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

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

On Saturday 26 April 2003 02:26 am, Mark Wedel wrote:
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        However, some bits won't change.  Eg, while it may be nice for the search
     
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      order of the hth attacks to be setable, that seems sort of pointless to me.
     
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       The player should select the appropriate one.  This sort of falls back to
     
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      request of 'I want to be able to set what food I eat when my food reaches
     
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      0'.  the code to do that for such a minor convenience makes it a very low
     
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      priority.
     
     
Really the only reason "order of attacks" comes into it at all for me is that
it's something that MUST be there(?) and MUST be edited in the source code
(and recompiled) - if it just automatically got added to the bottom of the
list if it wasn't hard-coded, that'd work too...but see below...

>
     
        Maybe.  It wouldn't hurt - but there has been a lot of customizable stuff
     
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      there already, and a lot of it doesn't seem to get played with.
     
     
Smells like a new poll topic - "Which customizable feature are you least
likely to play with? 1)(whatever) 2)(whatever) 3)What customizable features?
(etc.)...."

>
     
        In terms of the image stuff, there is no way to do that right now.  The
     
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      trickier bit here is that images are assigned numbers - I'm pretty sure
     
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      those numbers have to be contigous.  I'm not sure if they have to be in
     
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      alphabetical order
     
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        However, at the same time, to rebuild that data is really easy.  I can't
     
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      see that as being much a point to server admins - if they are willing to
     
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      patch a bunch of files for some change, I can't see it being much a stretch
     
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      that they couldn't have an arch distribution and do a 'make collect'.
     
     
Okay - that's not much more complex than "cat newtreasures >> treasures" so
that takes care of my concern there, too, since it doesn't actually require
a complete recompile.

>
     
        See the discussion a few weeks back about spell objects.  It didn't
     
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      addressed summon creatures, but that is probably something that could be
     
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      included.
     
     
Okay, went back and found it...and the short discussion hits pretty much 
EVERYTHING that I was wanting, (including supporting "negative damage" to
cause healing effects.)

Two additional minor suggestions there - support for a "resistance" allowing
a character to be healed by a damagetype (only if the >100% resistance comes
from ONE object) - e.g. Fireborns might have a 105% resistance to fire, thus
being healed at a rate of 1/20th of the damage that would have been done by
fire (might be possible to extend this to allow characters/monsters to
recharge mana/grace from particular types of attacks as well.)

>
     
        Note that right now, I think some of the summoning stuff looks at the
     
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      races to determine what to summon, so for some, just modifying the races
     
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      file might be enough.
     
     
That would be ideal, in my opinion.  Making a new summoning spell would then
just mean adding the pointer to the appropriate race/caster's level entry
in the file.

>
     
        Thats true - if you are fighting a whole bunch of wimpy creatures, faster
     
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      attacks for less damage would be of some advantage.
     
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        But otherwise, it is simple math to say 'attacktime * damage =
     
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      attackfactor'. Eg, if you have something that has an attacktime of 1.0 but
     
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      does 20 damage, and something that has an attacktime of 2.0 but does 5
     
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      damage, still pretty clear that the slower attack that does more damage is
     
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      better.  Unless you are fighting mobs of monsters with low hit points.
     
     
If I wanted to play with a calculator instead of playing the game I'd be
playing on a MUD or something :-)

>
     
        But I still wonder how many different unarmed attack types you can come
     
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      up with which are really that different.  When do we add kicking and so on?
     
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        Thus may not seem like a big deal, but right now there are 30+ skills out
     
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      there.  Imagine if it got to the point there was 100.  It'd be like the
     
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      northman now - it wouldn't so much to get rid of it because it was bad, but
     
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      more because it is redundant.
     
     
[...] 
>
     
        unarmed combat could have a mixture of messages.  kicks, claws, bites,
     
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      knees, etc.  It could actually be a little more colorful because you'd get
     
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      higher variety.
     
     
This is true, and actually I could see re-simplifying and reorganizing unarmed
combat into a smaller subset - "humanoid unarmed" (punching, wrestling,
karate) and "animal unarmed" (biting and clawing and trampling).  Point both
the skills and abilities at the same two attackmessages tables and you're
done...cuts down the redundant message tables and "non-weapon attacks" while
keeping a rational division between the types.  Rough difference would be
humanoid combat = faster but lower damage, animal combat=slower but higher
damage ("base" values).

[...]
>
     
        Perhaps the bigger issue with skills is that there are some proposals to
     
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      make learning skills difficult or limiting the number of skills one can
     
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      learn.  In some of these cases, the more marginal skills lose out (if
     
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      karate and boxing are pretty much the same, why'd you bother to learn both
     
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      for example, especially if it might cost you to learn something more useful
     
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      like jeweler (still not one of hte major skills, but still something you
     
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      might use a bit and not redundant with one of your existing skills)
     
     
I can see the point there.  "Collapsing" the unarmed combat into 2 or 3,  more 
rationally-delineated categories (rather than the 5?  6? that currently exist
or "would make sense to exist given the current breakdown") would solve that.

