From mwedel at sonic.net Mon Dec 1 01:30:57 2008 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Sun, 30 Nov 2008 23:30:57 -0800 Subject: [crossfire] Client Snapshot Builds In-Reply-To: References: <200811290245.49880.kbulgrien@worldnet.att.net> <200811291024.22579.crossfire@ailesse.com> <200811291024.48583.kbulgrien@worldnet.att.net> <200811301206.18344.crossfire@ailesse.com> Message-ID: <493392B1.70903@sonic.net> Quick notes (I've probably missed some - if I've missed anything important, follow up). The list of supported platform is largely based on user input. I've not had a mac, so that is based on someone providing patches (if necessary) and saying it works. On going testing of those platforms does not happen by me, and maybe not at all. At one point, I think the list was a lot longer, but then we started asking 'just when is the last time someone tried to compile on irix?'. For what its worth, I've moved for redhat linux to solaris (x86/amd64) so cover that base. The official release cycle is slow for a variety of reasons - off the top of my head: - Broken release system - the tools/components are there, but changes have been made (addition/removal of file being most common) such that release/packaging fails. Not hard to fix, but takes time. - For official releases, desire to have stable components (no big check in the day before). But folks also like to have a chance to fix bug and make other changes before the release, which sort of goes against stability (fixing bugs should make things more stable, but not always the case) - Scheduling becomes a problem - between the packaging, uploading, and updating the page on sourceforge, it would be a couple hour process. It may be the case that I have the time right now, but to let everyone have a chance to put in the patches, change, etc it means a couple weeks time, when I may not have time. - The only real part of the official release was the source tar balls. Binaries may come later or not at all (I only did x86_64 rpms - never did anything more) On those notes, things to make releases happen more often: - Folks other than me doing releases. - Use standard release train model (release happens at this time - if change isn't done, need to wait for next train/release). - More frequent releases such that missing a train isn't as big an issue. - Do more frequent in between snapshots - if this uses same logic/scripts as official releases, it means that problems related to missing files get found sooner. A lot of that is easier said than done. I've also said that I'll try to do releases more often, but finding time to do so is often hard. And even on second point of release train model, I suspect that dates would be vague or in a range (something along the lines of 'Release schedule will be January, May and September'). That gives entire month to find the necessary time for a release, and not a specific day. One last note - with various free VM solutions out there, it now does make it easier to releases for multiple OS's or doing 32 bit releases on 64 bit linux (I know of the problem Lauwenmark speaks related to trying to do a 32 bit release on 64 bit linux - solution would be to have a 32 version installed in a VM) Now in terms of the 2.x branch: For the client, given that lots of good stuff has gone into the 2.x branch and nothing really removed that breaks compatibility, I'd be tempted to take what is currently 2.x and make it the main trunk (I'd need to think about it more and see what changes have been done). To prevent confusion, a long time back it was decided that the client would mirror server version - that normally worked pretty good when we were just doing incremental 1.x release, but doesn't work as good for 2.x. The reason for tying the versions together is it made support easier - just tell users to make sure their client was at least same version as server and things would work. But also since that time, the protocol has stabilized a great deal. Now the idea of the 2.x client (and thus server) was that at time of release of 2.0, the client would fully support the 2.0 protocol and nothing more (all code related to deprecated commands would be removed. All setup or other option related to protocol control would also be removed, such that at startup, the two would already be speaking the same language. Some setup commands related more to control/preferences would still be in place). Such a client almost certainly would not run on a 1.x server, and a 1.x client would not work with a 2.x server. But that hasn't happened yet, and the current trunk client certainly does work on the 1.x servers, so maybe it does make sense to take what is in trunk and call it 1.x - it would get more folks using the features that are there. It may just make sense to just work on trunk until such time when it really does become incompatible with 1.x clients. For the server, this is a trickier question - the trunk server clearly is not ready for official release - sure it will run, but work on balance and other areas need to be done. One has to ask what do we get by releasing it more widely - I think we'd certainly get a fair number of bugs or questions related to known issues. I'd be more tempted to do snapshot releases after certain major things are done but before the next one is started. And those release would still have to be marked as alpha/experimental. But maybe it doesn't even make sense then - if folks really want to play with it, having them know how to compile and get it from SVN may be a first level sanity check. The number of folks that download the server as is isn't that huge, and for pre-release test versions, I think it'd be even lower. From leaf at real-time.com Tue Dec 2 01:41:27 2008 From: leaf at real-time.com (Rick Tanner) Date: Tue, 02 Dec 2008 01:41:27 -0600 Subject: [crossfire] (Automated) Client Snapshot Releases In-Reply-To: <200811290245.49880.kbulgrien@worldnet.att.net> References: <200811290245.49880.kbulgrien@worldnet.att.net> Message-ID: <4934E6A7.9070805@real-time.com> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Kevin R. Bulgrien wrote: > > What might it take to break the blockade on 2.x client releases? I would say squashing the double character issue that you mentioned later on in your email. > P.S. Right now my build system is x86_64, and unfortunately x86_64 RPMs > seems to have the "[ 1876788 ] Doubled characters in GTK clients" bug. Or move what is currently in trunk right now and make it 1.12.0 or something similar. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkk05qAACgkQhHyvgBp+vH47MwCfcE/P/DTBSnfFU0fBEOfx1ooW pXgAoKV510Jek4IpPIPu6Fl1Ft/olNAw =TC4q -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From kbulgrien at worldnet.att.net Tue Dec 2 06:48:08 2008 From: kbulgrien at worldnet.att.net (Kevin R. Bulgrien) Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2008 06:48:08 -0600 Subject: [crossfire] (Automated) Client Snapshot Releases In-Reply-To: <4934E6A7.9070805@real-time.com> References: <200811290245.49880.kbulgrien@worldnet.att.net> <4934E6A7.9070805@real-time.com> Message-ID: <200812020648.08302.kbulgrien@worldnet.att.net> > > What might it take to break the blockade on 2.x client releases? > > I would say squashing the double character issue that you mentioned > later on in your email. > > > P.S. Right now my build system is x86_64, and unfortunately x86_64 RPMs > > seems to have the "[ 1876788 ] Doubled characters in GTK clients" bug. > > Or move what is currently in trunk right now and make it 1.12.0 or > something similar. It might seem fair to say dealing with that bug is required, but I am pretty sure that information you dug up says it is a bug on the released branch which pretty much freezes a "stable" branch too. ( https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/crossfire-client/+bug/87194 ) Of course, it is ideal to fix that, but 32-bit players should still be able to use the client, but I do not have the level of GTK experience at this point to know this is going to be something I can fix. That said, I'm in the process of setting up a 32-bit build environment to check, but so far I can only reproduce the problem when building with rpmbuild to make RPMs, and people aren't providing the level of detail about how they build to help with the debug/reproduction. It does not happen when building "normally" with ./configure; make; make install, and, I've even tried the same ./configure parameters the crossfire.spec file uses. Probably next up is to diff the spew from a regular build with an rpmbuild. In summary, I do not think the double text issue should hold back a working snapshot. From leaf at real-time.com Tue Dec 2 11:01:11 2008 From: leaf at real-time.com (Rick Tanner) Date: Tue, 02 Dec 2008 11:01:11 -0600 Subject: [crossfire] (Automated) Client Snapshot Releases In-Reply-To: <200812020648.08302.kbulgrien@worldnet.att.net> References: <200811290245.49880.kbulgrien@worldnet.att.net> <4934E6A7.9070805@real-time.com> <200812020648.08302.kbulgrien@worldnet.att.net> Message-ID: <493569D7.3080400@real-time.com> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Kevin R. Bulgrien wrote: > > In summary, I do not think the double text issue should hold back a > working snapshot. The double characters in the GTKv-2 client on a 64bit system makes the client unusable, IME. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.7 (Darwin) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFJNWnXhHyvgBp+vH4RAqsMAJ9Mme73z2SxjMflgHO6Eo0Czn7rOACfWJ+t K6l+RF6Xwky6pQsisXsWVTM= =2/DZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From kbulgrien at worldnet.att.net Tue Dec 2 17:02:55 2008 From: kbulgrien at worldnet.att.net (Kevin R. Bulgrien) Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2008 17:02:55 -0600 Subject: [crossfire] (Automated) Client Snapshot Releases In-Reply-To: <493569D7.3080400@real-time.com> References: <200811290245.49880.kbulgrien@worldnet.att.net> <200812020648.08302.kbulgrien@worldnet.att.net> <493569D7.3080400@real-time.com> Message-ID: <200812021702.55864.kbulgrien@worldnet.att.net> > > In summary, I do not think the double text issue should hold back a > > working snapshot. > > The double characters in the GTKv-2 client on a 64bit system makes the > client unusable, IME. A working 32-bit RPM, a working 64-bit tarball, etc. is not the same as a non-working 64-bit RPM... 'Nough said. From kbulgrien at worldnet.att.net Wed Dec 3 23:42:57 2008 From: kbulgrien at worldnet.att.net (Kevin R. Bulgrien) Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2008 23:42:57 -0600 Subject: [crossfire] [ 1876788 ] Doubled characters in GTK clients (trunk GTK-V2 fixed) Message-ID: <200812032342.57734.kbulgrien@worldnet.att.net> The trunk GTK-V2 client is considered fixed as of SVN 10827. This client is compatible with branch servers (metalforge). Some additional attempt will be made to verify/reproduce/fix problem in the GTK-V1 client. Branch client code is quite different from trunk, but it should be quite simple to backport changes there as needed. The issue is not closed yet because the trunk GTK-V1 client and both branch clients have not been examined or worked on yet. Kevin Bulgrien P.S. Credit is due mwedel for facilitating this fix. From nicolas.weeger at laposte.net Sat Dec 6 05:04:28 2008 From: nicolas.weeger at laposte.net (Nicolas Weeger) Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2008 12:04:28 +0100 Subject: [crossfire] [ 1876788 ] Doubled characters in GTK clients (trunk GTK-V2 fixed) In-Reply-To: <200812032342.57734.kbulgrien@worldnet.att.net> References: <200812032342.57734.kbulgrien@worldnet.att.net> Message-ID: <200812061204.33809.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> Le jeudi 04 d?cembre 2008, Kevin R. Bulgrien a ?crit?: > The trunk GTK-V2 client is considered fixed as of SVN 10827. This > client is compatible with branch servers (metalforge). > > Some additional attempt will be made to verify/reproduce/fix problem > in the GTK-V1 client. Branch client code is quite different from trunk, > but it should be quite simple to backport changes there as needed. > > The issue is not closed yet because the trunk GTK-V1 client and both > branch clients have not been examined or worked on yet. Nice, thanks for the fix! Nicolas -- http://nicolas.weeger.org [Petit site d'images, de textes, de code, bref de l'al?atoire !] -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 197 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. Url : http://mailman.metalforge.org/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20081206/50865eb3/attachment.pgp From nicolas.weeger at laposte.net Sat Dec 6 05:15:47 2008 From: nicolas.weeger at laposte.net (Nicolas Weeger) Date: Sat, 6 Dec 2008 12:15:47 +0100 Subject: [crossfire] C++/Qt server version In-Reply-To: <200811300935.08586.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> References: <200811172007.40625.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> <200811271909.30878.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> <200811300935.08586.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> Message-ID: <200812061215.50850.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> Hello. Reminder, the page http://wiki.metalforge.net/doku.php/dev%3Aserver_design and specifically the 'player-wise' section is waiting for you and your ideas! :) Nicolas -- http://nicolas.weeger.org [Petit site d'images, de textes, de code, bref de l'al?atoire !] -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 197 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. Url : http://mailman.metalforge.org/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20081206/eceb07e2/attachment.pgp From schmorp at schmorp.de Fri Dec 12 15:55:54 2008 From: schmorp at schmorp.de (Marc Lehmann) Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2008 22:55:54 +0100 Subject: [crossfire] Seeking life... In-Reply-To: <200811011332.27334.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> References: <200811011332.27334.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> Message-ID: <20081212215554.GB13883@schmorp.de> On Sat, Nov 01, 2008 at 01:32:22PM +0100, Nicolas Weeger wrote: > So, anyone working on something? Anyone having plans for working on CF? Or can > we close the shop down? I know, it's a bit late for a reply, but I found it rather satisfying and funny. The crossfire/metalforge folks are *actively* driving away everybody who is willing to do work, and you still seem to wonder about it. Now that's weird. Contrast this to Deliantra. Content: - deliantra has had vastly improved 64x64 graphics with *working* smoothing for over a year. - almost all textures have been redone, many items and buildings are now actually 3d models. known proprietary material has been removed. - a myriad of map bugs have been fixed. - npc dialogs have been vastly improved in the server, and most content has been updated, starting from mere rewriting of many of the existing (but wrong) texts in maps to adding completely new quests, cities and even whole new contintents! - many areas have been bigworldised (this is technically very easy in deliantra). - there is a multi-stage tutorial and many areas of the world (including scorn) have been redone almost completely to work more logically and give beginners a more logical introduction to the game. of course, the server can give (optional) hints - I probably forgot a lot here, because I wasn't involved in all of these changes, sorry to our content designes if I forgot something especially important :) - Rebalancing: we worked for years on rebalancing the game play, with huge successes (you have to see it to understand it), there are no known cheats or exploits left, and players actually feel that the gaem continues after level 20. - We also almost completely eradicated the frustration of the high death penalty, keeping players from leaving (I am sure you know what I am talking about), without endangering the game balance (via nimbus and other techniques). - (oh yes, don't let me mention the region-specific monsters, server-provided music, 2d sound effects for monsters and spells, interactive in-game world map and many other improvements). many of these things have only been made possible by advances in the server, of course. Client: - deliantra distributes native OS X/Windows/Linux binaries and naturally, very portable source code going along with it. - the client is very easy to install, in most cases, you simply download and start it, no installation or uninstallation required, and certainly no obscure libraries. - the client takes advantage of opengl hardware and works even on very old hardware, is full screen, has a minimap, and greatly improves user interaction by delivering something that looks and feels like a game, not something that looks like some administration console. - (well, just look at the screenshots at http://www.deliantra.net/screenshots.html). Server: Naturally, since we have two strong programmers, Deliantra also "suffers" from the server being improved the most. - the server takes advantage of C++ features wherever it can: as a simple example, shared strings and objects are transparently refcounted and garbage collected, which alone fixed a lot of bugs (especially where crossfire accessed freed objects). of course, this also simplifies string handling a lot and, in most cases, both speeds it up AND fixes a lot of buffer overflows. - the server is fully asynchronous: map loading/saving, player loading/saving and many other tasks are done in the background, so the server is able to handle more than 10 players without starting to freeze shortly every time a player changes maps. - the server can load treasures, archetypes, the world map (which is actually a png file), faces, music, configuration, extension modules, books, regions etc. etc. at runtime and of course asynchronously, without disturbing the running game. - stability: the server doesn't crash. well, we fixed over a hundred crash bugs. not only that: the server doesn't lose data on crashes, at least it didn't in the last years. To get an impression of what that means: our "unique 1" mascot in scorn had to be recreated on every restart (not crash!) because crossfire loses data even on clean restarts, while in deliantra, despite having had hundreds of crashes (mostly when rewriting the map handling parts a year (or two?) ago), the server was simply back up 20 seconds later without having lost a single second of playing time, no duplicated items and so on. Or to put it differently, a restart in deliantra means a downtime of 10 seconds, while in crossfire, it means a major map reset, crashes mean item loss of duplication etc. etc. - most of the server has been modernised: the skill/slot usage has been rationalised, the map handling has been completely redone, as well as the object and plug-in system. apart from the many crash bugs that have been fixed, a lot of content bugs have been fixed as well, such as a rewritten spell strength system, or a lighting system that actually works (you will understand if you run around in new scorn at night on deliantra vs. crossfire). - speed: I don't quite understand why crossfire people are even wondering about distributed implementations for speed: deliantra uses about 2.5% of cpu time with 10 active players, mostly due to obvious bugfixes. It has >100ms *less* latency when reacting to user input and can handle a lot more players then crossfire has seen in the last year or so (crossfire on the same hardware was somewhere between 25% to freezing with 10 active players, even without the hanuk bug (has that one been addressed yet in cf?)). - protocol: with the deliantra client, the server can actually deliver more than 8 faces/s (without crashing, yay :). whats more, it can deliver objects of any size (long books, music etc.), asynchronously, so the player can move freely even though content has not been loaded (as opposed to freezing and likely dieing in crossfire). the server even monitors packet loss of available bandwidth, with automatic bandwidth scaling so people can play unhindred even if large (megabytes) data faces are being delivered. and all that without dirty hacks such as bumping up the packet size, which just makes the game less playable. - there are about 500 summarised changes for the server alone. Heck, most of the things that have been planned or mentioned as nice ideas on this list *have* been implemented for a long time in deliantra. So why is Deliantra separate? - leaf made up ever new rules for the metaserver, and in the end, just removed us silently by making up *lies* (and of course new rules), despite deliantra following *all* rules we had agreed to on IRC before. what really happened, of course, is that deliantra was vastly more successful, so leaf just wanted to get rid of those other annoying servers in the worst possible way. of course, he alos did that to *all* other servers with a nonzero amount of players. get the idea? metalforge is the most successful server for crossfire because other, possibly more innovative and user-friendly servers simply get censored... - the deliantra devs grew very tired of the constant "you cannot do this and that becasue of ". To those who remember having told us "we cannot do xxx": we actually implemented *all* of what you thought couldn't be done. I especially remember the many nights I wasted to discuss with some crossfire dev idiot who came up with ever more reasons why 64x64 graphics (and scaling) cannot be done. I wasn't happy about kicking him from the channel, but without these annoying disucssions, we had it implemented within about a week. Yes folks, you *are* responsible for the bad state of affairs. All you do is make up idiotic regulations, force alternative crossfire servers into stupid name changes (or just silently block them), and keep telling each other why so and so is impossible or too hard and why you are soo cool. I might sound a bit big-nosed, but remember that Deliantra is the living proof of all this. Have a look at it, be amazed at what very few people can actually do if they are not constantly hindred by you. Oh, and yes, I am convinced that deliantra is very close to the philosophy of crossfire. Many long-term crossfire players describe deliantra as "crossfire as it should be nowadays". (I am actually thankful for getting expelled from the metaserver, it didn't hurt our userbase, and freed a lot of time to actually *do* stuff). > I admit I'm not motivated at all lately. The code is a real mess, maps are > pretty boring usually, and the game is going nowhere. Well, that's your fault, too, so deal with it and quit whining... Yours Sincerely, schmorp (with the consent of other deliantra hackers) -- The choice of a Deliantra, the free code+content MORPG -----==- _GNU_ http://www.deliantra.net ----==-- _ generation ---==---(_)__ __ ____ __ Marc Lehmann --==---/ / _ \/ // /\ \/ / pcg at goof.com -=====/_/_//_/\_,_/ /_/\_\ From lalo.martins at gmail.com Fri Dec 12 17:07:32 2008 From: lalo.martins at gmail.com (Lalo Martins) Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2008 23:07:32 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [crossfire] Seeking life... References: <200811011332.27334.