[crossfire] create earth wall totally nerfed ...

[Mark Wedel]

Andrew Fuchs wrote:
> On 8/11/06, Mark Wedel <mwedel at sonic.net> wrote:
> ...
>>   a new movement type for jump?  I suppose that could be done - OTOH, I'm not
>> sure how many movement types we want.
>>
>>   One theory, and what I originally envisioned, was keeping them fairly broad -
>> walking, fly low, fly high (spells vs say flying on a dragon), swimming, boat.
>>
>>   The other side is that you have a movement type for every particular way of
>> moving - crawl, run, jump, swim, skip, etc.
>>
>>   The later provides lots of way to control movement.  OTOH, if movement types
>> are automatic, it may not mean much (ok, you have to crawl in that low passage,
>> but since you will crawl automatically, what difference does it make?), etc.
> 
> It depends.  Can everyone and everything crawl, or only a few races or monsters?

  A fair question.  But that is why I think addition of movement types needs 
some discussion - otherwise, the potential for having 20 movement types and then 
looking at them and saying 'well, crawl and slither are really the same, 
levitate and fly is the same, etc'.

  Of course, this really gets driven by having some reason for the different 
movement type - there isn't any reason to add a crawl movement type if everyone 
that has walk also has crawl.

  And my thought is more that movement types should be general to describe 
constraints on the movement, and not the movement type itself.

  Eg, instead of saying crawl is a movement type, you'd instead have a movement 
type that denotes that the space is small/limited.  So that you give small 
creatures that movement type also (for example, the small snakes).  If you say 
crawl, you get the case of people saying 'well, snakes don't crawl, so that 
doesn't make sense'.


>>   One possibility is to make a new earthwall archetype that only blocks walking
>> and have the spell use that new archetype, so earthwalls created by the spell
>> only block walking, but those on maps block everything.  Map makers could of
>> course change behaviour of earthwalls on maps to match what they want it to do.
> 
> Yes, if you can jump over earthwalls, they are probably low enough to fly over.

  agree.

> 
>>   I'm not sure if that causes any problems - letting players fire spells or
>> other attacks over earthwalls at monsters may cause problems, as I'm not 100%
>> sure all monsters are smart enough to try and break through the earthwall (but
>> that could then be considered a different problem).
> 
> Flying mobs would be able to get over too, but every spell has its
> limits, right?  Though i don't think that most mobs would fly over
> one, unless they are able to see a target (possible redo of the line
> of site code for everything).

  I think that in general, if a monster is hit by an attack, it will make the 
person that did the damage its enemy.  Now whether the monster in this case will 
be smart enough to actually figure its way over the earthwall is a different 
discussion.  Some monsters do have a flag which says to tear the earthwalls down.

  If the problem is that monsters are too stupid, we should fix that logic, and 
not limit the earthwalls.

  There are certainly cases where there are bugs that players exploit.  However, 
if players are reasonably clever on the use of spells, we shouldn't go and try 
to prevent the players from using those tricks, but rather make the monsters 
smart enough to try and avoid it, etc (or at least monsters that should be smart 
enough).

  It is completely reasonable to me that if you put up and earthwall, you should 
be able to pick off things like snakes, rats, or other stupid creatures with out 
them getting to you in return.

  Those are pretty low exp creatures, so if a player really wants to spend the 
time to get exp safely but slowly, that is fine by me.