[crossfire] The future of Crossfire

[Juergen Kahnert]

Hello,

On Fri, Jun 01, 2007 at 11:16:14PM +0200, Nicolas Weeger wrote:
> What kind of game do we want? What kind of gameplay?

I'm not a CF developer, just my $0.02.

Crossfire is / was the base for some other games. In some cases just the
idea / gameplay in some other cases even the code.

Check out FIXME_name. They play with only two spells and two prayers
(magic bullet, probe, Cause Light Wounds and Minor Healing since years)
but they have more players than CF.

The people like good graphics. The gameplay / deep isn't that important
against a pretty look and feel.

You could focus on gameplay, maps and features without improving the
garphics. Ok, will be a nice game for a few players who also like to
play [for example] nethack. And it will be fun for the developers, too. :)

But you won't reach much players.


> So, what would be everyone's vision of the game?

On Fri, Jun 01, 2007 at 08:45:48PM -0700, Mark Wedel wrote:
>   To me, the biggest immutable thing is probably the map (both file
> format and how displayed) - changing it to a 3D game (which sometimes
> comes up) is such a major change in many areas that it hardly would
> seem to be the same game after it is done.

That's the point. A 3D game is much more work than 2D - in any cases.
And you have to make a decision, which way you like to go.

1) Stay with 2D and improve gameplay / deep.

2) 3D game, lot of coding work, and also a lot of design work, new maps
   are harder to create, ...
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If you decide for 1), you don't need to call it Crossfire2.

If you decide for 2), you need to ask yourself if you have the people
doing all the graphics work... If the CF team has good designers, why
didn't changed the art design over the past few years?

But wouldn't better graphics result into more player with more people
supporting the project?

It's a hard decision. And having a bad 3D implementation would make it
worser than better. I played nethack on telnet, very nice game. But I
don't like Falcon's Eye - bad gameplay (same game, different display).


> - NPCs in crossfire a really quite boring.  Trying to have any
> conversation with them is often annoying (as trying to figure out
> correct words is sometimes difficult), but they are also very static -
> you go to the bar, and just see a bunch hanging around.  Improving
> conversation is easy, but that doesn't remove the pretty static nature
> of them.

Yesterday on metalforge:

    ScottyOB has entered the game.
    ScottyOB chats: Is it just me, or is this game slow?
    A chats: Whats your speed?
    ScottyOB chats: I don't know... This is the first time I've played this
    before.  I just mean moving around town
    ScottyOB chats: Like, I'd push the right arrow, and wait half a second
    before he moves?
    A chats: If you're carrying a lot of stuff, you'll be very slow.
    A chats: Or if you have a slow internet connection.
    ScottyOB chats: I have no idea how to start leaning this game
    ScottyOB chats: How do I interact with people?
    ScottyOB chats: NPC's
    A chats: "say hi"
    ScottyOB chats: I think I'll head back to my MUD's.  I didn't get into
    this game :(
    ScottyOB chats: yeah, I don't get it.  It tells me to go west for
    beginners, and there's just a wall there :(
    ScottyOB chats: and all this guy keeps asking is "What did you say?"
    whever I try to speak with him
    ScottyOB quits the game.


> - Maps:  All to many are just hack and slash - if you're tough enough,
> you survive and win, if not, well, your dead - need to be more maps
> where the focus isn't killing everything.

So you like to stay on a 2D map? For 3D you need to change every map
anyway...

If you ask me, I would say the first question of all should be: Stay
with 2D or implement 3D?

Kind regards,

    Jürgen