[crossfire] The future of Crossfire

[Yann Chachkoff]

Le lundi 4 juin 2007, Mark Wedel a écrit :
>   Extra lore about the world could be used to explain other things.  <snip>
>
A lot of lore material is already available for a long time on the wiki. The 
problem is not really adding extra lore, but using what's already written in 
maps. Writing more lore is pointless if it keeps being ignored in the 
map-making process.

>   And while a lot of this could be done with scripts, I'll state this:  For
> any point that comes up where it could be done with a script, there should
> then be an example script set up that does that, with it clearly documented
> (ideally at the top of the script) with the values to change.
>
Although creating templates or grouping often used script functions into 
libraries can definitely be done, it is unrealistic to expect a template for 
each use we can possibly think about; a lot of code would be specific to each 
NPC anyway.

>   It doesn't do me any good to say 'it can be done with a script' if it now
> takes me 2 hours to write/test that script or figure out if there is a
> suitable one elsewhere I can modify.
>
Just for the record, spending hours to figure out how the C code is supposed 
to work is already necessary, so I wonder why you are insisting so much on 
that specific point.

> In the case above, there should be a 
> sample script that looks for an item in the player<snip>
>
This is called creating a library and it can of course be done once we have a 
clear view of the needed common functions to put into such a library.

>   I think this change is actually fairly easy to make, because I think
> almost all damage calculation goes through 1 function.
>
Except that changing the pace of combats also involves changes of a lot of 
maps, which were designed with the idea of fast hack-n-slash. Rooms full of 
monsters will become either impossible to empty, or very boring to do. I 
don't think you can dissociate the code modifications from map issues it will 
create.

>   But here's the thing - if I have a quest to escort an NPC from scorn to
> navar city, what would that script look like?  Right now, I envision it
> being pretty complicated - I think it'd probably be good to have some
> amount of C code backend to simplify it.
>
Python supports the use of script libraries, so common useful functions could 
easily be moved into such a library, removing the need to add C code.
I also have a hard time understanding how replacing a supposedly complex 
Python script by an equally complicated C code would make things simpler in 
the end.

> I know all this could be done in 
> python, but it would seem to be become a pretty complicated python script
> at some point.
>
So what ? Scripts weren't made with the idea of restricting their usage 
to "Hello World" kind of uses. 
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