[CF-Devel] Adding New Stuff (again) - Requests and suggestions

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

Flying Pedestrian wrote:

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      Well, again, that's why I think it'd be nice to have more of the configuration
     
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      (particularly, e.g. names of spells and HtH attacks, order of preference
     
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      of HtH attacks, 'definitions' of extensions of standard spells, etc., which
     
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      currently are "hard-coded" into the source...)
     
     
  Well, that is coming - more of that stuff is moving to archs.

  However, some bits won't change.  Eg, while it may be nice for the search 
order of the hth attacks to be setable, that seems sort of pointless to me.  The 
player should select the appropriate one.  This sort of falls back to request of 
'I want to be able to set what food I eat when my food reaches 0'.  the code to 
do that for such a minor convenience makes it a very low priority.

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      I think people'd be more likely to try out new things if it just required
     
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      adding a bit to a couple of files instead of going through the whole patch,
     
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      recompile, reinstall routine.
     
     
  Maybe.  It wouldn't hurt - but there has been a lot of customizable stuff 
there already, and a lot of it doesn't seem to get played with.


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      Is it also easy to add graphics to the crossfire.0/crossfire.1 files "on the
     
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      fly" as well?  Also, is it possible to skip adding a new spell name to
     
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      the headers and instead just add it to the spell_params file?  (I imagine
     
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      not, from what I remember of the code...I think it'd be ideal to be
     
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      able to add a spell for testing with just an addition to spell_params, an
     
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      entry in the archetypes file, and new graphics...)
     
     
  In terms of the image stuff, there is no way to do that right now.  The 
trickier bit here is that images are assigned numbers - I'm pretty sure those 
numbers have to be contigous.  I'm not sure if they have to be in alphabetical order

  However, at the same time, to rebuild that data is really easy.  I can't see 
that as being much a point to server admins - if they are willing to patch a 
bunch of files for some change, I can't see it being much a stretch that they 
couldn't have an arch distribution and do a 'make collect'.


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      Basically, any spell (for example) that doesn't require new BEHAVIOR (just
     
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      different attack types, settings for range, duration, radius, list of possible
     
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      creatures summoned, etc.) seemed like it ought to be moved out to the
     
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      arch's and spell_params files instead of hard-coded as they are now.
     
     
  See the discussion a few weeks back about spell objects.  It didn't addressed 
summon creatures, but that is probably something that could be included.

  Note that right now, I think some of the summoning stuff looks at the races to 
determine what to summon, so for some, just modifying the races file might be 
enough.


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      Similarly, this would affect e.g. pets (as summoning spells improve in
     
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      variety, this may become and issue - although again it's more for "color".
     
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      ["Your air para-elemental jolts zombie.  Your air para-elemental zaps
     
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      zombie..."...] it would make sense that a character with a pet wolf or
     
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      giant purple vampire frog would see "biting" type messages...or for that
     
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      matter a character who gets polymorphed into something else, or when someone
     
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      starts adding Were(whatever) races to the game, might end up
     
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      seeing that for his own attacks.)
     
     
  Well, for monsters, as said, it doesn't come from attacks.  It comes from 
attack messages.  I'd think the code is there to just make up some more messages 
and assign the appropriate attack message type to the monster arch.

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      On the other hand - Karate, for example, doesn't do as much damage as many 
     
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      melee weapons, but it has a higher "fire" rate.  "Biting" would be slower
     
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      than "Clawing" but have a substantially (though still reasonable) higher base
     
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      damage.  Properly constructed, the tradeoffs make for a bit of potential
     
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      strategy  (Karate is actually pretty handy when you're being mobbed by 
     
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      large numbers of fast but relatively weak creatures), and another bit of
     
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      potential "uniqueness" for characters, without danger of serious imbalance
     
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      being added or having the high "barrier to entry" of needing to understand the
     
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      crossfire source well enough to code a complex new set of behaviors into the
     
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      game.
     
     
  Thats true - if you are fighting a whole bunch of wimpy creatures, faster 
attacks for less damage would be of some advantage.

  But otherwise, it is simple math to say 'attacktime * damage = attackfactor'. 
  Eg, if you have something that has an attacktime of 1.0 but does 20 damage, 
and something that has an attacktime of 2.0 but does 5 damage, still pretty 
clear that the slower attack that does more damage is better.  Unless you are 
fighting mobs of monsters with low hit points.

  But I still wonder how many different unarmed attack types you can come up 
with which are really that different.  When do we add kicking and so on?

  Thus may not seem like a big deal, but right now there are 30+ skills out 
there.  Imagine if it got to the point there was 100.  It'd be like the northman 
now - it wouldn't so much to get rid of it because it was bad, but more because 
it is redundant.


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      Actually, I'm glad for that - one "style" of attack at a time is plenty.  For
     
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      HtH attacks, specifically, the only real purpose would be do add a bit more
     
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      color and strategy, and add another potential "uniqueness" to a character
     
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      without having to add anything really bizarre or complex.
     
     
  fair enough.  But as said, one has to be careful with uniqueness.  Otherwise 
people may just be like 'oh biting.  Its basically the same as biting with a 
different name'.  At some level this gets annoying because of your keyboard 
bindings and what not.


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      The SKILL being rolled into one actually doesn't seem unreasonable to me,
     
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      though you then still have to deal with the messages (or just change them all
     
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      to "hit", which is boring...)
     
     
  unarmed combat could have a mixture of messages.  kicks, claws, bites, knees, 
etc.  It could actually be a little more colorful because you'd get higher variety.