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> <20081212215554.GB13883@schmorp.de> Message-ID: quoth Marc Lehmann as of Fri, 12 Dec 2008 22:55:54 +0100: > On Sat, Nov 01, 2008 at 01:32:22PM +0100, Nicolas Weeger > wrote: >> So, anyone working on something? Anyone having plans for working on CF? >> Or can we close the shop down? > > I know, it's a bit late for a reply, but I found it rather satisfying > and funny. No, it's just late, really. After 1.5 months of a lot of activity happening, your reply just came of whiny and clueless. Or did you completely miss the server rewrite thread, the news about having code and content leaders, the discussions about Tallworld? Ah, you probably did. Ok then. > The crossfire/metalforge folks are *actively* driving away everybody who > is willing to do work, and you still seem to wonder about it. Now that's > weird. Whatever helps you sleep at night, dude. > Contrast this to Deliantra. You got some stuff working? Good for you. Ranting and flaming about it won't get you anywhere, though, except for losing any scraps of respect some people (me included) still had for you and your project. Please don't post to this list anymore. best, Lalo Martins -- So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable. ----- http://lalomartins.info/ GNU: never give up freedom http://www.gnu.org/ From nicolas.weeger at laposte.net Sun Dec 14 06:16:08 2008 From: nicolas.weeger at laposte.net (Nicolas Weeger) Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2008 13:16:08 +0100 Subject: [crossfire] What about a gameplay revolution? Message-ID: <200812141316.12165.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> Hello. Here are some propositions to make CF a different but hopefully funnier game :) 1) Don't give out stats to players. Don't give HP/SP/GR/ whatever. Only give hints about the health ("you feel very bad", "you bleed a lot") and such things ("with great effort you take the armor, but fall on the ground trying to put it on") Rationale: we're doing a game, not some financial computation. Also, players should feel whether they are ready to tackle dragons or are doing damage to an opponent, not merely check stats. Of course, internally, the game could (should) still use numbers/stats. 2) Make attack/defense and other things just numbers with the rule "the higher the better". Attack 50 vs defense 50 => 50% chance to hit (or something like that). No "is it wc which is better lower, or ac?"). In the same way, make weapons +1 just give some attack bonus, that's all. 3) Don't give so many powerful items. Have players actually create such items, with difficulty, so they need to take time (or buy it from other players). Makes a "craftmanship" or even alchemy skill much more interesting. Want a sword with fire damage? Go find a rare stone of fire or harness the power of a volcano to make such weapon. 4) Reduce loot a lot. Don't put chests everywhere just waiting to be opened. Have stuff randomly grow on trees or plants, fish from sea, mine ore to build items, find stones to build buildings, whatever. 5) Remove map reset. A player destroyed a map? Well, another needs to rebuild it ingame - or let an NPC do it. That costs money and time, that's fine. And no need to rebuild it the same way :) Just some random thoughts. Nicolas -- http://nicolas.weeger.org [Petit site d'images, de textes, de code, bref de l'al?atoire !] -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 197 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. Url : http://mailman.metalforge.org/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20081214/93ad8d73/attachment.pgp From kbulgrien at att.net Sun Dec 14 20:19:13 2008 From: kbulgrien at att.net (Kevin Bulgrien) Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2008 20:19:13 -0600 Subject: [crossfire] What about a gameplay revolution? In-Reply-To: <200812141316.12165.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> References: <200812141316.12165.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> Message-ID: <20081214201913.6cb0ee60.kbulgrien@att.net> > Hello. > > Here are some propositions to make CF a different but hopefully funnier > game :) > > 1) Don't give out stats to players. Don't give HP/SP/GR/ whatever. Only give > hints about the health ("you feel very bad", "you bleed a lot") and such > things ("with great effort you take the armor, but fall on the ground trying > to put it on") > Rationale: we're doing a game, not some financial computation. Also, players > should feel whether they are ready to tackle dragons or are doing damage to > an opponent, not merely check stats. > Of course, internally, the game could (should) still use numbers/stats. The idea has merit as there are definite aspects of the game that could use this sort of thing. One might ask oneself if adventure/role players are more "feel/mood" oriented as opposed to numbers-oriented. I'd be surprised if the answer came back that role players typically prefer environment to the point of removing numbers. (And sure, CF does not have to be one more of the same kind of game, but the numbers do personally help me play the game to the point where if they were gone I would personally get frustrated with the game.) On the other hand, I suspect that crowd would find feel/mood/environment content a big plus. There is no doubt improvement on these "feel" hints would have a positive effect, and that this would be a good point to work on in the early stages. > 2) Make attack/defense and other things just numbers with the rule "the higher > the better". Attack 50 vs defense 50 => 50% chance to hit (or something like > that). No "is it wc which is better lower, or ac?"). In the same way, make > weapons +1 just give some attack bonus, that's all. This seems more workable than removing the numbers altogether. I rarely know what these numbers do anyway, and personally do already prefer the simplicity of higher is better. On the flip side, what does it hurt to have the formula generally known outside of the game? > 3) Don't give so many powerful items. Have players actually create such items, > with difficulty, so they need to take time (or buy it from other players). > Makes a "craftmanship" or even alchemy skill much more interesting. > Want a sword with fire damage? Go find a rare stone of fire or harness the > power of a volcano to make such weapon. "So many powerful items" is not something I have experienced, but, I do find that the unlimited map replay in CF is annoying. (Plug for feature request on limiting, but not eliminating replay). I am in support of finding a reasonable way of to do this (replay/limit powerful artifacts), but I do think that the restrictions should not completely eliminate replay, especially when large periods of time elapse between playing spurts. I personally love the fact that I can come back to CF after months and optionally "start over" playing long sequences that take many hours of gameplay. I am not in favor of making CF a game where you must burn 100's of hours to gameplay to attain anything cool. That said, the idea of using craftsmanship and "ingredients" is welcome. I personally never played with alchemy, but have found games that concentrate on resource collecting and craftsmanship have been fun. Note that care needs to be taken... the royalty quests in Scorn tend to be a bit too vague on how to get to the next stage. Not that I am at all a typical CFer, but I've never gotten to the Dragon Lord quest, and the ones before that are way too hard for those not familiar with smallworld. > 4) Reduce loot a lot. Don't put chests everywhere just waiting to be opened. > Have stuff randomly grow on trees or plants, fish from sea, mine ore to build > items, find stones to build buildings, whatever. I am certainly in favor of the later proposition. The prior is unclear. People seem to think that loot is too prevalent in CF, and this is a mystery to me. I NEVER have enough money in CF, but I also have never gotten higher than lvl 30 something. When I was that high, the bigworld reset killed that character, and since then I have never broken 30. > 5) Remove map reset. A player destroyed a map? Well, another needs to rebuild > it ingame - or let an NPC do it. That costs money and time, that's fine. And > no need to rebuild it the same way :) No. Replay limits instead (penalty to loot/experience to the point where if you replay enough, there is absolutely no value to the map except exploration and taking in the scenery). I don't care if there are maps that work the way this is described, but it should not be the norm. This smacks of being a playground for people to spoil the game for other people. I see no good reason to make CF a game where the first guy there is the only one who can play the game at the expense of everyone else. > Just some random thoughts. Good thoughts as usual! -- Kevin Bulgrien From mwedel at sonic.net Sun Dec 14 23:38:31 2008 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2008 21:38:31 -0800 Subject: [crossfire] What about a gameplay revolution? In-Reply-To: <200812141316.12165.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> References: <200812141316.12165.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> Message-ID: <4945ED57.9000607@sonic.net> Nicolas Weeger wrote: > Hello. > > Here are some propositions to make CF a different but hopefully funnier > game :) I'm thinking that was funner, not funnier - but more humor in the game wouldn't hurt :) > > 1) Don't give out stats to players. Don't give HP/SP/GR/ whatever. Only give > hints about the health ("you feel very bad", "you bleed a lot") and such > things ("with great effort you take the armor, but fall on the ground trying > to put it on") > Rationale: we're doing a game, not some financial computation. Also, players > should feel whether they are ready to tackle dragons or are doing damage to > an opponent, not merely check stats. > Of course, internally, the game could (should) still use numbers/stats. I generally like being able to quickly glance at my stats and see how I'm doing. If I need to carefully look through messages to know if I'm about to die, that probably makes things less fun for me, not more. If the human players were spending bunch of time doing calculations (like in live action games), then simplifying such things may make more sense. Likewise, if the game was much more an adventure game, then maybe not having stats would make more sense (by adventure game, I mean games where the focus is on exploration and solving puzzles, like say myst, and not killing things). I'm also not sure if removing stats would help out in your dragon example - the real problem in many cases when you first go to fight something is no idea how powerful it is. In many cases tough monsters can be found in areas with much weaker monsters. > > 2) Make attack/defense and other things just numbers with the rule "the higher > the better". Attack 50 vs defense 50 => 50% chance to hit (or something like > that). No "is it wc which is better lower, or ac?"). In the same way, make > weapons +1 just give some attack bonus, that's all. I think WC is the only thing that violates that rule, correct? And the reason it does so is because it was based on the old AD&Dv1 version of THACO/AC (or so I believe). I'll note that AD&Dv3 actually fixed that - higher the AC, the better. Likewise, the idea of WC basically went away - instead, you just have a bonus to hit. Ends up being very simple - if d20 + to hit >= AC, you hit. Making that change in crossfire is IMO a good idea and would be really easy to do - one could easily enough write a script to go through and replace wc X with hit_bonus 20-X (with the script doing the calculation). Likewise, a similar change for AC could be done (new_ac = 20-X) > > 3) Don't give so many powerful items. Have players actually create such items, > with difficulty, so they need to take time (or buy it from other players). > Makes a "craftmanship" or even alchemy skill much more interesting. > Want a sword with fire damage? Go find a rare stone of fire or harness the > power of a volcano to make such weapon. Agree. Too often in maps/quests, the final reward is some artifact type weapon. It would be more interesting if these were components or pieces to make up really good weapons. And ideally give out very few static rewards (meaning that you always get item X from some quest - make it a treasure list of maybe 10 different items, etc) > > 4) Reduce loot a lot. Don't put chests everywhere just waiting to be opened. > Have stuff randomly grow on trees or plants, fish from sea, mine ore to build > items, find stones to build buildings, whatever. I don't know if the problem is so much the amount of loot, or more the lack to spend it on anything. I know there are some exceptions - guild houses go up for auction, and you can spend lots of money if you want your apartment a big bigger or quick exits to different maps. But even many of those are one time upfront costs. At some point in my adventuring, I just don't find anything in the shops to buy very often - I've gotten all the spells, the likelihood of actually finding any decent items in the shops is low. So that money just piles up. I think that is really the problem - unless there are more useful ways to spend money (needed for adventuring gear) it just accumulates. > > 5) Remove map reset. A player destroyed a map? Well, another needs to rebuild > it ingame - or let an NPC do it. That costs money and time, that's fine. And > no need to rebuild it the same way :) How do you handle dungeons? Once someone does the goblin quest map, no one can ever do it again (who is going to repopulate it with monsters, etc) One could perhaps make more of the maps persistent on a per player basis (basically store them as per unique maps). So each player could only complete certain maps once. What I don't know how to do in that cases is parties where someone has done a map and other folks haven't (or suppose it is a big party, and several folks have explored a map to some degree). Clearly parties should be able to explore the same map if they wanted to. From mail-lists+cfdev at dogphilosophy.net Sun Dec 14 20:51:00 2008 From: mail-lists+cfdev at dogphilosophy.net (mail-lists+cfdev at dogphilosophy.net) Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2008 20:51:00 -0600 Subject: [crossfire] What about a gameplay revolution? In-Reply-To: <20081214201913.6cb0ee60.kbulgrien@att.net> References: <200812141316.12165.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> <20081214201913.6cb0ee60.kbulgrien@att.net> Message-ID: <200812142051.00522.mail-lists+cfdev@dogphilosophy.net> On Sunday 14 December 2008, Kevin Bulgrien wrote: [...] > > 3) Don't give so many powerful items. Have players actually create such > > items, with difficulty, so they need to take time (or buy it from other > > players). Makes a "craftmanship" or even alchemy skill much more > > interesting. Want a sword with fire damage? Go find a rare stone of fire > > or harness the power of a volcano to make such weapon. > > "So many powerful items" is not something I have experienced, but, I do > find that the unlimited map replay in CF is annoying. (Plug for feature > request on limiting, but not eliminating replay). I am in support of > finding a reasonable way of to do this (replay/limit powerful artifacts), > but I do think that the restrictions should not completely eliminate > replay, especially when large periods of time elapse between playing > spurts. I personally love the fact that I can come back to CF after > months and optionally "start over" playing long sequences that take many > hours of gameplay. I am not in favor of making CF a game where you must > burn 100's of hours to gameplay to attain anything cool. That said, the > idea of using craftsmanship and "ingredients" is welcome. I personally > never played with alchemy, but have found games that concentrate on > resource collecting and craftsmanship have been fun. [...] > > 5) Remove map reset. A player destroyed a map? Well, another needs to > > rebuild it ingame - or let an NPC do it. That costs money and time, > > that's fine. And no need to rebuild it the same way :) > > No. Replay limits instead (penalty to loot/experience to the point where > if you replay enough, there is absolutely no value to the map except > exploration and taking in the scenery). I don't care if there are maps > that work the way this is described, but it should not be the norm. This > smacks of being a playground for people to spoil the game for other people. > I see no good reason to make CF a game where the first guy there is the > only one who can play the game at the expense of everyone else. I've got two thoughts here myself. For one thing, the fact that an item can be labeled with a blanket "powerful" or "not powerful" may be part of the problem. It might be beneficial to look at ways to make items more useful outside of the context of big numbers, hard- to-defend-against damage types, and "hit points". As for map resets: it would obviously take a fair amount of additional new code, but perhaps a type of map that "grows" or develops naturally might be introduced. If something vaguely resembling the AI code for a "resource based" RTS game were implemented, computer generated groups could take over "cleared" areas and redevelop them. One might wipe out a Kobold warren, and then come back not long after and find some kobolds had come back and started rebuilding (adding new tunnels and rooms in the process). Or that Orcs had come along and taken over instead. Or that the ramshackle village of bandits hidden in the woods that was cleared out previously has now been taken over by undead cultists... It might even be feasible to have map-makers predefine who the first few groups running the map will be (e.g. predefining that lizard-people are waiting to move in once adventurers kill off the dragons in the cave). From nicolas.weeger at laposte.net Mon Dec 15 06:38:00 2008 From: nicolas.weeger at laposte.net (Nicolas Weeger) Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2008 13:38:00 +0100 Subject: [crossfire] What about a gameplay revolution? In-Reply-To: <4945ED57.9000607@sonic.net> References: <200812141316.12165.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> <4945ED57.9000607@sonic.net> Message-ID: <200812151338.04117.