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

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

>
     
     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.
     
     
Glad that this came out in the clear.  It didn't come across to me in the
prior thread.

I still don't quite see exactly what you mean though.

It sounds like something that might support, say a Gorgon turning stuff to
stone and a Midas turning stuff to gold.  Now if these were non-player things
in the game, maybe that is not so abusive as a general player-invoked spell of 
transmutation, but have you really outlined what is so fundamentally different
about a player spell and a table that a player can coax into "casting" 
transmutation?  Have you got some game play examples instead of pure theory?

Why would you want to argue for tables that convert material anyway.  To me
that is not much different than having a player spell, but more to the point
is what it brings to the game.  Go find a silver arrow, or make one from
ingredients... don't convert a gold one or an oak one... I still think that
unlimited player invoked conversion doesn't help game play.  (Oh, and with 
the economy, charging money isn't necessarily enough of a control to make
limit something that is abusive.)

I am thinking that, a la snakeskin, the material system already does some
of that fancy work with stats, but maybe you are saying that it is limited
and that you'd like the system to be able to take a map maker placed iron
arrow and convert it to silver, calculate the stats, all before the player
ever saw the object?  Why wouldn't the map designer just say something 
like random_material arrow?

Then again, maybe you're not going for conversion tables per se, but rather
something that could be like a trap that turns your fine leather boots into
granite boots when you step on it.  The fact that it could be a conversion
table does not mean that you'd intend for people to add a store full of such.
And just because it is conceptually possible, probably no one would make a
trap like that that indiscriminately turned boots into valuable substances
even though this would be made possible by a transmutation engine.

Or maybe another example of what you envision might be a system that allows
a castable defensive magical aura that converts incoming bullets into rubber
bullets that don't do much harm...  but not necessarily also planning a 
spell that turns them into more valuable items that are heavier and more
damaging because there isn't really a good gaming scenario that makes that
worthy of consideration.

Well, enough said...  I'm thinking that I'm not the only one that doesn't
see what you envision and how it would not turn into yet another way to
avoid puzzle solving, material hunting, or earning wealth in more 
conventional ways.

Bottom line?  I can see merit to a developer controlled transmutation system
that might allow stuff as shown above - even though I remain opposed to
gratuitous, player-invokable conversions of arbitrary materials to other
arbitrary materials.


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