[crossfire] Random ideas.

[Mark Wedel]

Andrew Fuchs wrote:
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      The current map can be gotten through the "mapinfo" command, though
     
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      figuring out where you are located on a map, is more difficult; since
     
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      you can make several locations look the same.
     
     
  Right - I knew that.  For some maps, that isn't a very big deal, as its pretty 
obvious where you are.  But I have certainly used the fact that mapinfo reports 
the maps to get at least near the location of certain things I'm looking for 
(eg, know that titan cast is on world_125_124 - using mapinfo lets me know if 
I'm close or not).

  Because of that, I had considered that the newmap protocol command could 
actually send the map name of the new map the player moves to (that's just 
sending along already public information after all).

  In some sense, for many maps, that could be pretty close to good enough to 
sync things up - for example, if the client remembers that from level1 to level2 
the player shows up at x1,y1, and from level 3 to level 2, shows up at x2,y2, 
that would make syncing up very easy, often because there are also objects 
around that are rarely used by correspond to those exits (stairs, doors, etc).


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      If the map's path (as returned by "mapinfo") ends in "random????",
     
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      check to see if the suroundings match what was cached.
     
     
  right - I was just trying to think of some way to make it easier than trying 
to sync things up that way.   OTOH, if the client guesses wrong, that isn't 
really the end of the world - once the player sees those spaces, the server will 
send the real information for that space and it will correct itself.  Could be 
useful for a client command like 'clearcache' or something that clears all the 
cached info for that map that the client has once the player realizes that the 
map is different.


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      That brings in the question, of if there should be a cartography
     
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      skill, and if map makers should be able to restrict it's use on some
     
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      maps.  I think the results of mapping the maze mikeeusa has been
     
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      working on recently would prove to be interesting. (it would need to
     
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      be mapped in more than 2 dimensions, since it uses tricks with tiling)
     
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      In addition, I think the idea of having "bad" or inaccurate maps, for
     
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      the purpose of misleading players, could prove interesting.
     
     
  Not 100% sure if a seperate skill would be needed, or if literacy would be 
good enough to cover it.

  Certainly, allowing players to make maps as they see it would be completely 
reasonable (eg, player stands someplace and uses the skill, the the server makes 
a scroll based on what the player sees around him).  Perhaps errors are done 
based on skill of character making map, eg, some spaces get transposed or off by 
one or something).

  Having players make false maps, IMO, would be more an issue of the interface 
for the players to do it.  For map makers, an interface could be designed (or 
perhaps more easily, the ability to select a portion of the map in the editor 
and do something like 'save as game map', which saves it in the format used for 
the in game map scrolls.  Thus, easy for map makers to tweak about.