[crossfire] Summary, was Re: The future of Crossfire

[Mark Wedel]

  I think the discussions started to get off topic a bit (my fault), going more 
into implementation details vs the broad these are things we should/want to do. 
  so I thought I'd go back and summarize those.  If I'm missing something, let 
me know.  I'm trying to keep things general here, and not go into details on how 
to do it.  I think once we have the topics down, the we can look at how to do 
it.  Some may be easy, others may be hard:

- Better maps/quests - more on the thinking side, less on the 'you just need to 
kill everything and your done' side.  How many more maps are needed is a more 
difficult question - at some level, this is ongoing, but we probably want to 
have some sort of goal for X number of maps by 2.0 or something.  Some of these 
may be localized puzzles (in the sense that everything for the puzzle is in the 
dungeon itself), others may be broader, like pupland, where clues are all over 
the place, etc.

- Remove some of the old/bad maps - this can be harder to determine - what is 
really a 'bad' map?  Maps with all hack and slash and no puzzle are not 
particularly interesting, but at the same time, if we'd remove all of those, 
wouldn't be much left - it may be more that we need to better work on 
categorizing the maps or something - that's a puzzle dungeon, that is hack and 
slash, etc, and somehow have those tags on the exits themselves, so if you 
wander accross a map, you could know the type of map (plus perhaps other 
information, like level range?)  Because that is certainly another annoying 
point - finding some map and then finding it is way too easy or too hard - 
because many maps mix monsters, you can't necessary look at the first few 
monsters to know.

- Better NPCs.  NPCs should be more visible - some wander about town, some 
perhaps in the wilderness - as of now, they pretty much all just hang out in the 
tavern, which doesn't add much color

- Better NPC conversations - for many NPC's, trying to figure out what they know 
and getting them to say it can be frustrating since it is specific word match 
and many times players don't know what word

- Better NPC interaction - in many cases, giving/taking items is a bit 
confusion, since it is an altar nearby the NPC which is doing the actual work, 
so that if the NPC moves away, or you just can't figure out the right space, the 
transaction doesn't work.

- Slow down combat - combat is too fast so there is no tactics.  Combat should 
be slowed down so that there are tactics and time to react to events.  IMO, 
crossfire should be an adventure/RPG game more than an action game.  Note that 
slowing down combat will likely have other effects - reduce gain of exp, reduce 
gain of wealth, etc.

- Add better (some?) sound/music support.  Music files are on the tracker, and 
so map level music probably isn't hard.  The game is missing lots of potential 
sound effects (just things like gates opening), so would be nice to be able to 
add more to give a more immersive feel.

- Races & Classes:  Need to be more distinctive.  Perhaps several races should 
be removed (not especially distinctive from one another- was more relevant back 
when race & class was the same thing).  Classes need to be redone so that there 
is more importance in choosing the class you take beyond starting skills, so 
that high level wizards and fighters actually look quite a bit different.

- Coherent world - rules should apply that make sense.  A lot of this may be in 
backstory on the wiki - it might be nice to move more of this (or copies of 
this) in game, in books in the library, etc.

- Add missing documentation - everything about archetypes should be documented. 
  Some code cleanup likely in order to make objects behave in a consistent fashion.

- Better testing - make more use of testing framework.