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> > If the human players were spending bunch of time doing calculations (like > in live action games), then simplifying such things may make more sense. That is the point, I think: a fun game isn't a calculation game. So why put calculations we don't need? :) > Likewise, if the game was much more an adventure game, then maybe not > having stats would make more sense (by adventure game, I mean games where > the focus is on exploration and solving puzzles, like say myst, and not > killing things). Maybe that's somethine we should consider - remove some hack&slash aspect, make the game more strategic, have more time to think about what you want to do next. > I'm also not sure if removing stats would help out in your dragon example > - the real problem in many cases when you first go to fight something is no > idea how powerful it is. In many cases tough monsters can be found in > areas with much weaker monsters. Then that needs to be fixed :) > I think WC is the only thing that violates that rule, correct? And the > reason it does so is because it was based on the old AD&Dv1 version of > THACO/AC (or so I believe). I'll note that AD&Dv3 actually fixed that - > higher the AC, the better. Likewise, the idea of WC basically went away - > instead, you just have a bonus to hit. Ends up being very simple - if d20 > + to hit >= AC, you hit. > > Making that change in crossfire is IMO a good idea and would be really > easy to do - one could easily enough write a script to go through and > replace wc X with hit_bonus 20-X (with the script doing the calculation). > Likewise, a similar change for AC could be done (new_ac = 20-X) Actually, I was more thinking like: if attack == defense, 50% chance to hit. Attack > defense => more than 50%, capped to eg 90%. Attack < defense => less than 50%, capped to eg 10%. Maybe not linear progression, but that can be adjusted (and 50% is some value I didn't think about, can be adjusted). Also, you could have 'sword +1' => +5 bonus to attack, or +10, something like that. > Agree. Too often in maps/quests, the final reward is some artifact type > weapon. It would be more interesting if these were components or pieces to > make up really good weapons. And ideally give out very few static rewards > (meaning that you always get item X from some quest - make it a treasure > list of maybe 10 different items, etc) What about something like you need to do 10 quests to have all pieces needed for a powerful weapon? Each quests only gives one piece of the weapon, 10 needed. But that still doesn't address the issue of map camping or leveling up. > I don't know if the problem is so much the amount of loot, or more the > lack to spend it on anything. > > I know there are some exceptions - guild houses go up for auction, and > you can spend lots of money if you want your apartment a big bigger or > quick exits to different maps. But even many of those are one time upfront > costs. > > At some point in my adventuring, I just don't find anything in the shops > to buy very often - I've gotten all the spells, the likelihood of actually > finding any decent items in the shops is low. So that money just piles up. > > I think that is really the problem - unless there are more useful ways to > spend money (needed for adventuring gear) it just accumulates. Many things can be thought of. Apartment rent. Weapon/armor reparation. Potions to buy, or ingredients. Or lessons to level up or improve a skill. > How do you handle dungeons? Once someone does the goblin quest map, no > one can ever do it again (who is going to repopulate it with monsters, etc) Have some algorithm regenerate the map at some point, in a different shape? Mostly, make the world dynamic, with population variations and such (you trashed many orcs? hard for them, not many to see around - will become again visible later on). > One could perhaps make more of the maps persistent on a per player basis > (basically store them as per unique maps). So each player could only > complete certain maps once. > > What I don't know how to do in that cases is parties where someone has > done a map and other folks haven't (or suppose it is a big party, and > several folks have explored a map to some degree). Clearly parties should > be able to explore the same map if they wanted to. Yes, there's the party issue. IMO we should improve a lot how party work, to make it funner too. I think one current aspect of the game is 'everyone wants to be a hero'. If we want to keep this, of course we need to level up or such. If on the other hand we want something else, then maybe not everyone needs to be a hero :) One other point that was briefly discussed on the list: currently we lack a content and gameplay leader (not necessarily the same person, but well, maybe easier). Basically we need someone who can drive the game in some direction, and decide things ("yes, those maps are great, accepted", "could you add some more background story, please?", "no, those maps don't feel at all the spirit, rejected", "this item is too powerful and needs adjusting"). I'll admit I don't really feel qualified for this role, as I'm not totally sure of what I want the game to be :) (but I could think of some things). But IMO we definitely need someone, else we'll just not go anywhere, the game will be a disparate assembly of various parts without coherence. Nicolas -- http://nicolas.weeger.org [Petit site d'images, de textes, de code, bref de l'al?atoire !] -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 197 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. Url : http://mailman.metalforge.org/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20081215/780bf33b/attachment.pgp From fuchs.andy at gmail.com Tue Dec 16 00:37:17 2008 From: fuchs.andy at gmail.com (Andrew Fuchs) Date: Tue, 16 Dec 2008 01:37:17 -0500 Subject: [crossfire] What about a gameplay revolution? In-Reply-To: <200812141316.12165.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> References: <200812141316.12165.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> Message-ID: 2008/12/14 Nicolas Weeger > 1) Don't give out stats to players. Don't give HP/SP/GR/ whatever. Only give > hints about the health ("you feel very bad", "you bleed a lot") and such > things ("with great effort you take the armor, but fall on the ground trying > to put it on") > Rationale: we're doing a game, not some financial computation. Also, players > should feel whether they are ready to tackle dragons or are doing damage to > an opponent, not merely check stats. > Of course, internally, the game could (should) still use numbers/stats. Possibly use visual indicators either in-game or on the player's hud. An example for slowed movement would be a limping animation. > 2) Make attack/defense and other things just numbers with the rule "the higher > the better". Attack 50 vs defense 50 => 50% chance to hit (or something like > that). No "is it wc which is better lower, or ac?"). In the same way, make > weapons +1 just give some attack bonus, that's all. No idea > 3) Don't give so many powerful items. Have players actually create such items, > with difficulty, so they need to take time (or buy it from other players). > Makes a "craftmanship" or even alchemy skill much more interesting. > Want a sword with fire damage? Go find a rare stone of fire or harness the > power of a volcano to make such weapon. > > 4) Reduce loot a lot. Don't put chests everywhere just waiting to be opened. > Have stuff randomly grow on trees or plants, fish from sea, mine ore to build > items, find stones to build buildings, whatever. > > 5) Remove map reset. A player destroyed a map? Well, another needs to rebuild > it ingame - or let an NPC do it. That costs money and time, that's fine. And > no need to rebuild it the same way :) If a player has already completed the dungeon and enters it alone, alter the later parts of it to show that it has already been completed. If they enter with a party and leave the dungeon with artifacts they already have (we would need to implement some type of item tracking system) add 'defects' to the newly obtained artifacts. These defects would make the artifacts break and become less effective. I do agree that we should promote the craftsman skills more. 2008/12/15 Mark Wedel > I don't know if the problem is so much the amount of loot, or more the lack to > spend it on anything. > > I know there are some exceptions - guild houses go up for auction, and you can > spend lots of money if you want your apartment a big bigger or quick exits to > different maps. But even many of those are one time upfront costs. > > At some point in my adventuring, I just don't find anything in the shops to > buy very often - I've gotten all the spells, the likelihood of actually finding > any decent items in the shops is low. So that money just piles up. > > I think that is really the problem - unless there are more useful ways to > spend money (needed for adventuring gear) it just accumulates. An automated system that would allow a server administrator to charge a rent or tax on guild houses would be nice. Possibly allowing granular, per region, configuration. Rent for apartments could be charged, but we would need to implement a system that would allow players to recover items (except for built customizations) left in their inaccessible apartments. Another idea is if a player's items occasionally need to be repaired. Requiring that powerful artifacts be maintained after some use or time, potentially by very skilled and expensive craftsmen, would give higher level players a use for their money. Consideration should be taken for lower level players, who might come to depend on artifacts which where donated to them. Done possibly by weakening the artifact to a point where it is of little use to higher level players, but still valuable to players at lower levels. -- Andrew Fuchs From mwedel at sonic.net Tue Dec 16 01:12:21 2008 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2008 23:12:21 -0800 Subject: [crossfire] What about a gameplay revolution? In-Reply-To: <200812151338.04117.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> References: <200812141316.12165.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> <4945ED57.9000607@sonic.net> <200812151338.04117.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> Message-ID: <494754D5.1060500@sonic.net> Nicolas Weeger wrote: >> Likewise, if the game was much more an adventure game, then maybe not >> having stats would make more sense (by adventure game, I mean games where >> the focus is on exploration and solving puzzles, like say myst, and not >> killing things). > > Maybe that's somethine we should consider - remove some hack&slash aspect, > make the game more strategic, have more time to think about what you want to > do next. That's a bit different game. I do think too much emphasis of the game is really hack and slash. Or maybe hack and slash with no real purpose. Most RPG's do tend to have a lot of combat - that is sort of the basis of an RPG vs adventure game. But lots also have some purpose - get this item from the bottom of a dungeon, kill that nasty boss creature, etc, and these get tied into some basic storyline or quest. Some of the crossfire dungeons do fit into some framework of 'go do this and get some reward'. But a lot are just you come accross some dungeon, go in, and kill everything in sight, and there happens to be nice reward at the end. Crossfire is an RPG game at its heart - its not an adventure game (like myst), so combat will be a part of it. And while puzzles are good, and more puzzles would be welcome, they are also not as repeatable as hack and slash. What I mean by that is that in crossfire, you could play a fighter and do dungeons and get that character at high level, and then decide to try a fireborn - while defeating monsters the first time with a fighter would give me hints on how to do it with a fireborn, it is a bit of a different experience. However, for the puzzle, once you know the answer, that is it, and the next time around it could be really easy and now just an excersize of running around and doing the steps. I personally don't find much replay value in adventure/puzzle games that much for that reason - the fun was figuring out the puzzles the first time around (or finding places, whatever), but RPG's do have some level of repeatability. The combat rebalancing is slowing down combat, so does give player a bit more time to think, which is a good thing. >> I think WC is the only thing that violates that rule, correct? And the >> reason it does so is because it was based on the old AD&Dv1 version of >> THACO/AC (or so I believe). I'll note that AD&Dv3 actually fixed that - >> higher the AC, the better. Likewise, the idea of WC basically went away - >> instead, you just have a bonus to hit. Ends up being very simple - if d20 >> + to hit >= AC, you hit. >> >> Making that change in crossfire is IMO a good idea and would be really >> easy to do - one could easily enough write a script to go through and >> replace wc X with hit_bonus 20-X (with the script doing the calculation). >> Likewise, a similar change for AC could be done (new_ac = 20-X) > > Actually, I was more thinking like: if attack == defense, 50% chance to hit. > Attack > defense => more than 50%, capped to eg 90%. Attack < defense => less > than 50%, capped to eg 10%. > Maybe not linear progression, but that can be adjusted (and 50% is some value > I didn't think about, can be adjusted). > > Also, you could have 'sword +1' => +5 bonus to attack, or +10, something like > that. That all works. I'm not sure if it is worth while going to a percentage system - then you have other oddities like a +1 sword really gives a 5% bonus (so why don't you just make that a +5 sword, etc). But this sort of goes more into the details - I think the general thing of higher numbers is better just makes sense - explaining WC and AC is always odd. > > >> Agree. Too often in maps/quests, the final reward is some artifact type >> weapon. It would be more interesting if these were components or pieces to >> make up really good weapons. And ideally give out very few static rewards >> (meaning that you always get item X from some quest - make it a treasure >> list of maybe 10 different items, etc) > > What about something like you need to do 10 quests to have all pieces needed > for a powerful weapon? Each quests only gives one piece of the weapon, 10 > needed. > But that still doesn't address the issue of map camping or leveling up. Yeah, there are different approaches. If players craft their own weapons, then one could find different components that give different bonuses - instead of the existing armor improvment logic, maybe you find something that gives it 5% of fire resistance, or +1 str, etc. And you can go and choose how to combine those different pieces together. Maybe as a way to burn up money, you have the empty weapon sold in towns. For example, for 100 GP you can buy a sword that can hold 3 of those enchantments. If you want a sword that hold 10, it is 2500 GP, etc. At low levels, you may not be finding many of those enchantments, so not a big deal. Map camping is probably a different problem - I'm not sure it can really be solved as it relates to loot. > >> I don't know if the problem is so much the amount of loot, or more the >> lack to spend it on anything. >> >> I know there are some exceptions - guild houses go up for auction, and >> you can spend lots of money if you want your apartment a big bigger or >> quick exits to different maps. But even many of those are one time upfront >> costs. >> >> At some point in my adventuring, I just don't find anything in the shops >> to buy very often - I've gotten all the spells, the likelihood of actually >> finding any decent items in the shops is low. So that money just piles up. >> >> I think that is really the problem - unless there are more useful ways to >> spend money (needed for adventuring gear) it just accumulates. > > Many things can be thought of. Apartment rent. Weapon/armor reparation. > Potions to buy, or ingredients. Or lessons to level up or improve a skill. Yep - many of those would need more discussion to sort out details. I think potions would be one area with new combat that are more usable. Pricing them is key - I think in the past, some potions, while useful, were so expensive for what you get that it isn't worth it. A magic power potion could be an example - getting back all your mana instantly can be nice, but how much value is there to it if you can just step to the previous map and wait 10 seconds? It may also be that potions based more on effects that last - the fire resistance ones are good example - those are valuable, but no found often enough in shops. But other cases would be instead of something just giving you back a bunch of mana or hp, increasing the regeneration of those for say 5 minutes could be quite useful, and something players might consider worthwhile. I think finding/making things for players to buy may be one of the easier aspects of the game. But I was thinking about the general loot factor, and had some other quick thoughts: - There isn't any standard for what is appropriate treasure. The map making guide says something along the lines of treasure appropriate for difficulty. But what the hell does that really mean? Likewise, if I make up a new monster, what is appropriate treasure for it? - Even within existing monster archs, treasure isn't consistent - humanoids generate a lot of treasure (orcs, goblins), where other stuff doesn't. This means that from a player point of view, you go to where that treasure is - you'd rather fight orcs than birds because of that treasure difference. This could be fixed in a few ways - while humanoids still need some number of items for their attacks (like bows, etc), it doesn't mean that they are things that the character could get - one could say that the vast majority of those items are worthless crap and have no value (a club is just a stick someone picked up after all). So now instead of every orc dropping a pile of stuff, maybe every 4th orc drops one item type of thing. Drastic reduction in treasure - it also means that when you do get something, it is at least a little bit more exciting. > >> How do you handle dungeons? Once someone does the goblin quest map, no >> one can ever do it again (who is going to repopulate it with monsters, etc) > > Have some algorithm regenerate the map at some point, in a different shape? > Mostly, make the world dynamic, with population variations and such (you > trashed many orcs? hard for them, not many to see around - will become again > visible later on). I guess it depends on what problem is trying to be solved here. Most games have maps that are repeatable at some level or another - simply because otherwise you need a huge set of maps. And as a new player, I'd get turned off pretty quickly if I logged in, and have a list of a few beginners dungeons I could explore, only to find that they have all been cleared out. > > I think one current aspect of the game is 'everyone wants to be a hero'. If we > want to keep this, of course we need to level up or such. If on the other > hand we want something else, then maybe not everyone needs to be a hero :) As per note a ways above, depends on the type of game. My personal thought is that in an RPG, everyone _can be_ a hero. It doesn't mean you have to play that way - if one wanted to play a low key character who goes and makes items, that is fine. But I think we also need to identify what the core focus is. I think I'd prefer a game that is more limited in what you can do (say is much more hero orientated) but does a good job at it vs a game that lets you do a much of different things (Be a farmer) but doesn't do a very good job at any of those. Reason? If I'm going to choose to play something, I'll choose the one that does the best job at it. If there is some game that is really good on the non heroic stuff about farming, and I wanted to play a farmer, I'd probably do it on that game vs a game which doesn't do a very good job. Simply on the basis that the game that does a really good job is probably more interesting to play. Now crossfire could be really good in many different areas. But that is also many different areas that then need work, balance, improvement, etc. And there has to be enough demand of that feature to warrant that work as well as ongoing maintenance. If we had farming code, and virtually no one used it and it had various bugs, we'd probably just pull that code rather than try and fix the bugs. > > > > One other point that was briefly discussed on the list: currently we lack a > content and gameplay leader (not necessarily the same person, but well, maybe > easier). > Basically we need someone who can drive the game in some direction, and decide > things ("yes, those maps are great, accepted", "could you add some more > background story, please?", "no, those maps don't feel at all the spirit, > rejected", "this item is too powerful and needs adjusting"). > > I'll admit I don't really feel qualified for this role, as I'm not totally > sure of what I want the game to be :) > (but I could think of some things). > But IMO we definitely need someone, else we'll just not go anywhere, the game > will be a disparate assembly of various parts without coherence. I agree with that. Driving work forward is hard - IMO, the person doing the driving also has to do a fair amount of work. I think figuring out the direction isn't that hard - we've done things like that before. The hard part is actually seeing the work through. From mwedel at sonic.net Tue Dec 16 01:30:32 2008 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Mon, 15 Dec 2008 23:30:32 -0800 Subject: [crossfire] What about a gameplay revolution? In-Reply-To: References: <200812141316.12165.