[crossfire] Tweaking alchemy

[Mark Wedel]

  As far as alchemy is concerned, an easy first pass would be to extend the 
general store (maybe rename it grocery store or something) to include raw food 
items, eg, wheat, milk, hunks of meat, etc.  That still requires graphics, but 
but doesn't a whole set of farms, etc, where one can go and gather this.

  The farming aspect is a different piece.  I'd imagine, if it doesn't exist 
already, the buildable land plots would have to come in farms, or at least the 
player to build wheat fields, etc.

  There is already code in place for creatures to be able to spawn other 
creatures, and for creatures to have a life cycle.  It'd be nice to re-use as 
much as that as possible.

  Thus, in a simple case, a chicken lays an egg.  After some amount of time, the 
egg hatches into a baby chicken, and over time, it grows up, with same age 
categories it being able to lay eggs.  As time passes, it gets older, stops 
laying eggs, and at some point, dies of old age.

  The real question, I suppose, is whether there is a large number of players 
that actually want to play farmers.  Otherwise, this entire idea could be a fair 
amount of work for something that no one ever uses.