On 8/8/05, Mark Wedel < mwedel at sonic.net > wrote: > I suppose it could be a malicous player casting hundreds of runes on some > space which some player sets off. but otherwise, if anyone has a clue, let me know. Instead of processing each effect individually, would a better approach not be to have a single spell effect per tile and add to it? For example instead of having a stack of fireballs from meteor swarm or banishment on one square, have one that has "Time To Live" foo. Damage dealt can then be deduced from how long it has to live (a spell that has longer to live should cause more damage as it is more powerful?). It can then decay in strength with time, and if any more of the same spell is cast on it, the new spell can simply increase the time to live, and therefore strength and damage dealt. Other spread, damage, and decay-related parameters could then be added to make this more customisable. If needed it could possibly be made to decay along some decay curve, but that would be more CPU-intensive. I know this approach is very different from what is being done now and will proably require substantial changes, but it should prevent single players from being able to grind the server to a halt, as after the initial explosion it will not matter if you have one fireball going off or a thousand.