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> Message-ID: <49475918.40109@sonic.net> Andrew Fuchs wrote: > 2008/12/14 Nicolas Weeger >> 1) Don't give out stats to players. Don't give HP/SP/GR/ whatever. Only give >> hints about the health ("you feel very bad", "you bleed a lot") and such >> things ("with great effort you take the armor, but fall on the ground trying >> to put it on") >> Rationale: we're doing a game, not some financial computation. Also, players >> should feel whether they are ready to tackle dragons or are doing damage to >> an opponent, not merely check stats. >> Of course, internally, the game could (should) still use numbers/stats. > > Possibly use visual indicators either in-game or on the player's hud. > An example for slowed movement would be a limping animation. Yep - many games also use small icons to denote effects (both good and bad) with some form a pseudo stat bar to denote duration. Putting that type of logic in probably wouldn't be that hard. For most all effects, once the effect starts, the duration is constant, so it would only need to be communicated to the client once. There are ways to end the effect prematurely, but in that case, just need some way to say 'this effect is now ended' >> 5) Remove map reset. A player destroyed a map? Well, another needs to rebuild >> it ingame - or let an NPC do it. That costs money and time, that's fine. And >> no need to rebuild it the same way :) > > If a player has already completed the dungeon and enters it alone, > alter the later parts of it to show that it has already been > completed. If they enter with a party and leave the dungeon with > artifacts they already have (we would need to implement some type of > item tracking system) add 'defects' to the newly obtained artifacts. > These defects would make the artifacts break and become less > effective. This starts to get pretty tricky, as I can quickly think of various ways this can be circumvented (if in a party and one of the other party members picks up those artifacts and then gives them to another player later on). There are probably ways to try and prevent that, but I'd be cautious of adding anything that may reduce player interaction (trades in this case) I think the problem that is trying to be solved needs to be identified, if there is a problem - there may be simpler ways to fix it. One could pretty simply put in certain force objects into the character to denote they've completed that dungeon (or maybe even just how many times they have been in it), and also prevent characters from entering if they've done it too often, etc. > 2008/12/15 Mark Wedel >> I don't know if the problem is so much the amount of loot, or more the lack to >> spend it on anything. >> >> I know there are some exceptions - guild houses go up for auction, and you can >> spend lots of money if you want your apartment a big bigger or quick exits to >> different maps. But even many of those are one time upfront costs. >> >> At some point in my adventuring, I just don't find anything in the shops to >> buy very often - I've gotten all the spells, the likelihood of actually finding >> any decent items in the shops is low. So that money just piles up. >> >> I think that is really the problem - unless there are more useful ways to >> spend money (needed for adventuring gear) it just accumulates. > > An automated system that would allow a server administrator to charge > a rent or tax on guild houses would be nice. Possibly allowing > granular, per region, configuration. Rent for apartments could be > charged, but we would need to implement a system that would allow > players to recover items (except for built customizations) left in > their inaccessible apartments. Guild house rent makes a lot of sense, since the guilds are supposed to be active, and if they are not, they should default on the rent and someone else buy the guild house. Apartments are perhaps trickier - do you base rent on amount of time the character is played, or real world earth time? And the rent has to be such that characters don't create secondary bank characters, etc because the rent is too high, and if it is too low, doesn't have much affect on getting money out of the game. > > Another idea is if a player's items occasionally need to be repaired. > Requiring that powerful artifacts be maintained after some use or > time, potentially by very skilled and expensive craftsmen, would give > higher level players a use for their money. Consideration should be > taken for lower level players, who might come to depend on artifacts > which where donated to them. Done possibly by weakening the artifact > to a point where it is of little use to higher level players, but > still valuable to players at lower levels. This has been discussed many times. I've played some games that have such a system - in many cases, it can just end up being more annoying than anything else. That said, coming up with such a system may not be hard. Off the top of my head, each item could have some type of quality rating (100 means perfect condition, 0 means broken). All high quality items start at 100. As an item is damaged, it quality rating goes down, maybe leveling off at 50 (half damage) The effect of the item could be similarly reduced (stat modifiers, damage, armor, etc). So a good artifact given to a low level player may still be quite good even at 50% damage, and that low level character could go around with a beat up item. In fact, in this example, the most likely scenario is that the low level character was given an item with 50% damage from a high level character who didn't consider it that useful anymore. At higher levels, having your items 50% as effective would be a huge drop in power - probably difference between life and death. Repair cost of items is based on value of item. So likewise, that low level character could repair their +1 armor for little cost (since it is fairly low cost item), but those higher level folks with +3 dragon scale are spending a fair amount of money on repairs. From kbulgrien at att.net Thu Dec 18 22:21:52 2008 From: kbulgrien at att.net (Kevin R. Bulgrien) Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2008 22:21:52 -0600 Subject: [crossfire] [ 1876788 ] Doubled characters in GTK clients (closed) In-Reply-To: <200812032342.57734.kbulgrien@worldnet.att.net> References: <200812032342.57734.kbulgrien@worldnet.att.net> Message-ID: <200812182221.52609.kbulgrien@att.net> All GTK clients on trunk and branch are now considered free of the infamous and elusive double-character bug. i586 clients were tested at SVN r11002, and x86_64 clients were tested at SVN r11012. The tracker has been closed: [ crossfire-Bugs-1876788 ] Doubled characters in GTK clients (unusable) https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=113833&aid=1876788&group_id=13833 Along the way, another GTK-V1 client bug was killed off as well. It was required to use Pop Ups to use that client, but that issue has been closed also. Whomever builds the Windows client might want to rebuild a new snapshot. Lets also consider getting the trunk clients built and in distribution. I have auto-build scripts that make it pretty easy to generate both branch and trunk client RPM packages and and tarballs. I also would like to see the trunk clients become the new stable clients before 2.x goes incompatible with branches/1.x. I am willing to pitch in here as demonstrated by this drawn out debug. I've got many many hours into these clients and would like to see that effort acknowledged with a release. Kevin R. Bulgrien From nicolas.weeger at laposte.net Fri Dec 19 17:37:15 2008 From: nicolas.weeger at laposte.net (Nicolas Weeger) Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2008 00:37:15 +0100 Subject: [crossfire] [ 1876788 ] Doubled characters in GTK clients (closed) In-Reply-To: <200812182221.52609.kbulgrien@att.net> References: <200812032342.57734.kbulgrien@worldnet.att.net> <200812182221.52609.kbulgrien@att.net> Message-ID: <200812200037.19554.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> Hello. > All GTK clients on trunk and branch are now considered free of the > infamous and elusive double-character bug. i586 clients were tested > at SVN r11002, and x86_64 clients were tested at SVN r11012. Nice, thanks for the fixes. > Whomever builds the Windows client might want to rebuild a new > snapshot. I'll try to find time for that. > Lets also consider getting the trunk clients built and in distribution. > I have auto-build scripts that make it pretty easy to generate both > branch and trunk client RPM packages and and tarballs. Windows builds aren't that easy, unfortunately (I think), so making single-click scripts may not be that easy. > I also would like to see the trunk clients become the new stable > clients before 2.x goes incompatible with branches/1.x. I am > willing to pitch in here as demonstrated by this drawn out debug. > I've got many many hours into these clients and would like to > see that effort acknowledged with a release. Sounds ok for me. Nicolas -- http://nicolas.weeger.org [Petit site d'images, de textes, de code, bref de l'al?atoire !] -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 197 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. Url : http://mailman.metalforge.org/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20081220/f8d170ba/attachment.pgp From lalo.martins at gmail.com Fri Dec 19 18:57:18 2008 From: lalo.martins at gmail.com (Lalo Martins) Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2008 00:57:18 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [crossfire] Release 1.12 Message-ID: I'd like to propose that, before we set off on major rewrites, we officially give up on the previous 2.0 effort, and release what's currently on trunk as 1.12. (Which probably means either merge the branch, or abandon it and just use trunk...) There are major improvements on trunk, notably an actually usable gtk client; since trunk is no longer going to be the basis for 2.0, there's no point sticking to the 1.x branch any longer. (Maybe there should be a vote on rolling back / not merging the rebalance changes. Personally I love them. But I've seen some people claim they're not finished enough for release.) best, Lalo Martins -- So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable. ----- http://lalomartins.info/ GNU: never give up freedom http://www.gnu.org/ From lalo.martins at gmail.com Fri Dec 19 18:57:19 2008 From: lalo.martins at gmail.com (Lalo Martins) Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2008 00:57:19 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [crossfire] Release 1.12 Message-ID: I'd like to propose that, before we set off on major rewrites, we officially give up on the previous 2.0 effort, and release what's currently on trunk as 1.12. (Which probably means either merge the branch, or abandon it and just use trunk...) There are major improvements on trunk, notably an actually usable gtk client; since trunk is no longer going to be the basis for 2.0, there's no point sticking to the 1.x branch any longer. (Maybe there should be a vote on rolling back / not merging the rebalance changes. Personally I love them. But I've seen some people claim they're not finished enough for release.) best, Lalo Martins -- So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable. ----- http://lalomartins.info/ GNU: never give up freedom http://www.gnu.org/ From kbulgrien at att.net Sat Dec 20 03:37:39 2008 From: kbulgrien at att.net (Kevin Bulgrien) Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2008 03:37:39 -0600 Subject: [crossfire] GTK-V2 "Critical Messages" Pane content improvement Message-ID: <20081220033739.4d9ad12f@a850srvr.kbulgrien.att.net> The GTK-V2 Critical Messages pane presently seems rather useless. Not a lot of stuff goes there, and I would not call what does go there critical. Many times I find myself not seeing chats, tells, etc, because battle messages, praying, etc. are flooding the messages pane. Does anyone have an objection to the following message types being routed to the Critical Messages pane of the GTK-V2 client? #define MSG_TYPE_ATTRIBUTE 11 /* Changes to attributes (stats, */ /* resistances, etc) */ #define MSG_TYPE_COMMUNICATION 15 /* Communication between players */ #define MSG_TYPE_VICTIM 19 /* Something bad is happening to the player */ The presently supported types are: /* message types */ #define MSG_TYPE_BOOK 1 #define MSG_TYPE_CARD 2 #define MSG_TYPE_PAPER 3 #define MSG_TYPE_SIGN 4 #define MSG_TYPE_MONUMENT 5 #define MSG_TYPE_DIALOG 6 #define MSG_TYPE_MOTD 7 #define MSG_TYPE_ADMIN 8 #define MSG_TYPE_SHOP 9 #define MSG_TYPE_COMMAND 10 /* Responses to commands, eg, who */ #define MSG_TYPE_ATTRIBUTE 11 /* Changes to attributes (stats, */ /* resistances, etc) */ #define MSG_TYPE_SKILL 12 /* Messages related to using skills */ #define MSG_TYPE_APPLY 13 /* Applying objects */ #define MSG_TYPE_ATTACK 14 /* Attack related messges */ #define MSG_TYPE_COMMUNICATION 15 /* Communication between players */ #define MSG_TYPE_SPELL 16 /* Spell related info */ #define MSG_TYPE_ITEM 17 /* Item related information */ #define MSG_TYPE_MISC 18 /* Messages that don't go anyplace else */ #define MSG_TYPE_VICTIM 19 /* Something bad is happening to the player */ #define MSG_TYPE_LAST 20 Kevin From nicolas.weeger at laposte.net Sat Dec 20 06:22:50 2008 From: nicolas.weeger at laposte.net (Nicolas Weeger) Date: Sat, 20 Dec 2008 13:22:50 +0100 Subject: [crossfire] Release 1.12 In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200812201322.53224.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> Hello. > I'd like to propose that, before we set off on major rewrites, we > officially give up on the previous 2.0 effort, and release what's > currently on trunk as 1.12. (Which probably means either merge the > branch, or abandon it and just use trunk...) > > There are major improvements on trunk, notably an actually usable gtk > client; since trunk is no longer going to be the basis for 2.0, there's > no point sticking to the 1.x branch any longer. > > (Maybe there should be a vote on rolling back / not merging the rebalance > changes. Personally I love them. But I've seen some people claim > they're not finished enough for release.) Given that we don't have anyone wishing to coordinate content and maps and make them coherent and fun, I have no intention to do massive changes to the code, so that question is probably rhetoric :) (unless someone else feels like doing such work, obviously) Nicolas -- http://nicolas.weeger.org [Petit site d'images, de textes, de code, bref de l'al?atoire !] -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 197 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. Url : http://mailman.metalforge.org/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20081220/66e19309/attachment-0001.pgp From nicolas.weeger at laposte.net Sun Dec 21 02:59:24 2008 From: nicolas.weeger at laposte.net (Nicolas Weeger) Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2008 09:59:24 +0100 Subject: [crossfire] [ 1876788 ] Doubled characters in GTK clients (closed) In-Reply-To: <200812182221.52609.kbulgrien@att.net> References: <200812032342.57734.kbulgrien@worldnet.att.net> <200812182221.52609.kbulgrien@att.net> Message-ID: <200812210959.25354.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> > Whomever builds the Windows client might want to rebuild a new > snapshot. Done and published. Nicolas -- http://nicolas.weeger.org [Petit site d'images, de textes, de code, bref de l'al?atoire !] From juhaj at iki.fi Sun Dec 21 03:28:19 2008 From: juhaj at iki.fi (Juha =?utf-8?q?J=C3=A4ykk=C3=A4?=) Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2008 11:28:19 +0200 Subject: [crossfire] Release 1.12 In-Reply-To: <200812201322.53224.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> References: <200812201322.53224.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> Message-ID: <200812211128.27721.juhaj@iki.fi> > > (Maybe there should be a vote on rolling back / not merging the rebalance > > changes. Personally I love them. But I've seen some people claim > > they're not finished enough for release.) > Given that we don't have anyone wishing to coordinate content and maps and > make them coherent and fun, I have no intention to do massive changes to Two things. First, I'd like to coordinate, but I don't feel like I'm enough of a member of the community here. Second, I'd like to see a short review of the differences between branch and trunk before voicing an option on what Lalo proposed. Also, I thought the rebalance stuff would eventually be getting to whatever 2.0 will be - i.e. even with the latest discussion about future development, the rebalance would still be there. I think the rebalance was a good thing and should not be killed off. -Juha -- ----------------------------------------------- | Juha J?ykk?, juolja at utu.fi | | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | ----------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 197 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. Url : http://mailman.metalforge.org/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20081221/896e1693/attachment.pgp From juhaj at iki.fi Sun Dec 21 03:51:37 2008 From: juhaj at iki.fi (Juha =?iso-8859-1?q?J=E4ykk=E4?=) Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2008 11:51:37 +0200 Subject: [crossfire] What about a gameplay revolution? In-Reply-To: <494754D5.1060500@sonic.net> References: <200812141316.12165.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> <200812151338.04117.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> <494754D5.1060500@sonic.net> Message-ID: <200812211151.41866.juhaj@iki.fi> > That's a bit different game. I agree: I'd like to see CF stay an RPG with major hack and slash content. The amout of H&S might be too high at the moment, but I do not think that's because of H&S, but lack of other content - so we come back to content again. Personally, mining for diamonds instead of fighting for them in order to use them in making a ring might be more interesting. Also, making almost anything with alchemy, jewelry etc is quite difficult unless you have a script which keeps on trying. That's bad - beginners don't have scripts. Also, those skills increase way too slowly to ever really get above level 10 or so (again, without a script). And creating some of the fancier rings, for example, at level 10 jeweller... > The combat rebalancing is slowing down combat, so does give player a bit > more time to think, which is a good thing. And let's not waste that effort! > Yeah, there are different approaches. If players craft their own > weapons, then one could find different components that give different > bonuses - instead of the existing armor improvment logic, maybe you find > something that gives it 5% of fire resistance, or +1 str, etc. And you can > go and choose how to combine those different pieces together. Maybe as a > way to burn up money, you have the empty weapon sold in towns. This is more or less what I proposed a year ago: to define what ingredients are required to get, for example, magic resistance +1 to an item. Suppose that is an eye of the beholder (I'd like to see some logic in this so players might guess that an eye of the beholder, a monster with 100% magic resistance, might come handy in crafting stuff to grant magic resistance). Now, you might need 1 eye to get +1%, 100 eyes to get +10%, and 10000 to get full immunity (if that's even possible), so it becomes progressively harder to get higher resistances. Or exceeding +10% might even need some other ingredient as well or what ever. But these ingredients should be the same for rings, swords etc. Of course, then we need also the rign or sword itself. That, too, might be crafted by the player - perhaps level 1 jeweller can craft a ring which can consume 1 ingredient (not ingredient type: just one single eye of the beholder), level 2 can craft a sword which can consume 5 ingredients etc (or whatever progression we wish). And then nice XP from crafts, too, so they actally do increase in levels, too. > is just a stick someone picked up after all). So now instead of every orc > dropping a pile of stuff, maybe every 4th orc drops one item type of thing. > Drastic reduction in treasure - it also means that when you do get > something, it is at least a little bit more exciting. I prefer the realism of orcs dropping whatever they were using in the combat, even though it creates lots of loot. For orcs, this probably is not a problem either, since 99.9% of orc-loot becomes worthless very quickly. The same is true for most, if not all, currently generator-produced creatures: they rarely carry anything magical (except pixies and vampires). The fact that fire (if used) burns some of this loot helps somewhat with the excess, but otherwise I don't think it's a problem. Excess loot only becomes a problem when you go kill titans, death knights and such, but the rebalance probably reduces their numbers so drastically that there should be no problem there either. Besides, I *still* have never seen many of the higher power stuff, like Rings of Power (not pow +somthing, but "the Three Rings for the" ... and the Ruling Ring as well). And I've searched and searched... Also, making extra archetypes like "broken shield" (or the 0-100 "condition" scale discussed elsewhere) might be realistic for loot dropped by dead creatures: if you just smashed an orc with a morning star, chances are its plate mail is not in prime condition any more; likewise for other stuff, too. So make them drop smashed items. Shops won't pay for them, the player may fix them, but since these would be normal items (magic will of course vanish if item is broken), repairing them is probably not what most players want to do. > And as a new player, I'd get turned off pretty quickly if I logged in, > and have a list of a few beginners dungeons I could explore, only to find > that they have all been cleared out. I rather liked what was proposed earlier: that monsters would gradually return to dungeons, map areas etc. That would give an added feeling of realism, would solve problem with cleared out maps and might even give a surprise every now and then, like the place which was infested by kobolds for years, and to which kobolds returned eventually no matter how many times they were cleared out, would suddenly, after latest clear-out, become infested by goblins, for example. A related question: is there something preventing us from profiting from the work done at forks of cf? It seems some of them already have some of the features we desire. Heck, I don't even know if cf is GPL, BSD or what it is... -Juha -- ----------------------------------------------- | Juha J?ykk?, juolja at utu.fi | | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | ----------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 197 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. Url : http://mailman.metalforge.org/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20081221/25f2d86b/attachment.pgp From lalo.martins at gmail.com Sun Dec 21 17:29:06 2008 From: lalo.martins at gmail.com (Lalo Martins) Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2008 23:29:06 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [crossfire] Release 1.12 References: <200812201322.53224.