[crossfire] specialised shops

[Brendan Lally]

On 8/17/05, Mark Wedel <
     
     mwedel at sonic.net
     
     > wrote:
>
     
        As a player, it'd suck to sell something worth 5000 pp and only get 500 pp
     
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      because its a cheap shop.  The problem is, if I don't find out I'll only get 500
     
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      pp until I sell it, I'm a bit out of luck.
     
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        In real life, there'd be more give an take.  You'd say 'how much for this
     
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      widget', and shop keeper would say '500 pp', and you'd go and take your business
     
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      elsewhere.
     
     
In my working copy of this, I have one line displayed at all times

"You reckon %s worth %s."

then if on a shop floor I display 

sprintf(buf,"You are offered %s for %s.",
		    query_cost_string(tmp,op,F_SELL+F_SHOP), tmp->nrof>1?"them":"it");

(I can't recall if that was in when I last diffed up to sf).

In any event, the players get an estimate of the value of the items
(which may be accurate or not) and the price they are being offered,
and are quite welcome to shop around and compare prices, whether they
consider that /worth/ doing, is another matter completely.

>
     
        I'm also concerned as this is a change in how things currently work.  Players
     
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      are currently used to going into whatever shop and getting a fair price.  If
     
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      they don't get any warning that they won't be getting fair prices, that is a bit
     
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        of an issue.  This was another reason why having the shop maps tell info on
     
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      entry would be good - players may ignore the message, but at least they got fair
     
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      warning - it is their fault they didn't read it.
     
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        One thought, which I'm not sure if its done, is that examining an item _in the
     
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      shop_ should reveal precisely how much the shopkeeper will give, and any other
     
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      relevant information (beyond what he'd normally pay, below what he'd pay, etc).
     
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        The stuff below value is easy - shopkeeper doesn't buy it, so player can pick
     
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      it up and take it elsewhere, no worse for wear.
     
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      >
     
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      > likewise I was going to have a cue in the description for the max
     
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      > price (something like 'the shopkeeper says, 'this is more valuable
     
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      > than most things I would trade in, I can offer you FOO but no more
     
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      > than that', I would have an equivilent thing for things that are worth
     
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      > too little.
     
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      >
     
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      > getting the item types isn't possible as far as I can tell, the
     
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      > correspondance between description and  number is in a series of
     
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      > defines, and is stripped out by the pre-proccesser.
     
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        It wouldn't be hard to set up a table of that mapping.  The defines aren't
     
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      really good names anyway.
     
     
I could set up a table, but I am loath to simply duplicate the
existing list, for the sake of a name. (maybe if there was somewhere
that there is a clear advantage to doing that, that it would remove
lots of cruft, but the clostest I can think of to that off-hand is
need_identify()...)

>
     
        That's nice, but comment about change of behaviour relative to experienced
     
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      player still apply.
     
     
I have to agree with Tchize here, news file is for that purpose, in
any case an experienced player should notice the fact that there are
two prices being shown (estimate and offer) and then look to the news
file anyway. (and if the server admin isn't maintaining the news file,
then that is their problem. (this leads me to another thought, but
that is another thread.....))