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

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

Kevin R. Bulgrien wrote:

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     I have yet to see compelling argument for transmutation.  I vote
     
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     against it.  It smells like a big cheat.  Oh, can't be bothered
     
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     to find diamonds, who cares, I'll make my own out of these stones
     
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     (that aren't made out of carbon).
     
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     Alchemy at least requires that you find ingredients, but even then,
     
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     I don't like (and don't use) what I hear is the ability to turn
     
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     any pile of treasure into gold.  I think that is severely bogus.
     
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     I'd rather see people abuse the titan's tower to get rich than
     
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     to abuse the newbie tower because I can change worthless things
     
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     into more valuable items.
     
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     The cool factor for transmutation is not compelling.
     
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     It is related to the past discussion about dimension door.  Unrestricted
     
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     dimension door pretty much hoses the challenge to most any map.  
     
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     Transmutation sounds like it hoses other things in a similar way.
     
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     IMO, conjuring energy is not that big of a deal (transmuting light, magnetism,
     
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     or what not to make spells we currently use).  Heck, even magic bullet isn't
     
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     bad if you consider that maybe you are taking elements (atoms/dust) from the
     
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     air and are simply condensing them to form bullets, but transmuting solid
     
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     matter from one material to totally another seems a bit of a stretch. Also,
     
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     IMO, if it is even allowed, it should be even more lossy than alchemical
     
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     formulae.  (Most of the time you vaporize the stuff away instead of getting
     
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     anything useful out of it.)  In fact, I'd think the premise of transmutation
     
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     would be atomic de/reconstruction, and I think that you should have to have
     
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     many times greater quantity of source material than end-result.  No way would
     
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     1 lb of lead give you 1lb of gold, but rather 1000 lb of lead gives you maybe
     
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     1 lb of gold.  While I vote no, in a pinch I would say make it very expensive
     
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     so if you really want to do cool things, you still have to work to do cool
     
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     stuff.  It is no fun to be able to make things just because you can't be
     
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     bothered to adventure for them.  If you have to do that, go play another
     
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     game...
     
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     Transmutation is the changing of one material to another - I stress that 
when I brought it up it was not to propose a 'transmutation power for 
players', it is not an ability or a spell or in anyway related to 
alchemy but a term I was using for changing the material field in an 
arch to a different material without otherwise changing the arch (and 
thus applying  properties like weight or saving throws of the new 
material to the arch).  It is something you would write code for to 
acomplish a range of things from converter tables, to monster abilities, 
to scripted events.  In itself it is not something that you could do in 
the game except by way of the application of such code.  I unfortunatly 
used a classic example of transforming a substance to gold, when I 
should have perhaps used something more neutral like transforming iron 
to oak.  There is nothing stopping the transmutation of objects now, it 
is just nicer to work with if there is more formal material system.


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