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> Message-ID: quoth Nicolas Weeger as of Sat, 20 Dec 2008 13:22:50 +0100: > > Given that we don't have anyone wishing to coordinate content and maps > and make them coherent and fun, I have no intention to do massive > changes to the code, so that question is probably rhetoric :) (unless > someone else feels like doing such work, obviously) That's not true... I thought gros was going to do that... if he won't for some reason I already said I'll volunteer too. best, Lalo Martins -- So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable. ----- http://lalomartins.info/ GNU: never give up freedom http://www.gnu.org/ From mwedel at sonic.net Mon Dec 22 01:35:09 2008 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Sun, 21 Dec 2008 23:35:09 -0800 Subject: [crossfire] GTK-V2 "Critical Messages" Pane content improvement In-Reply-To: <20081220033739.4d9ad12f@a850srvr.kbulgrien.att.net> References: <20081220033739.4d9ad12f@a850srvr.kbulgrien.att.net> Message-ID: <494F432D.5090306@sonic.net> Kevin Bulgrien wrote: > The GTK-V2 Critical Messages pane presently seems rather useless. Not a lot of > stuff goes there, and I would not call what does go there critical. Many times > I find myself not seeing chats, tells, etc, because battle messages, praying, > etc. are flooding the messages pane. > > Does anyone have an objection to the following message types being routed to > the Critical Messages pane of the GTK-V2 client? > > #define MSG_TYPE_ATTRIBUTE 11 /* Changes to attributes (stats, */ > /* resistances, etc) */ > #define MSG_TYPE_COMMUNICATION 15 /* Communication between players */ > #define MSG_TYPE_VICTIM 19 /* Something bad is happening to the player */ In my pie in the sky wishlist, what goes to what message pane (and how many message panes) would be setable in config options by the user (Simpler would be to have a fixed number of message panes, you with checkboxes you select where messages go - if a pane doesn't have anything selected for it, it wouldn't be drawn). (The wishlist beyond that would be able to specify the color/font/whatever for the different messages) I don't have any problems with those above changes, as a simpler solution to what I discuss. But I sometimes do wonder if a message pane devoted purely for player chat would make sense - if folks are busily chatting away, I don't want to necessarily lose important messages in the critical pane. Conversely, I have found times where I've been in combat and have to look back for past chat messages, and those are interspersed with the more critical battle messages. Probably no perfect solution. The addition of a critical vs normal message pane was done back in the day when the only thing that the client could use to differentiate messages was the color they were drawn in, so anything not default color was considered special, which was fairly arbitrary. From nicolas.weeger at laposte.net Mon Dec 22 01:39:42 2008 From: nicolas.weeger at laposte.net (Nicolas Weeger) Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2008 08:39:42 +0100 Subject: [crossfire] Release 1.12 In-Reply-To: References: <200812201322.53224.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> Message-ID: <200812220839.46663.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> > > Given that we don't have anyone wishing to coordinate content and maps > > and make them coherent and fun, I have no intention to do massive > > changes to the code, so that question is probably rhetoric :) (unless > > someone else feels like doing such work, obviously) > > That's not true... I thought gros was going to do that... if he won't for > some reason I already said I'll volunteer too. Yann dropped the project. And I didn't know you volunteered :) To be clear, let me yet again say what I mean by "content leader": someone who gives the overall gameplay style (fast combat? strategy? much loot?), the overall content (medieval fantastic? futuristic?), is willing to decide (arbitrarily if needed - and assume this decision against flames sure to come by) whether maps fit or not in the game, ensures background stories are "correct" globally, probably sort out gameplay-related feature requests and things like that. To be honest, not some fun part, I'm afraid, but something requires IMO to ensure a correct game experience. (and not saying the content leader must do everything alone - of course other people can help, but the content leader is ultimately responsible for the global vision of the game) Nicolas -- http://nicolas.weeger.org [Petit site d'images, de textes, de code, bref de l'al?atoire !] -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 197 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. Url : http://mailman.metalforge.org/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20081222/a3e0ade7/attachment.pgp From elsbernd at dfki.uni-kl.de Mon Dec 22 04:22:44 2008 From: elsbernd at dfki.uni-kl.de (Klaus Elsbernd) Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2008 11:22:44 +0100 Subject: [crossfire] Release 1.12 In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 20 Dec 2008 00:57:18 GMT." Message-ID: <200812221026.mBMAQhaY009578@dfki.uni-kl.de> Hello, To throw my too cents: I'm a long time user (since the pre-Mark-area; only debuged the code years ago). So I would like to speak for those users, which are waiting of a new relase since months. Before making drastical changes to development (c++ implementation...) I would like to see a new (complete (?)) stable release, which could be used by us players, during the reimplementation. I think, it wouldn't be a good idea, to rely on svn-access to get a working version with all the new features added since the 1.11 almost one year ago. Klaus Bis dann Klaus -- "Sure, vi is user friendly. It's just particular about who it makes friends with." ;-) _________________________________________________________ Deutsches Forschungszentrum f?r K?nstliche Intelligenz GmbH (DFKI GmbH) Klaus Elsbernd; System Administrator | Klaus.Elsbernd at dfki.de Trippstadter Stra?e 122 | elsbernd at dfki.uni-kl.de 67657 Kaiserslautern; Germany | Fernruf: 0631/20575-586 Fernbild: -582 Gesch?ftsf?hrung: Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Wahlster (Vorsitzender), Dr. Walter Olthoff Vorsitzender des AR: Prof. Hans A. Aukes| Amtsgericht Kaiserslautern, HRB 2313 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 516 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://mailman.metalforge.org/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20081222/9e203503/attachment-0001.pgp From tchize at gmail.com Mon Dec 22 05:25:04 2008 From: tchize at gmail.com (David Delbecq) Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2008 12:25:04 +0100 Subject: [crossfire] tracker spam notification Message-ID: <494F7910.8000303@gmail.com> for those that didn't notice, our tracker is getting spammed: http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1207603&group_id=13833&atid=313833 From leaf at real-time.com Mon Dec 22 06:53:00 2008 From: leaf at real-time.com (Rick Tanner) Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2008 06:53:00 -0600 Subject: [crossfire] tracker spam notification In-Reply-To: <494F7910.8000303@gmail.com> References: <494F7910.8000303@gmail.com> Message-ID: <494F8DAC.7020307@real-time.com> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 David Delbecq wrote: > for those that didn't notice, our tracker is getting spammed: Yep, noticed. For the moment non-logged in posting is disabled for Patches and Bugs tracker. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAklPjaQACgkQhHyvgBp+vH6q8ACg4LLZFCDN8K9o2WAIH8EBGpca SwoAoK2FBH5w/gVPXr6BVuFJ6zYvXn8j =qfqI -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- From tchize at gmail.com Mon Dec 22 06:44:11 2008 From: tchize at gmail.com (David Delbecq) Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2008 13:44:11 +0100 Subject: [crossfire] tracker spam notification In-Reply-To: <494F8DAC.7020307@real-time.com> References: <494F7910.8000303@gmail.com> <494F8DAC.7020307@real-time.com> Message-ID: <494F8B9B.8020400@gmail.com> Support ticket opened at sf : https://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&atid=200001&aid=2458451&group_id=1 En l'instant pr?cis du 22/12/2008 13:53, Rick Tanner s'exprimait en ces termes: > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- > Hash: SHA1 > > David Delbecq wrote: > >> for those that didn't notice, our tracker is getting spammed: >> > > Yep, noticed. > > For the moment non-logged in posting is disabled for Patches and Bugs > tracker. > > > > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- > Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux) > Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org > > iEYEARECAAYFAklPjaQACgkQhHyvgBp+vH6q8ACg4LLZFCDN8K9o2WAIH8EBGpca > SwoAoK2FBH5w/gVPXr6BVuFJ6zYvXn8j > =qfqI > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > > _______________________________________________ > crossfire mailing list > crossfire at metalforge.org > http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire > From lalo.martins at gmail.com Mon Dec 22 08:24:28 2008 From: lalo.martins at gmail.com (Lalo Martins) Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2008 14:24:28 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [crossfire] Release 1.12 References: <200812201322.53224.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> <200812220839.46663.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> Message-ID: quoth Nicolas Weeger as of Mon, 22 Dec 2008 08:39:42 +0100: > Yann dropped the project. And I didn't know you volunteered :) I told him, and Alex, and I thought I told you too, but maybe I didn't :-) let's make it official then. If nobody objects until 2009, I hereby proclaim myself "content leader". > To be honest, not some fun part, I'm afraid, but something requires IMO > to ensure a correct game experience. It's fun for me... yeah maybe I'm weird... but that's the part that appeals to me. More than coding, more than actually editing maps, heck even more than playing. best, Lalo Martins -- So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable. ----- http://lalomartins.info/ GNU: never give up freedom http://www.gnu.org/ From lalo.martins at gmail.com Mon Dec 22 08:26:50 2008 From: lalo.martins at gmail.com (Lalo Martins) Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2008 14:26:50 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [crossfire] GTK-V2 "Critical Messages" Pane content improvement References: <20081220033739.4d9ad12f@a850srvr.kbulgrien.att.net> Message-ID: I'd go for a chat pane as well. I remember seeing one in some client, but I don't remember which one; I've been told on irc jxclient has one, but I never actually played on it :-) maybe I've only seen it in screenshots? Anyway. I think a chat pane is the best solution. best, Lalo Martins -- So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable. ----- http://lalomartins.info/ GNU: never give up freedom http://www.gnu.org/ From nicolas.weeger at laposte.net Mon Dec 22 09:08:25 2008 From: nicolas.weeger at laposte.net (Nicolas Weeger) Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2008 16:08:25 +0100 Subject: [crossfire] Release 1.12 In-Reply-To: References: <200812220839.46663.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> Message-ID: <200812221608.29663.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> > quoth Nicolas Weeger as of Mon, 22 Dec 2008 08:39:42 +0100: > > Yann dropped the project. And I didn't know you volunteered :) > > I told him, and Alex, and I thought I told you too, but maybe I > didn't :-) let's make it official then. If nobody objects until 2009, I > hereby proclaim myself "content leader". Well, I may have missed that, then :) Could you describe what kind of game you want to make? So people know what to expect from you! ^_- > It's fun for me... yeah maybe I'm weird... but that's the part that > appeals to me. More than coding, more than actually editing maps, heck > even more than playing. Well, fine then :) Nicolas -- http://nicolas.weeger.org [Petit site d'images, de textes, de code, bref de l'al?atoire !] -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 197 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. Url : http://mailman.metalforge.org/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20081222/d4fe019d/attachment-0001.pgp From mwedel at sonic.net Tue Dec 23 01:41:35 2008 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2008 23:41:35 -0800 Subject: [crossfire] What about a gameplay revolution? In-Reply-To: <200812211151.41866.juhaj@iki.fi> References: <200812141316.12165.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> <200812151338.04117.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> <494754D5.1060500@sonic.net> <200812211151.41866.juhaj@iki.fi> Message-ID: <4950962F.60709@sonic.net> Juha J?ykk? wrote: >> That's a bit different game. > > I agree: I'd like to see CF stay an RPG with major hack and slash content. The > amout of H&S might be too high at the moment, but I do not think that's > because of H&S, but lack of other content - so we come back to content again. Pretty much agree. That said, there have been times in the past where we focused more on the H&S - someone would find out some way to circumvent a monster, and it was like 'We can't have that' and things were changed. At some level, if players are clever, it shouldn't be a requirement that they kill everything in sight. Now a lot of RPG games are really H&S - there may be some parts which are not. Most games also have some delay in groups of monsters - you'll kill a group, and you wander a bit before you get to the next monster - that lets spells/whatever recharge. Crossfire often has the case where monsters are wall to wall - so you clear out a room which is full of monsters, and there is a door, behind which is another room full of monsters, etc. > Personally, mining for diamonds instead of fighting for them in order to use > them in making a ring might be more interesting. Also, making almost anything > with alchemy, jewelry etc is quite difficult unless you have a script which > keeps on trying. That's bad - beginners don't have scripts. Also, those > skills increase way too slowly to ever really get above level 10 or so > (again, without a script). And creating some of the fancier rings, for > example, at level 10 jeweller... I think the entire alchemy/item creation probably needs to be revamped. That is probably a different discussion (I wouldn't put that into core gameplay), but quick thoughts: - Most all common raw materials (wood, water, rock, etc) should be something that can easily be found/harvested - Success rate for most items should be greatly increased, with the flipside that for powerful items, the ingredients should be quite rare (so you're luck to find the component to make something really good) - Related to the H&S above, concern always was of it being too easy for players to get exp doing non dangerous stuff. IMO, that isn't a problem as long as they can't get exp faster. If a person wants to sit in town crafting stuff, I have no problem with them getting exp. The limitation in their case would be materials. With the combat rebalance, I've tried to target it taking about 30 minutes/level (presuming effective gameplay, no deaths - and this is more the adventuring side, not the details of selling items in town, etc). So for skills, if it takes a player 30 minutes to make enough item to gain a level, that would be about right in balance. - Recipes/instructions should really be a character attributed, not a player attribute. I realize there are some special recipes right now where only a character that has learned it can make it, but for a large number, it is really the player knowing the recipe (either through looking at the file, or just acquiring tidbits among multiple characters) I personally don't have much problem with a character mining diamonds (that should clearly be harder - maybe need a pick axe to work through stone, etc), so long as the time it takes is longer thant it would take to get same number through adventuring. My general philosophy on RPG worlds is that going out adventuring and killing things should be the fastest way to get money. >> Yeah, there are different approaches. If players craft their own >> weapons, then one could find different components that give different >> bonuses - instead of the existing armor improvment logic, maybe you find >> something that gives it 5% of fire resistance, or +1 str, etc. And you can >> go and choose how to combine those different pieces together. Maybe as a >> way to burn up money, you have the empty weapon sold in towns. > > This is more or less what I proposed a year ago: to define what ingredients > are required to get, for example, magic resistance +1 to an item. Suppose > that is an eye of the beholder (I'd like to see some logic in this so players > might guess that an eye of the beholder, a monster with 100% magic > resistance, might come handy in crafting stuff to grant magic resistance). > Now, you might need 1 eye to get +1%, 100 eyes to get +10%, and 10000 to get > full immunity (if that's even possible), so it becomes progressively harder > to get higher resistances. Or exceeding +10% might even need some other > ingredient as well or what ever. But these ingredients should be the same for > rings, swords etc. Of course, then we need also the rign or sword itself. > That, too, might be crafted by the player - perhaps level 1 jeweller can > craft a ring which can consume 1 ingredient (not ingredient type: just one > single eye of the beholder), level 2 can craft a sword which can consume 5 > ingredients etc (or whatever progression we wish). And then nice XP from > crafts, too, so they actally do increase in levels, too. When I originally wrote that, I was thinking more rare treasure items you might find at ends of dungeons or in treasure chests that give inherent bonus (shard of sharpness - +1 bonus to weapon, etc) But in thinking what you wrote, I don't see any reason those can't coexist - there certainly could be many different ways to get a +1 bonus to a weapon (or magic resistance, or whatever). There is lots of balancing of different aspects here - the rarity of monster parts is related to how common that monster is. Right now, some parts are perhaps too common for one to say it should be used for bonuses - makes it too easy to get a high bonus. But if the number of monsters is reduced, so are the number of parts. I was also thinking that items have a fixed number of slots for how many enchantment type bonuses they can take, and that number be pretty low (otherwise we get characters with ultra powerful weapons and armor). I was thinking that perhaps 10 as the upper limit - if one says that one can get +1 hit, it means they could get a +10 item with no other bonuses. But most likely, it is better to mix that up - maybe +3 with 30% fire and 30% armor or something. But related to your comment above, maybe mix different parts together. Maybe that item still can hold 10 different bonuses. Maybe 1 beholder eye can be used to give a 1% magic resistance bonus, and if the player wants, could put 10 beholder eyes on that item for a 10% resistance. But maybe also he can take those beholder eyes, do some alchemy type stuff and get a single item that gives him 3% magic resistance but only use one slot, etc. > >> is just a stick someone picked up after all). So now instead of every orc >> dropping a pile of stuff, maybe every 4th orc drops one item type of thing. >> Drastic reduction in treasure - it also means that when you do get >> something, it is at least a little bit more exciting. > > I prefer the realism of orcs dropping whatever they were using in the combat, > even though it creates lots of loot. For orcs, this probably is not a problem > either, since 99.9% of orc-loot becomes worthless very quickly. The same is > true for most, if not all, currently generator-produced creatures: they > rarely carry anything magical (except pixies and