[crossfire] Moving server towards a modularized system?

[Mark Wedel]

  Sorry, in the initial post I presumed it would be python, but a C plugin seems 
like a reasonable idea.  For one thing, I can't imagine a C plugin ever not 
being able to be installed (unlike python where people could be lacking the 
libraries)

  That said, trying to figure out what is optional or not is difficult.  I'd 
venture to say a lot of people would say the random maps really are not optional 
(or if those are optional, what else is optional, like shops, monsters, etc)

  I'd think that if there is a C plugin, aside from the different passing in of 
the values, and using appropriate callbacks for functions instead of calling 
them directly, it could access the function data directly? Eg, it should need to 
do a plugin callback to set the dam of an object, it could just set ob->dam?

  That said, the plugin itself won't fix all the ills.

  To do that, more radical changes are needed in the basic functions as is, and 
that will break things.

  For example, it was brought up the idea of meteor swarms and/or swimming. 
Doing those in plugins don't really fix anything.

  The basic problem here is that insert_ob_in_map() does a lot more than just 
puts the object on the map and links it up.  It checks for move_on/move_off 
flags.  It checks for merging.  It checks if the object glows, and thus updates 
lighting, checks to see if it blocks movement/line of sight.

  It is those things which make a consistent behavior difficult (and also what 
causes meteor swarm to slow down the server).

  To be redesigned, insert_ob_in_map should just do only that.  The functions 
that call it should make the other checks (can we merge with something on this 
space?  should we check move_on status, etc).  But making those type of changes 
is likely to result in breakage in various places (insert_ob_in_map is called in 
146 places for example).  Although, perhaps at a first pass, a new flag like 
INS_OBJ_ONLY_AND_DONT_DO_ANYTHING_ELSE could be added (ok, maybe a littler 
shorter, but you get the point).

  all that said, I do think it is fair to discuss other work to be done - if you 
have limited resources, it makes sense to discuss where those resources go.  Yet 
at the same time, given this is a volunteer project, one can't really force 
anyone to do anything.