>
     
      > 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
     
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      > kicking", "brass knuckles", "Amulet of the Weapons Master" (boosts Melee
     
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      > Weapons attacks), "MithrilWhite(tm) Toothpaste" (bite-enhancing
     
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      > "potion"), etc...), though what little I understand of the existing code
     
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      > makes me think new code would have to be added to be able to modify the
     
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      > effects (damage, wc, etc.) of only one type of attack skill at a time...
     
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        It is somewhat an issue of fluff vs actual usefulness.  I can certainly
     
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      see possibilty to add all sorts of stuff (spiked kneepads, etc).
     
     
It it any more "fluff vs actual usefulness" than having amulets (ac+1),
rings(ac+1), and bracers(ac+1) all existing at the same time?...

I wouldn't want to go TOO overboard - do we really need to add a "knee" or
leg bodypart (in addition to the existing "feet")? But, a BIT more potential
variety here doesn't seem any more redudant than having 10 different versions
of "big knives" in melee weapons (or, really, more like 80, factoring the
new materials code [which, as I mentioned before, I actually DO like]), or 6-8
different versions of "spell-casting guy" classes...

>
     
        In the case of players, I'd say difference means different in play (eg,
     
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      human northman issue again - if the only thing different is face and maybe
     
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      a stat by 1 point of something, that isn't all that different in play).
     
     
[...]
>
     
        I'd say some of it depends on thought process.  If you come up with a new
     
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      monster/class/spell/skill, ask yourself, what does this add to the game? 
     
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      Why are you adding it?
     
     
THIS I completely understand and agree with.  I'm more wondering, for example,
where the line for "many smaller differences" or "a few larger differences"
crosses the point where someone else might find it worth trying out...

I tend to want to design new things as ideas strike me and on those occasions 
where I have a small amount of spare time to work on them...rather than
having an idea and waiting for an email committee to re-design it for me (and
then waiting for the NEXT batch of spare time to arise) before I actually try
to implement it :-) so it would be helpful to be able to at least make a
reasonable guess as to whether or not a new race/item/spell/whatever is
"different enough" before spending much time on it (either in implementation
or waiting on the aforementioned email committee...)

>
     
        Certainly not - I think a lot more can be done without code changes. 
     
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      However, at some level, an 'extra large fireball' isn't all that different
     
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      than what exists now.  However, something like 'balls of fire' (like ball
     
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      lightning) could be different enough.
     
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        The problem is the question is difficult enough to answer that I can't
     
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      just provide a 'these are a set of rules, and if you follow them, things
     
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      will be OK'. My personal thought is that best to drop a mail to the list
     
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      asking about the conceptual bases.  Eg, I have an idea for a new spells
     
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      that does a, b, c.  The enumeration of a, b, c doesnt' have to be in
     
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      specific at this point, eg, for a new class, you might say 'it would have a
     
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      bonus to strength, penalty to con, ..' and you wouldn't have to come up
     
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      with all those details at that point.
     
     
Well, actually I WOULD, since what I'm thinking of is actually doing the
work of putting the ideas into practice, rather than "Hey, I have this great
idea, why don't you developers get to work implementing it for me" :-)

(I actually think there are more than enough classes already, so that's
not specifically an issue.  Races and spells (and cults and quests which
can be built with and around them...if/when I finally get time to figure out
map-making) are where I'm thinking at the moment.

>
     
        The other tricky part of this is that adding such things can reduce the
     
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      uniqueness of others.  If you fall by balls of fire example, that sort of
     
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      reducesthe uniqueness that ball lightning currently has.  Maybe that is OK,
     
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      maybe not.
     
     
This make sense if the only thing different about the new spell is damage type
and the color of the graphic.  On the other hand, one might use exactly (? 
haven't looked to see if this would work yet) the "ball lightning" routine
with a different arch and graphic (as examples off the top of my overstressed
head):

attacktype - confusion and depletion
damage - low
arch - slow-moving, medium duration

Voila' - the "Phantasmal Molester" spell... (or something of the sort).

Change to medium speed arch, physical and magic attacktype and
an animated graphic of a hyperactive kitten and you have "Summon Playful
Annihilator"...

Looking at the "technical" descriptions - "It's just ball lightning with 
different speeds, graphics, and attacktypes.  That's not very different."....

In PLAY they probably wouldn't SEEM anything like ball lightning at all,
though. (AND, if I am correct that the existing ball-lightning code needs only
a little easy modification (or better still, none at all) to be adapted
for this, I am capable of putting out the finished "products" myself without
pestering official developers to stop what they're doing and get them
working for me...)

>
     
        Unfortunately, I don't think all that info has been recorded.
     
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        However, one can certainly ask 'if I added a new spell, what would have
     
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      to be done'.  and an answer detailing the steps may be forthcoming. But
     
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      since it may be from people's memory, who knows how accurate.
     
     
Ah, got it - the information's not written down because nobody's completely
sure what it is :-)  Fortunately, it looks like in MOST cases it's not
too tough to work out.

I'm hoping other people will jump into the discussion here, too, so it doesn't 
look so much like I'm pestering you personally...

Where DO all of you tend to draw the line at what makes something "different
enough" to be worth possibly including?...


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