vampires). The fact that > fire (if used) burns some of this loot helps somewhat with the excess, but > otherwise I don't think it's a problem. Perhaps - it may also be more a case that generators don't make really good monsters. But there are still those maps out there with good monsters piled up like crazy. But a problem I see is that money really isn't consistent - some creatures really just are not worth fighting, and others really are worth a lot of money. So I could certainly see why some folks would say they don't have a lot of money, while other folks would say they do have lot - depends where you go. But even at low levels, orcs can be a good source - sure, most of the stuff is crap, but if you get 500 items dropped, a few will probably be +2 in nature or have some artifact bonus and be worth 50 platinum or something. And at low level, that is a really nice chunk of change. To me, that's really the problem with huge number of items generated - odds are that some really good things will get generated now and again. > > Excess loot only becomes a problem when you go kill titans, death knights and > such, but the rebalance probably reduces their numbers so drastically that > there should be no problem there either. Besides, I *still* have never seen > many of the higher power stuff, like Rings of Power (not pow +somthing, > but "the Three Rings for the" ... and the Ruling Ring as well). And I've > searched and searched... That's sort of a different issue - rarity or certain items vs accumulation of wealth. One could have lots of money but still not found certain items. The nature of that special artifact code does make some of those items incredibly rare - they are not on any treasure list, so what has to happen is a ring get generated by some mechanism, then that ring be converted into a random artifact, and then conditions (and luck) be such that the ring gets converted into that special ring. For some items, like most weapons, the artifact mechanism probably works fine. But for rings, a better way to generate them is probably needed (currently bonuses are done in the treasure.c file - it should really be done on treasurelists or something that doesn't require a recompile to change the behavior of) > > Also, making extra archetypes like "broken shield" (or the 0-100 "condition" > scale discussed elsewhere) might be realistic for loot dropped by dead > creatures: if you just smashed an orc with a morning star, chances are its > plate mail is not in prime condition any more; likewise for other stuff, too. > So make them drop smashed items. Shops won't pay for them, the player may fix > them, but since these would be normal items (magic will of course vanish if > item is broken), repairing them is probably not what most players want to do. I was thinking about this. Items below some condition could be worth 0 money, so the player has to invest time in repairing them (which means they are not making money adventuring) or not deal with it. One concern I have on this is inventory management - I'd really hate to have 40 different swords in my inventory by virtue of them being in slightly different condition. That would just get really annoying really quickly (this brings back memories of the material code, where stuff could get made of many different materials) For the weapons my character is using, not much of a problem there, as that should be a fairly small number. But when cleaning up loot, that would be a pain. A quick thought could be that most of that stuff has 'condition 0' denoting it is broken crap (useful for materials and repair), and another else has 'condition 100'. At least that one, on that initial pass, we'd only really be doubling amount of different items in ones inventory. > >> And as a new player, I'd get turned off pretty quickly if I logged in, >> and have a list of a few beginners dungeons I could explore, only to find >> that they have all been cleared out. > > I rather liked what was proposed earlier: that monsters would gradually return > to dungeons, map areas etc. That would give an added feeling of realism, > would solve problem with cleared out maps and might even give a surprise > every now and then, like the place which was infested by kobolds for years, > and to which kobolds returned eventually no matter how many times they were > cleared out, would suddenly, after latest clear-out, become infested by > goblins, for example. As long as that works, then that is fine. My concern is actually getting such repopulations to work properly. I'm also a bit concerned that this seems like addition of a fairly new/complicated feature when there is already lots of things that could/should be done. Not to say it shouldn't be done, but I don't think I'd put this in the top 5. > > A related question: is there something preventing us from profiting from the > work done at forks of cf? It seems some of them already have some of the > features we desire. Heck, I don't even know if cf is GPL, BSD or what it > is... Crossfire is GPL. For the forks, most likely we could take much of changes they've made to the server code and use it ourselves, because that work would also likely be under GPL (GPL license says derivations must also be under GPL) For non server stuff, it gets trickier. It really depends on what license they use - if they say it is under GPL, then sure, we could take those bits. But one could certainly write something new from scratch (client, map editor, maps, or images) and probably make a fairly good case it isn't a derivation, and thus could reasonably have a different license. Last I recall, anything hosted on sourceforge had to be under GPL or similar type of license, and IIRC, most of the forks were hosted on sourceforge, which probably means they are using such a license - if not, then they probably shouldn't be on sourceforge. From lalo.martins at gmail.com Tue Dec 23 03:55:19 2008 From: lalo.martins at gmail.com (Lalo Martins) Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2008 09:55:19 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [crossfire] Platform statement Message-ID: Re me "running" for content leader: >> quoth Nicolas Weeger as of Mon, 22 Dec 2008 08:39:42 +0100: > Well, I may have missed that, then :) Could you describe what kind of > game you want to make? So people know what to expect from you! ^_- Well let me start by saying, I like crossfire. I think it's a fun game as it is, even though there's room for improvement. So I'll organise my statement in 5 areas for better reading... Gameplay ======== You mentioned: > the overall gameplay style (fast combat? strategy? much loot?) Fast combat is fun but IMO gets boring fast. In my ideal game, you'd still be able to mow through "extras" (to borrow Exalted terminology... in this case I guess it means monsters less than 1/4 of your level) very fast because that's what they're for. But I'd have less of them around and focus maps on monsters that are actually a challenge, and on things other than monsters. A roomfull of extras should be an element in the story, an annoying obstacle in either the first room of the dungeon or the last one before the boss, and not in the whole dungeon. For combat with enemies about your level, I think mwedel's changes did the trick, at least for fighters (ie not magic-users). I like non-magic combat on trunk. On top of that I'd put a stronger focus on damage types, so you'd put more work/thought into getting a weapon that can do the work and/or armour that can keep you alive. Add more items with damage types, maybe add another damage type or three. (But careful not to turn the game into Pokemon.) An important point that was raised in the list is that when you meet something way above your level, it should hurt you badly but not kill you instantly, so you can run away. Of course if the monster is TOO MUCH above your level (let's say 4x to keep consistent with the definition of extra), then it's reasonable that you die without ever knowing what hit you. I'd like to make it a little more RPG-y. Looking at online games recently, I believe people are enjoying the option of doing things other than H&S. So I think we should keep the H&S fun if that's what you're into, but it should be possible to make a life as a trader or crafsperson, maybe even fisher, farmer, etc. What I think the gameplay lacks most in 1.x is goals. That's one of the two things that make Pupland such a classic; there's always a next quest, there's always something more to keep you going. By the time the whole thing is over, you're so high level that you can think of things to do on your own. So, either an overall meta-quest or a general, social push are a must. Otherwise you don't really have a reason to come back to the game other than "it's fun". Generally I tend to go with Nicolas' idea of making the world truly dynamic and persistent. But Pupland proper becomes impossible with that; how many people can rescue one king? Although considering the nature and end of the quest, it's still possible, with a few tweaks. Another important point: I want to make level progression a lot slower. Not the actual gaining of levels, but what that means; how fast your SP pool, HP pool, etc increase, things like wc (or whatever Nicolas replaces it with); and also, make permanent stat increases a lot harder, so that you only reach "perfection" typically at level 100 or so. I don't know... strongly tempted to kill overall level entirely. What is it really good for anyway? I like the concept of item power, but I'd replace it with something you get from quests. Loot and money -------------- I agree there is too much loot; in the beginning of the game you never have enough money, and after a few levels you have too much and not enough ways to spend it. Here's how I see solving it, suggestions/comments welcome: - Reduce treasure-type loot. Less gold and expensive stuff in dungeons, less artifacts. (I like the idea of finding a *component* of an artifact...) - Equipment-type loot (eg orc swords) makes sense to me. I'd make them even cheaper though. Also selling flesh shouldn't give you that much money (I usually get my non-dragon characters started basically with selling livers). - Change the money system. I think calling coins "gold" and "silver" is a weird and contrived fantasy trope; historically, all nations either used currency with actual names, or item-for-item trading (salt was particularly popular). A gold coin should be worth a lot and you shouldn't see one until level 20-something. So, the server's internal money unit will become some worthless new coin, let's call it a "forkee". If you care about that, let's say it's made of tin or nickel. The lowest coin actually used is the bronze "aytbit". Then next comes the thing people actually trade mostly in (for trivial stuff), let's call it a "cleekin" (heavy brass). Then comes the copper "reggry" in which most people's salaries are paid. The silver "new imperial", gold "skuddie" and platinum "khelon" are the money of rich people, more similar to today's diamonds than jade/amberium. (If that system isn't sufficient for the "rich" half, there could easily be different-sized silver and gold coins.) (Folk-etymology claims "ayt" is an old word for bronze. Historians however remember the aytbit is a relic from a few hundred years ago when a king tried to impose a coin system where every coin was 8x the next-lower one; the "wanbit" coin can still be found in antique collections. "Reggry" on the other hand is more obvious, it comes from the coin being red and green; it used to be legally called a "full-crown".) Then of course all items would have their arch-value reviewed for "realism" and game balance. That comes naturally as part of world redesign. Later on I'd like to make money regional. You shouldn't be able to use Scorn money on eg Nurnberg. There could be one person who buys it (think exchange service), if there isn't one where you're at, you can sell the coins for their metal value which is a little lower than the mint value, but that may be a crime in some nations. But that's later. There's a question of the relative value of coins. Let's put it to an informal vote. (Remember, when I say most salaries are in reggry above, that salaries in pre-modern settings are usually weekly, not monthly). - Logical (SI) system: aytbit killed; 100 forkees = 1 cleekin, 100 cleekins = 1 reggry, 100 new imperials = 1 skuddie, 100 skuddies = 1 khelon. The rate from reggries to new imperials doesn't need to be 100 though. Approx. meaning compared to cost of living in the US: forkee = cent, cleekin = dollar, new imperial ~= 100k dollars, skuddie ~= 10M, khelon ~= 1B. If you're not in the US... a 2L bottle of coke should cost 1 to 1.5 cleekin in the market near your house. This system has the problem that a gold coin being worth 10 Million dollars is a little hard to believe, no matter how large :-P - "Realistic" but harder to remember system: basic forkee value is a little lower (say ~5x above); 40 forkees = 1 aytbit, 8 aytbits = 1 cleekin, 30 cleekins = 1 reggry, 60 new imperials = 1 skuddie, 12 skuddies = 1 khelon. Yonder bottle o'coke would cost circa 2 cleekins; the new imperial would be about 20k dollars. This still makes silver, gold and plat worth a lot more than in our world, but I think that's reasonable. - Mixed: Logical for the poor, realistic for the rich. Setting ======= I want the world to have a distinct personality and a clearly-defined history. Common people (and beginning characters) don't know the whole of this history of course, but if you play every single quest, you should learn it to the extent that an average cultured modern person knows ours. The world *will* be rebooted from scratch. If you want your favourite map to be in it, adapt it to the new status quo and submit it. I'm also throwing out the current world history. It feels inconsistent and less than ideally interesting to me; the reason I was behind keeping it before was that with Yann as content leader, it was in safe hands ;-) as he is always able to come up with interesting-sounding answers to anything. If I'm the one who has to do the hard work, then I prefer to go with a more "traditional" fantasy setting, with a more mythological emphasis and a history that is more present and visible. (Meaning, ancient cities, ruins, sacred places, etc.) I want to draw more from literature than computer and tabletop RPGs. Think Conan, LOTR, a little bit of Darkover thrown in for good measure. Or even better... so that we have a clear and well-defined yardstick to compare against: heroic-age Europe. (Bear in mind the place never actually existed. It was invented by classic-age Greeks, roughly based on a mixture of what the region was historically like more than 1000 years prior, with their religious stories.) Before someone gets me wrong and figures I'll be building a Heroic Greece game: no. It's still a wholly new setting, but the in-setting "logic" will be comparable to Heroic Greece. I'll (mostly) keep the existing pantheon, and elements that are homage to past developers well either be kept or reworked; the first city around which the reboot will groww will still be called Scorn and founded by Skud. I'll write something up the next few days. Visual ====== I think we badly need new faces, but the whole redesign project was based on the premise that Yann was going to, if not draw all of them, at least enough to motivate other people. I'm not a graphics artist and I can't promise the same, so unless someone steps up, I think this subproject will have to be shelved. WRT how to do it, I like the "tallworld" idea: don't increase the face size to 64, rather make the objects use more cells, which would reduce the "klunky" feel of the gameplay. I'd even go so far as reducing the cells to 16 or 8 pixels. So here's the plan: - Facesets can have different pixel-per-cell sizes. I think that's already the case, right? - "Rebootworld" will start with current faces, but 4 pixels per cell and "tall faces". So we can design better arches, especially buildings, without drawing anything. That will kind of kill smoothing, I guess, but we'll see how it goes. (I don't know if smoothing + tall faces has been though of yet...) - Then a new "Enhanced" tileset will be started, using 12 pixels per cell. (Hey, no reason to keep to powers of 2.) This will grow as fast as it does. Anyone who feels adventurous is free to start their own tileset. - A benefit of keeping the "basic" tileset around is that it would probably look good on a small-screen client (mobile phone, NDS, PSP, netbook). Technical ========= See in "Gameplay" for comments on combat system and leveling up. I'd like to request two huge features that I think would improve the feel: Re-hauled movement UI --------------------- Moving around with arrows only is so last century! I'd like PCs to have basic pathfinding, so you can click where you want to go and the character will get there. Then of course, I found that people expect that clicking on a monster will attack it. Finally, I'd like to add a "follow this road" mode; basically you set your character on a road and he will go on until (a) it ends, (b) it forks, (c) it's too dark to see (or for or whatever), or (d) the character is too tired/hungry to proceed. (We don't have "tired", but a time limit on using this feature would work. Not sure what happens then, it's up for discussion.) Maybe "follow" is only available to transports... that would be fine if that's how we think it should be. True multi-scale ---------------- This is really two different features on the server side: - All movement is slowed down proportional to the "scale" attribute of the map. (If you think moving 10x slower on the city than indoors is annoying, bear in mind you'll probably move a little faster indoors, and outdoors you'll have transports, which I want to use more heavily.) - Objects can have different faces depending on the "scale" attribute. I suppose if there isn't a match a default could be used. Those faces can have different (cell) sizes. That doesn't mean you'd look 10x smaller outdoors, but a little smaller. Then I'd go for making the "enhanced" tiles 16 pixels rather than 12. The rationale here is that we're trying to make both movement and window size work for what are two almost entirely different games; dungeon exploring is one thing and requires one UI, walking around the city or road or forest is something else. We could even go back to Smallworld ways and use 3 scales rather than two, I'll put that up for discussion. Alternatively, this could add a zoom UI to the client proper. But in this case I'd change the rule to, if an object doesn't have a face in the right scale, it isn't displayed; that would mean, for example, you can't find the hidden cave on "traveling" zoom, you must go to the right region then zoom in to "outdoors" and search there. Community ========= Even in its current state, this game seriously rocks, especially compared with a lot of online games I've been playing recently. It amazes me that it doesn't have more players and that nobody has heard of it. We need more marketing, and I have a few ideas in this direction, although I'll keep those for later, to avoid drawing the discussion away from the points above. best, Lalo Martins -- So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable. ----- http://lalomartins.info/ GNU: never give up freedom http://www.gnu.org/ From lalo.martins at gmail.com Tue Dec 23 04:52:11 2008 From: lalo.martins at gmail.com (Lalo Martins) Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2008 10:52:11 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [crossfire] Platform statement References: Message-ID: quoth Lalo Martins as of Tue, 23 Dec 2008 09:55:19 +0000: > forks, (c) it's too dark to see (or for or whatever), or (d) the ^^^ fog damn, and I did proofread this thing :-P I blame the cold, my fingers don't want to behave. best, Lalo Martins -- So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable. ----- http://lalomartins.info/ GNU: never give up freedom http://www.gnu.org/ From juhaj at iki.fi Tue Dec 23 08:29:53 2008 From: juhaj at iki.fi (Juha =?iso-8859-1?q?J=E4ykk=E4?=) Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2008 16:29:53 +0200 Subject: [crossfire] What about a gameplay revolution? In-Reply-To: <4950962F.60709@sonic.net> References: <200812141316.12165.