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      Of course, while we're at it, someone could do something about all that silly
     
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      redundancy of having daggers, shortswords, longswords, broadswords, sabers,
     
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      scimitars, cutlasses, falchions, katanas, and rapiers. After all, they're all
     
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      basically just "big knives"...
     
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      (kidding, obviously...I LIKE the "color" and minor differences that having
     
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      all of those adds to the game...I think the same can apply to a certain
     
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      extent to different "unarmed" attacks as well, though probably not THAT many.)
     
     
  The other difference is that dealing with a bunch of objects is a bit easier 
than dealing with a bunch of skills. Thats basically just how the game is - this 
is perhaps largely an interfact issue and may get improved upon (with the change 
in skill system, each skill will have its own exp bucket, which then means this 
gets communicated to the client.  If the client displays it, might not be 
unreasonable to switch to that skill if the player clicks on it).

  Perhaps the bigger issue with skills is that there are some proposals to make 
learning skills difficult or limiting the number of skills one can learn.  In 
some of these cases, the more marginal skills lose out (if karate and boxing are 
pretty much the same, why'd you bother to learn both for example, especially if 
it might cost you to learn something more useful like jeweler (still not one of 
hte major skills, but still something you might use a bit and not redundant with 
one of your existing skills)



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      On the other hand, having them separate gives some potential to later add
     
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      items to the game that enhance a particular attack type ("boots of kicking",
     
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      "brass knuckles", "Amulet of the Weapons Master" (boosts Melee Weapons
     
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      attacks), "MithrilWhite(tm) Toothpaste" (bite-enhancing "potion"), etc...),
     
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      though what little I understand of the existing code makes me think
     
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      new code would have to be added to be able to modify the effects (damage, wc,
     
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      etc.) of only one type of attack skill at a time...
     
     
  It is somewhat an issue of fluff vs actual usefulness.  I can certainly see 
possibilty to add all sorts of stuff (spiked kneepads, etc).

  With the new skill system, this may be more possible - it should be possible 
to have different skills (by name) that do the same functions.  So thus, bite, 
claw, head butt, kicking, etc, could all go into an 'unarmed' skill subtype.


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      "Sufficiently different" is the part that I understand the least - not that
     
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      I don't know why there needs to be differences, but that I'm not quite certain
     
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      what constitutes something that would be considered a worthy "difference".
     
     
  It depends on what you are doing.

  In the case of players, I'd say difference means different in play (eg, human 
northman issue again - if the only thing different is face and maybe a stat by 1 
point of something, that isn't all that different in play).

  For monsters, this is much more open - IMO, there is a lot of room to add more 
monsters, because in that case, difference can just be in race.  And these can 
be used as ways for the priests of certain religions to gain exp.

  I'd say some of it depends on thought process.  If you come up with a new 
monster/class/spell/skill, ask yourself, what does this add to the game?  Why 
are you adding it?

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      Does it mean that to be "different" there must be a new set of functions in
     
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      the source code to handle it?...(Is it, for example, "just another bolt spell" 
     
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      regardless of other novelty unless it has its own new function?  Personally, I
     
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      think there's a lot of untapped "uniqueness" potential sitting in the existing
     
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      "damage spells" and, perhaps, summoning spells code, waiting for only novel
     
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      spell names, graphics, and arches to bring it out...)
     
     
  Certainly not - I think a lot more can be done without code changes.  However, 
at some level, an 'extra large fireball' isn't all that different than what 
exists now.  However, something like 'balls of fire' (like ball lightning) could 
be different enough.

  The problem is the question is difficult enough to answer that I can't just 
provide a 'these are a set of rules, and if you follow them, things will be OK'. 
  My personal thought is that best to drop a mail to the list asking about the 
conceptual bases.  Eg, I have an idea for a new spells that does a, b, c.  The 
enumeration of a, b, c doesnt' have to be in specific at this point, eg, for a 
new class, you might say 'it would have a bonus to strength, penalty to con, ..' 
and you wouldn't have to come up with all those details at that point.

  The other tricky part of this is that adding such things can reduce the 
uniqueness of others.  If you fall by balls of fire example, that sort of 
reducesthe uniqueness that ball lightning currently has.  Maybe that is OK, 
maybe not.


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      Well, I was thinking in terms of what specifically is needed to make a 
     
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      (whatever) "complete".  It's obvious in a lot of cases, but might be helpful 
     
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      to have noted down explicitly somewhere, e.g. for a new race:
     
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      Either 4 or 8 "facing" graphics (with rare exceptions, e.g. fireborn)
     
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      arch for the new race
     
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      treasure entry for new race
     
     
  Unfortunately, I don't think all that info has been recorded.

  However, one can certainly ask 'if I added a new spell, what would have to be 
done'.  and an answer detailing the steps may be forthcoming. But since it may 
be from peopel's memory, who knows how accurate.

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      Anyway, just thinking about trying to offer new things for the game again, 
     
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      particularly the spells, skills, races, and monsters at the top
     
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      of the poll results...
     
     
  Well, as said above, the first step would be a conceptual level (a spell that 
does X, a class like Z, etc) - post those out and see what people think.  If the 
idea is generally positive, then starting working out details, eg, bonus, 
damage, starting equipment, etc.


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