[crossfire] Crossfire 2.0+ features/priorities

[Gabriele Dini Ciacci]

On Sun, 29 Jan 2006 14:38:55 -0800
Mark Wedel <mwedel at sonic.net> wrote:

>   the current method of 'press keys to swap stats', 'press spacebar to
cycle
> through classes', 'move your now created character to choose a class', and
then
> heading to the nexus are all a little hokey.

(Here is my char creation draft, another of my series, if someone thinks I
should
gather all the drafts I wrote on the wiki, say me, so they are all near,
instead that
sparse on the list)

Me and lalo did lot of discussion about that, and we ended up with a design
to still use in-game creation system (that I personally do not like, but
many seem
to like it in cf comunity) withotu sacrifing flexibility.
Lalo created different rooms for class selection each with a different wall
and
decoration layout based in yoru race. Those rooms can miss the
conflicting/owerpowered race/class combos too.
(many rooms are allready created, work just need to be finished)

Race selection is done in another room before this one, with each path that
has
a decoration that matches the one used in the class selection.
Each "way to a race" has a magic mouth that tells you the stat mods, so the
player has just to step on it to read the description of that race.

The player starts in the race selection room as a new arch named something
like "life force" (or energy).

Note:
A nice romantic notice on ghostish races should be something like "life
force
sacrifice and converts to a death force"

After that, each race receive a cerain ammount of tokens (non dropable
inventory
item) to spend on skills. Each class is teleported in a different room with
many paths,
each path rapresent a skill, at the path start you get a magic mouth that
explain you the
use of the skill and what you will be able to do with it.
Each skill cost a different amount of tokens, based on class (room is per
class as said
above), then the player chooses one skill stepping on the teleporter at the
end of the
path, if he still has tokens he get the skill and then is teleported back in
the room to
choose another skill.
There is a special teleporter that bring you to startgin point directly,
converting all your
tokens in money (like 500gp per token), this is for players that prefer
having no skills,
but more startign money.
Notice that only common skills are here, skills for casting are not supposed
to be bougth
in this room, this is for "professional" skills like smithing, woodsman,
mountanering and
so on

It woudl be fair for the avarae skill to cost 2 tokens, with less improtant
skills costing
1 token and complex skills costing 3 tokens (like smithing).

This is the basic common for all classes.

Casters classes will do one more step and go in a room with many paths where
they can
use their "magic study tokens" (or "devotion tokens" if churches become like
magic
schools) to acquire different caster skills like piromacy, sorcery...

The number of "magic study tokens" you get is based on the class, class that
"studied
magic obsessiverly" get 3 tokens, so he can get 3 magic schools,
intermediate magic
user get 2 tokens, and basic magic user gets 1 token.

Special races get in a room with "race tokens"  (each special rage get 1)
where they
can buy race skills, like dwarfs can buy for just one token smithering or
jewlercrafting
as starting skill. Fireborns can buy piromacy, elves can buy woodsman.
Or again they can convert those tokens to money takeing the exit.

I think that's all, code changes requided should be minimal, but since I am
on the
side of plugininzation I add that there is a way to make map changes minimal
too.

If random map generation becomes plugin, you can just add a layout that is
"char
creation room layout" that automatically generates the path rooms, given a
list
of skills that need a path wtih the skill token cost, the name of the token
items.
Then the teleporters will have all the same token checking algo. So those
maps are
dynamic and generated only when a player step in, this is cause this model
has many
maps and keeping them all loaded allways sound terible. Morover keeping them
in sync
with game engine is sad too, cause we want to be able to add new skills.
Generating the map on the fly solve both issures cause if you want to add a
skill to a
class you just have to edit the class generation file (where the plugin read
the
configuration) and you are done.

This extra plugin idea adds more code now, but reduce the ammount of mapper
work
needed (considering that we have few mappers and bad mapping tools, it sound
good
to me). Morover it nearly zeros the ammount of mapper work requided in the
future in
case of skill change, and personally, thinking about mantainability, this is
the only way
to have a char generation that can be keep in sync with the engine.

Notive that since the plugins is dynamic, each server can configure char
generation, so
a server that do not want to allow smithing as a starting skill for example,
can jsut remove
it from the list in teh configuration file of the plugin.

Char generation merely becomes a plugin, that is lovely, someone could just
create a new
in-game class generation system this way.

Ok, it's allready enougth long.

Hope you like this, I really love this idea :)

Salutes,
Gabriele Dini Ciacci

-----------
http://linux-wildo.sf.net
http://www.diniciacci.org
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