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> <200812211151.41866.juhaj@iki.fi> <4950962F.60709@sonic.net> Message-ID: <200812231630.38455.juhaj@iki.fi> > focused more on the H&S - someone would find out some way to circumvent a > monster, and it was like 'We can't have that' and things were changed. At I think this is wrong. If a player outsmarts the map maker, it's the map maker's shame and nothing should be changed (unless the map becomes trivial and everyone just keeps going there and pick up the reward). If there is a bug in the code, it's different. > some level, if players are clever, it shouldn't be a requirement that they > kill everything in sight. Which is what I basically mean above. > I think the entire alchemy/item creation probably needs to be revamped. > - Most all common raw materials (wood, water, rock, etc) should be > something that can easily be found/harvested > - Success rate for most items should be greatly increased, with the > flipside that for powerful items, the ingredients should be quite rare (so > you're luck to find the component to make something really good) Agreed on all accounts. > items in town, etc). So for skills, if it takes a player 30 minutes to > make enough item to gain a level, that would be about right in balance. Yep. > - Recipes/instructions should really be a character attributed, not a > player attribute. I realize there are some special recipes right now where > only a character that has learned it can make it, but for a large number, > it is really the player knowing the recipe (either through looking at the > file, or just acquiring tidbits among multiple characters) Nice point. Perhaps the recipies should be force-objects on the character? > My general philosophy on RPG worlds is that going out adventuring and > killing things should be the fastest way to get money. Yes, but I rather like the idea that it is not the ONLy way to get money and xp. > But related to your comment above, maybe mix different parts together. > Maybe that item still can hold 10 different bonuses. Maybe 1 beholder eye > can be used to give a 1% magic resistance bonus, and if the player wants, > could put 10 beholder eyes on that item for a 10% resistance. But maybe > also he can take those beholder eyes, do some alchemy type stuff and get a > single item that gives him 3% magic resistance but only use one slot, etc. Sounds good. The current alchemy involves mixing magic (or alchemy produced) stuff in "better" recipies, so why not keep doing that? To get +10% magic resistance using only one slot, one might need either a more powerful monster part or something created from beholder eyes, like 10 rings of +1% magic resistance. That way we'd have a kind of chain of items, starting with beholder eyes used to create potions of magic resistance, next being these potions used to create rings, rings used to create amulets and finally amulets can be used to create rings where +10% resistance only consumes one slot. Up to some limit, of course - otherwise we hit the ulta-powerful stuff again. All of this naturally needs much tweaking to get the balance right. I think linear growth on the number of beholder eyes is too easy. > have a lot of money, while other folks would say they do have lot - depends > where you go. Looks like I don't know the right places. =) > But even at low levels, orcs can be a good source - sure, most of the > stuff is crap, but if you get 500 items dropped, a few will probably be +2 > in nature or have some artifact bonus and be worth 50 platinum or > something. And at low level, that is a really nice chunk of change. 50 platinum? I just sold a Ruggilli's Whisker for 23 platinum... Amulet of the Magi was the most expensive piece of equipment I had and I was offered 35 for it. Where are all those items orcs drop that sell for 50 platinum?-o > That's sort of a different issue - rarity or certain items vs > accumulation of wealth. One could have lots of money but still not found > certain items. I lied about the rings earlier, I *do* have a Ring of Mithrandir after all. But that is still the only one of the ones I mentioned. But you also explained quite clearly what was the problem with it. There's obviously something that must be rebalanced there. Like everywhere where it comes to balancing different race/profession combos. I do not think a troll sorcerer should be as powerful as a fireborn sorcerer, but I certainly do think that the current situation where anyone or anything using weapons and armour quickly becomes way more powerful than those who do not use them - simply because there are so exceedingly powerful weapons/armour, and only those, around. Of course, adding a superior ring, for example, will not change things: the fighter will simply use it as well. What would be needed is some way prevent that. And it needs to be "natural". The only thing I can think of is somehow related to the skill levels. Perhaps item powers should look at skill levels instead of the total? Something along the lines of rings need evocation, amulets sorcery, daggers one-handed-weapons etc. And after that we need to prevent fighters from reaching high evocation levels... Anyone any ideas? Or is the whole thing totally unnecessary? > I was thinking about this. Items below some condition could be worth 0 [...] > A quick thought could be that most of that stuff has 'condition 0' > denoting it is broken crap (useful for materials and repair), and another > else has 'condition 100'. At least that one, on that initial pass, we'd Perhaps everything dropped by an orc should either be 50% or 0% condition? It would be natural for the weapons to NOT be at 100% and something should also be totally crap. I think 0% should be irreparable: perhaps those items should just vanish like some arrows? > For the forks, most likely we could take much of changes they've made to > the server code and use it ourselves, because that work would also likely > be under GPL (GPL license says derivations must also be under GPL) Why don't we do that, then? -Juha -- ----------------------------------------------- | Juha J?ykk?, juolja at utu.fi | | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | ----------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 197 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. Url : http://mailman.metalforge.org/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20081223/d4a56cef/attachment.pgp From kbulgrien at att.net Tue Dec 23 11:28:01 2008 From: kbulgrien at att.net (Kevin Bulgrien) Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2008 11:28:01 -0600 Subject: [crossfire] Platform statement In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20081223112801.67a477ba@a850srvr.kbulgrien.att.net> First and foremost, the platform sounds great. Not having put as much thought into it, I can't say I fully grasp the finer points. > Gameplay > ======== As I read "Gameplay", it all sounds good. If there was one game that I was impressed with (but abandoned when it went non-free) it was Dransik. I think it is now called Ashen Empires. All the positive things about that game seem already on the table. > I don't know... strongly tempted to kill overall level entirely. > What is it really good for anyway? I like the concept of item > power, but I'd replace it with something you get from quests. I admit that it felt as if the "overall level" and "item_power" paragraph did not have the same appeal as what was present in the rest of this section. I'd definitely suggest more confidence before tossing these aspects of the game. I am pretty sure I recall the instantiation of item_power, and I do not (yet?) see what the problem with an overall level and the balancing aspects of item_power are. It is, granted something I am not that familiar with (never having leveled very high), but I have definitely had to better plan out my game play since it came around, and that, I think, is a sign it is not something to be lightly tossed. > Loot and money > -------------- The whole loot/money discussion seems well thought out and good. I am not sure I see how this all fixes the current situations, but as aspects of the money problem concerning low and high characters is mentioned, that helps the faith aspect of what might occur so long as it remains under consideration. > Setting > ======= This is section also seems well thought, though I distinctly feel that the "rebooted from scratch" is rather a good way to ensure that trunk is not reasonably playable for a very long time... Maybe it is just not clear what a "reboot" will look like. Perhaps it would be good to describe what a reboot means before we go off disagreeing about whether or not to do one. The concept of a reboot is not really unreasonable, but if done without addressing the logistics and details of how, it seems hard to accept carte blanche. I find myself assuming that what is meant is a mass delete of "substandard" maps, and this begs the question about whether anyone has really considered the cost and what it means considering the (lack of?) resources that are presently on project. If there is one thing that seems odd, it is to have someone not presently very active in development of this or that (content), to be so quick to say this and that (content) are being thown out (no matter what). Some of us do not care to play on a dead branch, but to develop on a reasonable, if unpolished, trunk, since there is a sense that this group is made up of player/developers. Perhaps one suggestion is to not forget that it is not given that a reboot implies a reformat of the disk. Did pupland branch ever get merged back? If not, what's to stop a "reboot" from falling to the same fate? The point is not to bash the idea of a reboot, but to challenge more communication and thought about how to pull it off without sacrificing the ability save in the event that available people are not able to keep up with the vision. > Visual > ====== > WRT how to do it, I like the "tallworld" idea: don't increase the > face size to 64, rather make the objects use more cells, which > would reduce the "klunky" feel of the gameplay. I'd even go so > far as reducing the cells to 16 or 8 pixels. And, for the record, I like the tallworld idea myself. I believe it was recently construed that I did not (and also FTR, I do not deny a "client-breaker" comment made on IRC might have led to that thought). This does not mean I do not have serious concerns about the impact to the client I happen to be very strongly attached to. As long as the tallworld proponents do not embark on callous client- bashing, which tends to quickly demoralize development and participation, it is likely things will work out somehow, and I would rather be stretched than to insist that nothing must change just because it is difficult - though it would be nice to see some support in at least keeping the GTK-V2 usable. > So here's the plan: As with the other sections, the response is go-for-it. With collaboration, it seems success can be had with what is presented. > Technical > ========= > > See in "Gameplay" for comments on combat system and leveling up. > > I'd like to request two huge features that I think would improve > the feel: > > Re-hauled movement UI > --------------------- > > Moving around with arrows only is so last century! I'd like PCs > to have basic pathfinding, so you can click where you want to go > and the character will get there. > > Then of course, I found that people expect that clicking on a > monster will attack it. Last century or not, I vote against a mouse-only interface. IMO, Daimonin failed in its appeal partly due to making the move to such mouse-intensive gameplay though probably a key contributing factor was the incredible slow-down of gameplay. It made one feel like those dreams where you can run, or feel the way one feels trying to run in the swimming pool. I'll take the dead-before-you-know-what- happened over the waste of time that I felt Daimonin made out of my limited gaming time budget. BTW, don't underestimate "retro". Not that long ago, I think a lot of people would have mocked the idea of "texting" with cell phones. This is not a "no UI re-haul" petition, but it is a request to take special care when working this aspect of the game. > Finally, I'd like to add a "follow this road" mode; basically you > set your character on a road and he will go on until (a) it ends, > (b) it forks, (c) it's too dark to see (or for or whatever), or > (d) the character is too tired/hungry to proceed. (We don't have > "tired", but a time limit on using this feature would work. Not > sure what happens then, it's up for discussion.) > > Maybe "follow" is only available to transports... that would be > fine if that's how we think it should be. Ok. Honestly, "Technical" seems pretty thin on detail. Frankly I think there are far a lot more aspects of Crossfire that need technical focus and depth: sound, global ID for maps (and all that that makes possible), replay management, and much more) I think it would be far more productive to look for technical issues that relate to content management, than to start with surface issues like mice vs. keyboard. Forcing mouse use is "so Microsoft", and IMO, will kill a lot of CF appeal. The movement UI, IMO, is sadly lacking, but not that it is keyboard based; rather that it is prone to classic keyboard buffer problems, etc. Apparently Daimonin developers addressed this successfully based on comments on IRC or the ML by michtoen (that largely seemed to go ignored) though I have not played it in ages because it lost my interest after only a few weeks of play due to other massive changes away from what CF was. > True multi-scale > ---------------- Seems reasonable, though I can't say that I "understand". > Community > ========= > > Even in its current state, this game seriously rocks, especially > compared with a lot of online games I've been playing recently. > It amazes me that it doesn't have more players and that nobody > has heard of it. We need more marketing, and I have a few ideas > in this direction, although I'll keep those for later, to avoid > drawing the discussion away from the points above. :-) Ok, though "marketing" seems an odd thing to focus on. All the marketing in the world won't fix what lack of releases breaks in the free and open source world... Build a good, fun game, make regular releases (that are timed at basically around the release frequency of several main OS distributions, be responsible about fixing issues, and it is doubtful that marketing will be much of an issue. Imbalances in bug-fixing/releasing/feature/content are all well known problem in Crossfire. IMO, releasing is the big ticket item in addressing the community issues. The rest is small potatoes (IMO). > best, > Lalo Martins The main personal priority I have is that I believe one of Crossfire's best qualities is that one can play it off and on... for years. I am not sure I can put my finger on why, but it is the only game I keep coming back to. When I say only, I mean only. I do not keep gameplaying as a top priority, but I have a fair number of PC games from the Pre-Windows ME era, all the Nintendos except the DS, and have given a try to get into some of the Linux offerings. Only CF gets me everytime I feel a hankering to get into gaming. The others have less of a draw even if they pique interest from time to time. Personally, I'd like to see it stay that way - not that there is any sense it will not, based on this statement, but just to underscore how strongly I feel that this game should not turn into yet another, fill-in-the-blank. Part of the reason is that it is a good combination of play, learn, and develop (hobby), which might point to the underlying draw of the game (learn). I find that I lose interest in anything that does not involve learning from beginning to end. All, in all, I hope it is clear that this is a supportive response, though the volume of some comments are meant to encourage more thought, or to document some difference of opinion about where the problem areas are. Kevin From lalo.martins at gmail.com Tue Dec 23 12:06:35 2008 From: lalo.martins at gmail.com (Lalo Martins) Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2008 18:06:35 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [crossfire] Platform statement References: <20081223112801.67a477ba@a850srvr.kbulgrien.att.net> Message-ID: ok... let's address your specific points. quoth Kevin Bulgrien as of Tue, 23 Dec 2008 11:28:01 -0600: > First and foremost, the platform sounds great. Not having put as much > thought into it, I can't say I fully grasp the finer points. thanks. >> Gameplay >> ======== >> I don't know... strongly tempted to kill overall level entirely. What >> is it really good for anyway? I like the concept of item power, but >> I'd replace it with something you get from quests. > > I admit that it felt as if the "overall level" and "item_power" > paragraph did not have the same appeal as what was present in the rest > of this section. I'd definitely suggest more confidence before tossing > these aspects of the game. I am pretty sure I recall the instantiation > of item_power, and I do not (yet?) see what the problem with an overall > level and the balancing aspects of item_power are. It is, granted > something I am not that familiar with (never having leveled very high), > but I have definitely had to better plan out my game play since it came > around, and that, I think, is a sign it is not something to be lightly > tossed. I *don't* want to toss item power. I want to toss overall level and still keep item power somehow. But I'm not sure about tossing overall level yet. We'll see. >> Loot and money >> -------------- > > > > The whole loot/money discussion seems well thought out and good. I am > not sure I see how this all fixes the current situations, but as aspects > of the money problem concerning low and high characters is mentioned, > that helps the faith aspect of what might occur so long as it remains > under consideration. Well the details of the money system were a bit of a tangent, I got carried away. It can be summed up in three points: - give money more granularity (by spacing prices more, or in other words, making the lowest coin -- the arch "value" attribute -- worth less) - go through every arch and re-think prices for realism and game balance - make the coins more "realistic" and, well, in-setting. >> Setting >> ======= > > > > This is section also seems well thought, though I distinctly feel that > the "rebooted from scratch" is rather a good way to ensure that trunk is > not reasonably playable for a very long time... Maybe it is just not > clear what a "reboot" will look like. Perhaps it would be good to > describe what a reboot means before we go off disagreeing about whether > or not to do one. It means starting a new world (maps and arch) from scratch, porting things from 1.x as appropriate. And I think we owe everyone an explanation here. It didn't occur to me I had to give it, but your message highlighted an important point. As I see it "rebootworld" is _not_ trunk. Trunk would go on being 1.x maintenance, and it's even possible there will be more 1.x releases after 1.12; same, if I understand Nicolas' intentions correctly, goes for server. (BTW, since it seems to be in fashion to assign roles -- do you want to be "officially" in charge of the "clients" tree? Which really mostly means gtkv2... I'm in favour of dropping the other two unless someone steps up to maintain them.) The development of 2.0, meaning C++ server, "rebootworld" maps and "rebootworld" arches, would be in wholly new trees. We've been even talking of git or bzr. So no, 1.x isn't dead; development on it will only stop a little after 2.x is playable. And that's both server and content. Just no major changes anymore; those will be on 2.x. But small improvements, and bugfixes, will still happen. And people are free to submit maps or map changes for 1.x/bigworld, although I'd strongly prefer they do for 2.x/ rebootworld instead :-) >> Technical >> ========= >> >> Re-hauled movement UI >> --------------------- >> >> Moving around with arrows only is so last century! I'd like PCs to >> have basic pathfinding, so you can click where you want to go and the >> character will get there. >> >> Then of course, I found that people expect that clicking on a monster >> will attack it. > > Last century or not, I vote against a mouse-only interface. Wait wait, that's not even up for a vote :-) I play with the keyboard exclusively as well, and I'd scream and leave the project before agreeing with mouse-only UI. No. What I mean is that the existing mouse UI is awful, bordering on unusable. The keyboard UI is fine as it is (although we'd have to think about how the "follow" mode would be activated from the keyboard). > Honestly, "Technical" seems pretty thin on detail. > there are far a lot more aspects of Crossfire that need technical focus > and depth... Sure... but those belong on Nicolas' yard :-) I'm running for "content" leader, not project leader. That, I believe, remains mwedel. > :-) Ok, though "marketing" seems an odd thing to focus on. All the > marketing in the world won't fix what lack of releases breaks in the > free and open source world... Build a good, fun game, make regular > releases (that are timed at basically around the release frequency of > several main OS distributions, be responsible about fixing issues, and > it is doubtful that marketing will be much of an issue. Imbalances in > bug-fixing/releasing/feature/content are all well known problem in > Crossfire. IMO, releasing is the big ticket item in addressing the > community issues. The rest is small potatoes (IMO). If every home gnu/linux/bsd/solaris/etc user who is also a gamer played crossfire, we'd still have a ridiculously small user base. And by simply having quality and regular releases, we wouldn't be anywhere near those results. The problem is that a lot of people who would love the game even as it is now, have never heard of it. But I'm not focusing on marketing, not now. Just wanted to mention it, because I do plan to focus on it... later. > The main personal priority I have is that I believe one of Crossfire's > best qualities is that one can play it off and on... for years. I am > not sure I can put my finger on why, but it is the only game I keep > coming back to. Agreed :-) Well for me not the only... like an addict I'll play every new gameboy pokemon game that nintendo and gamefreak put out... what can I do, it's my dirty little vice. best, Lalo Martins -- So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable. ----- http://lalomartins.info/ GNU: never give up freedom http://www.gnu.org/ From mwedel at sonic.net Tue Dec 23 22:33:21 2008 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2008 20:33:21 -0800 Subject: [crossfire] What about a gameplay revolution? In-Reply-To: <200812231630.38455.juhaj@iki.fi> References: <200812141316.12165.