[CF-Devel] More Lore

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

Just as aside, I've realized I'm spending a lot of time going in depth on 
responses, and then finding I don't have time to do anything else.  So expect 
less detailed responses from me, but hopefully still with useful information.

I understand your idea to have a lore system that covers everything we may want 
it to do.  Better to design it once than multiple times.

  But at some level, I wonder if it really makes sense to try and grap 
information from maps instead of just having something like a 'scorn.lore' or a 
'dungeon.lore' or whatever else - that lore file just being a freestanding file 
in the proper lore syntax.  A lot easier to collect those.  A lot easier for 
anyone else dealing with those maps in the future to find the lore information.

  As for collection, I'd prefer that the scripts be in perl and not python, 
largely because I know the former, and not the later.  Which is probably related 
to why all the existing scripts are also in perl.  However, that isn't a major 
point.

server changes - I'd think something needs to be done to read in the lore file 
and process all the meanings (area, weighting, etc).

  As for file format, probably doesn't make a big difference - but do keep in 
mind that the server has to be able to parse it.  And since we are taking raw 
data, I don't know if it makes a lot of sense to convert it to xml - one could 
certainly have an option in the collect script to also spew out xml if desired. 
  AT some level, I'd prefer not to require yet more libraries to compile the server.

  It is not legal to have multiple arches with the same name, so the point of 
using the name to combine data doesn't really apply.  But I otherwise think that 
idea is fine - the probability of lore information about an orc is only relative 
to the orc itself.

  However, in the broader picture, it seems we need some information about the 
probabilty of the lore for the archetype itself showing up.  Eg, information 
about holy avengers should be less likely to show up than orcs.  OTOH, maybe 
just keep it all even, so useful lore information is bound to show up - if we 
generate lore for all the archetypes, that is a lot of lore entries - enough 
that everything would be seemingly rare.


  map lore:
As you mention, this is a trickier problem.  Having it in the map header 
requires something like a
maplore
lore thurgond
@chance 5
...
@chance 8
...
endlor
lore scorn
@chance 12
...
@chance 3
...
endlor
endmaplore

  Which is still easy enough to to do - it all works as long as the containing 
names for it in the map header don't aren't the same as the lore delimiters.  Or 
a seperate file could be used.

  I do agree it is a good idea to try and make collecting map lore automatic. 
At some level, however, that is different/unrelated to arch lore (eg, the same 
format for the lore in maps can be used in archetypes and vice versa. IT may 
just being it isn't meaningful in the archs, so that data is left blank).

  One addition I'd suggest to the lore header - a tag indicating the type of 
lore, eg, spell, monsters, person, place, item.

  Thus, books like 'Marks Tome of Rare Items' can show up and only contain lore 
about with the 'items' type.  Perhaps that takes the place/is used as the 
location tag also, eg, instead of '@chance 5 place' it could be '@chance 5 
"place:santo dominion"' can be made.





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