more responsive.


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