[crossfire] combat notes

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On Thursday 13 December 2007
Mark Wedel wrote:

> While I agree the ecology of training centers probably do not make much
> sense, there is an overall lack of ecology in game.  Where is all that iron
> for weapons coming from (there really are not any iron mines).  How do the
> 50 orcs live in the newbie tower with no food?  Why do maps reset in the
> first place?

I have been cogitating on the map reset issue. Mainly we have maps resetting 
because at the time that was done someone could not come up with a better way 
of making an area usable again after someone else had cleaned it out. For my 
part I think once you kill the Zorn family how would they arise from the 
dead? Well, the players do (at least they do on non-permanent death servers) 
so the NPCs do as well. Currently to do this we have maps reset all at once 
(if no one visits them for ## amount of time) back to a pristine state.

Perhaps a method could be used to have them gradually reset back to the 
pristine state. Of course this would take a lot more resources on the server 
as the maps could not be gradually resetting while swapped out. Maybe to 
mitigate this a resetting daemon could run and load + check each swapped map 
every X seconds (tunable by the server owner) and manage the gradual reset 
then swap each map back out. This daemon would have a referent of the 
original map and use some smart programmer's algorithm to gradually clean it 
up and re-add the NPCs while no players are on it. If a player comes to the 
partially redone map and messes it up again no big deal as the daemon will 
use the same process to start gradually cleaning the map again once the 
player leaves. (I am not the smart programmer that can do this, but perhaps 
this idea can be a starting point for one of you who is a smart 
programmer :) ).

Also, quest rewards are in specific maps. Perhaps having a reward generator 
that can be tied to specific NPCs, altars or whatever would help. That could 
also be done with forces and inventory checker. Have force A, B and C but not 
D, E and F? You have halfway done with the quest. Once finished and going 
over the inventory checker that triggers the reward the forces are removed 
and the reward is generated. This means quests will need more thought and 
effort on the part of the persons making quests. However, I think this is 
worth a little more thought and effort. I am toying with doing this in the 
Zorn scrolls quest that will be beneath the Zorn dungeon. IMO forces and 
inventory checkers are under-utilized in crossfire.

Gene Alexander
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