[crossfire] Random ideas.

[Mark Wedel]

Nicolas Weeger wrote:
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     1) As a dragon player, I find that at some point I just have stat
     
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     potions piling up since I have no real use for them (can't make weapons
     
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     that are usable).  One thought I have would be to allow players to
     
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     effectively go beyond max stats, but  only rarely (say 1% chance of each
     
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     potion you drink going up a stat?)  That'd give a little value to those
     
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     potions.
     
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      Or we could use'em in some alchemy/smithery/... recipes. Or enchant
     
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      ring/whatever to increase stats?
     
     
  Yes, perhaps. One would have to be careful about balance on that - as I 
recall, dragons get some benefits on the basis they can't use specially 
enchanted weapons (the dragons biggest shortfal, arguably, is the limited number 
of things they can equip).  Thus, if you limit recipes to say 5 enchantments, 
that might still be more useful than some things out there, but probably won't 
make things really out of balance.

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     2) Does anyone right now really use the magic map command?  One thought
     
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     I've had would be to change it - instead of just sending the colors, it
     
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     instead sends the faces of everything (or maybe limit it to just the
     
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     floor/wall/other non living stuff?)  this would probably make it useful.
     
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      Yes, I use it often, to spot monsters on maps, and such.
     
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      Sending faces could make more detailed maps.
     
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      Also, maybe we could implement automapping? So player knows some maps
     
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      already visited, and keep that knowledge between sessions. Maybe with
     
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      a 'forget' factor, losing some details :)
     
     
  Yes, sending faces would make it more detailed - perhaps arguably too 
detailed.  OTOH, maybe not that bad if you go by the basis that for many maps if 
you've been there before, you sort of know what is around anyways.  Certainly by 
sending faces, the client could use it to fill in a bunch of fog of war spaces.

  As far as automapping, that can almost be done automatically on the client. 
The real issue why it can't easily be done right now is that we hide the 
coordinates that the player is on when they change maps.  This is done because 
without doing so, so maps become much simpler (if you can see where all the 
teleporters are taking you, very easy to see where you need to go and where 
you've been).

  A real example of this would be the electric church in brest.  If coordinates 
are sent each time you fall through a bit, working your way through the maze 
would be very easy.

  That said, while playing, it can be very annoying to step on a teleporter and 
have your entire known map go away, even when you step back through again.  So 
it really becomes  balance on convenience vs trying to be secure.

  More random thoughts on client caching fog maps:

1) If some coder was really clever, they could automatically try to figure out 
what map, and thus what cached fog map to use, based on data they see.  A simple 
example is scorn - see 4 signs, a fountain, etc, and you'd easily identify that 
as scorn, and could load up the appropriate data.  Many dungeons would be much 
trickier because the data isn't as consistent or could be more ambiguous (and 
client would have to catch that - did it guess the wrong map, or did someone 
cast an earthwall?)

2) If client was to cache maps, it'd need some logic, just like the server, to 
time out maps that player hasn't visited for a while.  For example, you don't 
want megabytes of random maps stored away, which by definition, the player can't 
visit again.

3) Related to above, for random maps, map name may not be good enough to know if 
the right version is in use.  Think of this case - server starts up, player logs 
in and goes to random dungeon (gets random0001).  Server restarts, player 
repeats - gets the same name, but since map is random it is not the same map. 
Yet at the same time, there is some desire to remember random maps, like say 
when going down through a random dungeon - if for some reason you leave and come 
back, would be handy to be able to see where you've been before and make it that 
much easier to get through.

4) Client caching maps wouldn't have to be that complicated, and wouldn't take 
that much space.  Could do something just like:

mapsize 20 20
space 0 0
forest.111
sign.111
space 0 1
cobblestone.111
orc.111
...

  because after all, the only think the client knows is the face name/number. 
It'd really need to store things by name since the face numbers can change from 
run to run (OTOH, it could be clever at create a bmaps file for each map that 
contains the number to name map for the faces stored in the map, thus making it 
even easier to parse those cached maps).

5) Outdoor maps would need improved handling - right now, the client isn't even 
aware when the player moves across the tiles.  It does have logic to recenter 
and clear out the old data as needed, but to handle outdoor maps, it would sort 
of need some idea of where it is (which goes back up to telling the coordinates).

6) It would be neat to have 'map' objects within the game that show a map.  I 
think tchize is working on adding image support to objects.  But what I envision 
beyond that would be if you have one of these maps, and is actually where the 
map displays its stuff, if you applied it, it would 'fill in' the area around 
you on your map (fog of war) area.