[crossfire] Making maps easier to maintain, by creating custom archetypes for duplicated objects.

[Alex Schultz]

Andrew Fuchs wrote:
> There are several instances in the maps, where custom objects where
> copied and pasted from other maps.  An example to this is the
> guidebooks in the post offices.  Recently the guide books in Scorn's
> post office where modified, but not the ones in other post offices.
> This lead me to think about what requirements have to be met for it to
> become practical to replace duplicated custom objects with new
> archetypes.
>   
Seems like a good idea to me.

> I'm thinking that having two or more of similar objects that appear on
> separate maps would be enough warrant a new archetype.
I don't think that's good criteria, for one, what about floors set to
no_magic? IMHO that isn't worth making new archetypes for. (However
perhaps the editor should give an option to automatically set no_magic
when placing floors? but that's another matter.). We would need to
define how different the archetype would need to be from it's original
arch, to trigger the map check warning.
IMHO some good criteria would be highly similar objects being used on
two or more maps, and at these criteria scoring at least 5:
Score       Criteria
4              Objects have the same message, which is over 10
characters long and different than the archetype.
2              Objects have same name, which is different than the
archetype.
1              Objects have the same in some other attribute, different
than the archetype

Or perhaps something similar to that table. In any case it seems we
would need some sort of scoring system for how similar objects are, and
how different from the archetype they are.

Alex Schultz