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> <200812211151.41866.juhaj@iki.fi> <4950962F.60709@sonic.net> <200812231630.38455.juhaj@iki.fi> Message-ID: <4951BB91.3000104@sonic.net> Juha J?ykk? wrote: >> - Recipes/instructions should really be a character attributed, not a >> player attribute. I realize there are some special recipes right now where >> only a character that has learned it can make it, but for a large number, >> it is really the player knowing the recipe (either through looking at the >> file, or just acquiring tidbits among multiple characters) > > Nice point. Perhaps the recipies should be force-objects on the character? Yes - that would work. It would also allow something along the line of 'what recipes do I know'. Instead of having to jot down recipes you find in the game someplace else (or keep all those scrolls), one could get a listing of all recipes you found, etc. >> But related to your comment above, maybe mix different parts together. >> Maybe that item still can hold 10 different bonuses. Maybe 1 beholder eye >> can be used to give a 1% magic resistance bonus, and if the player wants, >> could put 10 beholder eyes on that item for a 10% resistance. But maybe >> also he can take those beholder eyes, do some alchemy type stuff and get a >> single item that gives him 3% magic resistance but only use one slot, etc. > > Sounds good. The current alchemy involves mixing magic (or alchemy produced) > stuff in "better" recipies, so why not keep doing that? To get +10% magic > resistance using only one slot, one might need either a more powerful monster > part or something created from beholder eyes, like 10 rings of +1% magic > resistance. That way we'd have a kind of chain of items, starting with > beholder eyes used to create potions of magic resistance, next being these > potions used to create rings, rings used to create amulets and finally > amulets can be used to create rings where +10% resistance only consumes one > slot. Up to some limit, of course - otherwise we hit the ulta-powerful stuff > again. > > All of this naturally needs much tweaking to get the balance right. I think > linear growth on the number of beholder eyes is too easy. Yes - I think there are a few ways to limit this: 1) Number of slots an item has for enchantments. Some may hold more than others, and thus be more valuable. But in any case, the max slots should be something fairly limiting. 2) Growth of bonus should not be linear. A square bonus would work pretty good (so to get an item with +10% resistance, you'd need to have a total of +100% resistance items). That in itself may not be hard. OTOH, such items may become rarer - you wouldn't sell those items to the shop anymore if they are now useful for making your items. 3) Different items have different affinities - I'll detail this more below about race/class balance. > Like everywhere where it comes to balancing different race/profession combos. > I do not think a troll sorcerer should be as powerful as a fireborn sorcerer, > but I certainly do think that the current situation where anyone or anything > using weapons and armour quickly becomes way more powerful than those who do > not use them - simply because there are so exceedingly powerful > weapons/armour, and only those, around. Of course, adding a superior ring, > for example, will not change things: the fighter will simply use it as well. > What would be needed is some way prevent that. And it needs to be "natural". > The only thing I can think of is somehow related to the skill levels. Perhaps > item powers should look at skill levels instead of the total? Something along > the lines of rings need evocation, amulets sorcery, daggers > one-handed-weapons etc. And after that we need to prevent fighters from > reaching high evocation levels... Anyone any ideas? Or is the whole thing > totally unnecessary? I think you do have a valid point. One problem (IMO - others don't see it this way) is that any class can pick up any skill. So while racial bonuses do matter, what class you start with doesn't have much impact. I don't really want to focus on redoing the skills in some fashion, so will instead continue with the item discussion. But note that effectiveness as a spell caster does depend on your skill level. My point about affinities above may be different items may take some enchantments better than others. Something like plate armor could perhaps only be improved with bonuses that directly relate to combat/protection (resistances, AC, etc). But a set of mage robes may allow some different affinities, like improved sp regen, improvement of certain stats, etc. Same could be true of a sword vs a dagger. The sword could perhaps largely be limited to bonuses related to doing damage. But that dagger (maybe we should really just add something like a wand or other non combat item a character holds) could have bonuses related to spell casting. Now this still doesn't solve the problem of the fighter deciding he wants to wear some mage robes and wield a dagger. OTOH, now he really is like a mage, so maybe no problem there. IF (and a big IF there) we want to keep the current system where any starting class can pick up new skills, there isn't much way you can limit what skills they can use. But if that fighter now has to use mage equipment to be useful, well, he starts to look a lot like a mage now, not a fighter. Another possibility is limiting certain items by class and/or race. Maybe only spellcasters can use a wand in their hand instead of some other weapon. If like above, that wand has affinities for spellcasting type skills, it effectively gives them a leg up. Likewise, certain weapons should probably only be usable by fighter. If we want to prevent fighters from be mages, mages also shouldn't be able to be fighters. > >> I was thinking about this. Items below some condition could be worth 0 > [...] >> A quick thought could be that most of that stuff has 'condition 0' >> denoting it is broken crap (useful for materials and repair), and another >> else has 'condition 100'. At least that one, on that initial pass, we'd > > Perhaps everything dropped by an orc should either be 50% or 0% condition? It > would be natural for the weapons to NOT be at 100% and something should also > be totally crap. I think 0% should be irreparable: perhaps those items should > just vanish like some arrows? Maybe. A broken item could still be scavenged for materials perhaps, but maybe that isn't something we worry about. A case could be made that magical items should perhaps generally be found in better shape. > >> For the forks, most likely we could take much of changes they've made to >> the server code and use it ourselves, because that work would also likely >> be under GPL (GPL license says derivations must also be under GPL) > > Why don't we do that, then? We'd have to know what to grab - unless we just wanted to take everything (which I don't think is the case), you'd have to look and find the features we want, port them over, etc. For some things, like bug fixes, finding out how the bug was fixed may not be any easier than just fixing it in the first place. From mwedel at sonic.net Tue Dec 23 23:55:33 2008 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2008 21:55:33 -0800 Subject: [crossfire] Platform statement In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4951CED5.7000006@sonic.net> Lalo Martins wrote: (various bits snipped here and there) > Gameplay > ======== > > For combat with enemies about your level, I think mwedel's > changes did the trick, at least for fighters (ie not > magic-users). I like non-magic combat on trunk. On top of that > I'd put a stronger focus on damage types, so you'd put more > work/thought into getting a weapon that can do the work and/or > armour that can keep you alive. Add more items with damage > types, maybe add another damage type or three. (But careful not > to turn the game into Pokemon.) Like so many things done in crossfire, the discrete damage changes is something that was never followed up to fruition. For reference, the non discrete damage would be something like: attacktype physical | fire damage 12 Where when that hit a creature, it would hit it with those 2 attacktypes, and use whichever one would do more damage. The discrete damage type was like: dam_physical 8 dam_fire 6 Which says this item could do 8 points of physical or 6 points of fire. One thing which I don't think was ever really clear if that was an AND (physical + fire) or OR (physical or fire). The old system (attacktype) was OR logic. IMO, the AND logic makes more sense - you can have a flaming sword that does a fair amount of phyiscal and a lesser amount of fire. I'd make a strong case that every 'attacktype' line get removed and replaced with appropriate discrete damage name. The complication here is that if we do use AND logic, automatic conversion isn't as easy (but for items with only 1 attacktype, still would be). The entire magic attacktype is also odd, because for lots of things it is used to denote a magical affect (thus magic resistant creatures take less damage). Maybe we just do away with that logic? Getting rid of the attacktype would also just be a nice code cleanup - don't need to handle that code anymore. As far as new attacktypes - are you talking physical types, or other ones? For physical, the mix of slashing/blunt/piercing is popular. For characters, it clear adds more variation and decisions (skeletons should have very high resistance to piercing, less to slashing, and none to blunt). Likewise, different armors the character wears should have direct benefits - some would be better against certain attacktypes than others. > > An important point that was raised in the list is that when you > meet something way above your level, it should hurt you badly but > not kill you instantly, so you can run away. Of course if the > monster is TOO MUCH above your level (let's say 4x to keep > consistent with the definition of extra), then it's reasonable > that you die without ever knowing what hit you. That's reasonable. I'd make a strong case that in general, it should be difficult for characters to wander into places in which the enemy is 4x your level (low level dungeons are sort of an exception - if you're level 2, 4x is level 8 - not as unreasonable, as level 10 vs 40) I think the slower combat has helped this out already - monsters generally do less damage per hit, so less likely one hit will take a character out, unless there is a real high level difference. > What I think the gameplay lacks most in 1.x is goals. That's one > of the two things that make Pupland such a classic; there's > always a next quest, there's always something more to keep you > going. By the time the whole thing is over, you're so high level > that you can think of things to do on your own. So, either an > overall meta-quest or a general, social push are a must. > Otherwise you don't really have a reason to come back to the game > other than "it's fun". I agree that more goals are needed, and this can also help change the H&S focus - some goals may not be kill everything in a dungeon, but rather get some item, transport and item, etc. Goals could also help to move players along - get higher level players out of scorn and into other cities as that is where goals/quests appropriate for their level is now located. > Generally I tend to go with Nicolas' idea of making the world > truly dynamic and persistent. But Pupland proper becomes > impossible with that; how many people can rescue one king? > Although considering the nature and end of the quest, it's still > possible, with a few tweaks. I'm not completely adverse to this idea, but I think it needs to be fleshed out more. How do you deal with those goals/quests when the dungeon(s) related to them might have been cleared out. How fast does stuff repopulate, etc. As said before, my biggest concern is that the various maps are cleared out and haven't been repopulated. At some level, that isn't much difference than right now with maps and reset times - on active servers, you can get a case where many of the maps have not reset yet, and that can be fairly frustrating - more so for low level characters who may not have as many choices as high level characters. > > Another important point: I want to make level progression a lot > slower. Not the actual gaining of levels, but what that means; > how fast your SP pool, HP pool, etc increase, things like wc (or > whatever Nicolas replaces it with); and also, make permanent stat > increases a lot harder, so that you only reach "perfection" > typically at level 100 or so. I don't really see much problem with that. Note that the balance work I've already done with melee combat presumes a certain level of WC, AC, and HP progression - if those are drastically altered, it may mean all that stuff has to be rebalanced (not that it can't be done, just want to raise that point) > > I don't know... strongly tempted to kill overall level entirely. > What is it really good for anyway? I like the concept of item > power, but I'd replace it with something you get from quests. Overall level isn't used for much. Item power. Hit points. That's about it I think. Overall exp is still used to record your score. For hit points, it could be done away with. Why should one necessarily get a big blob of hit points every level, and nothing in between? Historically, this has been because you got a random number of hit points per level. But it would be simple enough to change it to some basis where you get 1 HP and these different points. But see note above about impact of changing HP. > > Loot and money > -------------- > > I agree there is too much loot; in the beginning of the game you > never have enough money, and after a few levels you have too much > and not enough ways to spend it. > > Here's how I see solving it, suggestions/comments welcome: > > - Reduce treasure-type loot. Less gold and expensive stuff in > dungeons, less artifacts. (I like the idea of finding a > *component* of an artifact...) > > - Equipment-type loot (eg orc swords) makes sense to me. I'd > make them even cheaper though. Also selling flesh shouldn't > give you that much money (I usually get my non-dragon > characters started basically with selling livers). I often thought that all flesh should basically have a timer (like the demon ichors) - they only are 'fresh' for so long, then become rotting, and then eventually disappear entirely. But most flesh should really be of very little value. If it isn't used for some recipe, it really has no value beyond its food, so why would someone pay much money for it? > > - Change the money system. I think calling coins "gold" and > "silver" is a weird and contrived fantasy trope; historically, > all nations either used currency with actual names, or > item-for-item trading (salt was particularly popular). A gold > coin should be worth a lot and you shouldn't see one until > level 20-something. So, the server's internal money unit will > become some worthless new coin, let's call it a "forkee". If > you care about that, let's say it's made of tin or nickel. The > lowest coin actually used is the bronze "aytbit". Then next > comes the thing people actually trade mostly in (for trivial > stuff), let's call it a "cleekin" (heavy brass). Then comes > the copper "reggry" in which most people's salaries are paid. > The silver "new imperial", gold "skuddie" and platinum "khelon" > are the money of rich people, more similar to today's diamonds > than jade/amberium. (If that system isn't sufficient for the > "rich" half, there could easily be different-sized silver and > gold coins.) My quick thoughts: Changing the name doesn't really change value. If silver is replaced with bronze piece, and gold with copper, etc, that doesn't really do much to change actual wealth, all that really changes is what we call it. The one advantage of a revaluation is that maybe there are still coins for really high value stuff instead of using gemstones, etc. I'd strongly suggest a decimal system be used (10:1 or 100:1 ratios). I really don't want to have to be doing 64:1 multiplication to try and figure out values of different items. I certainly do think value of many items does need to be re-evaluated. Note that internally, a general 'value' is used - the meaning of that to coins is a different piece of code. I had suggested at one time that instead of actually having all those coins about (and extra code to deal with it), a characters money is just another attributed like hp or exp. I'm also not fond of regional currencies. While realistic, this tends to just become more of a bother to players to go in and exchange currency than actually adding much. Now maybe you have some special quests (someone will only take regional currency or something), but have to keep in mind point is to have fun and not get bogged down in details of real world economics. > Setting > ======= < much about reboot removed> > > I'll (mostly) keep the existing pantheon, and elements that are > homage to past developers well either be kept or reworked; the > first city around which the reboot will groww will still be > called Scorn and founded by Skud. > > I'll write something up the next few days. Am interested in seeing that write up. Do you envision doing all new maps them? Including new world, new cities, etc? > > Visual > ====== > > I think we badly need new faces, but the whole redesign project > was based on the premise that Yann was going to, if not draw all > of them, at least enough to motivate other people. I'm not a > graphics artist and I can't promise the same, so unless someone > steps up, I think this subproject will have to be shelved. > > WRT how to do it, I like the "tallworld" idea: don't increase the > face size to 64, rather make the objects use more cells, which > would reduce the "klunky" feel of the gameplay. I'd even go so > far as reducing the cells to 16 or 8 pixels. > > So here's the plan: > > - Facesets can have different pixel-per-cell sizes. I think > that's already the case, right? Sort of. While different facesets can have different sizes, I'm not sure if the clients actually use that information or not. > > - "Rebootworld" will start with current faces, but 4 pixels per > cell and "tall faces". So we can design better arches, > especially buildings, without drawing anything. That will kind > of kill smoothing, I guess, but we'll see how it goes. (I > don't know if smoothing + tall faces has been though of yet...) If I follow this right, it does mean that in many cases, the number of objects would need to be increased considerable. I gather that in the context above, a cell would be equivalent to a map space (otherwise, we don't get anything be subdividing it). So while we now have each cell use 32x32 pixels, the basic idea is divide that cell in 64. Such a major division is likely to have many impacts on map handling. I think further investigation is needed. Certainly subdividing is a good thing, and does make for a smoother interface/look. I just think impact/way to do it needs some additional details. > > - Then a new "Enhanced" tileset will be started, using 12 > pixels per cell. (Hey, no reason to keep to powers of 2.) > This will grow as fast as it does. Anyone who feels > adventurous is free to start their own tileset. A reason to keep a power of 2 is that it allows rescaling of existing images with fewer artifacts. That said, if going from 4 to 12, that is a clean multiple. > > - A benefit of keeping the "basic" tileset around is that it > would probably look good on a small-screen client (mobile > phone, NDS, PSP, netbook). How big of a viewable areas do you envision the client to display? For example, existing client supports up to 25x25, and I think the jxclient uses 25x19. From quick calculations, it would seem that increase the detail by a factor of 3 will result in either less cells being viewable, or in almost all cases, the end user actually downscaling the images. > > Technical > ========= > > See in "Gameplay" for comments on combat system and leveling up. > > I'd like to request two huge features that I think would improve > the feel: > > Re-hauled movement UI > --------------------- > > Moving around with arrows only is so last century! I'd like PCs > to have basic pathfinding, so you can click where you want to go > and the character will get there. Yes. Monsters should also use that, as could AI NPCs. > > Then of course, I found that people expect that clicking on a > monster will attack it. This would be more useful for directional attacks - I shouldn't need to be perfectly lined up on a monster to shoot an arrow at it - if it is one space over, I should still be able to do so (and likewise, it to me) > True multi-scale > ---------------- One time in the past, someone toyed with the idea of there not being multiple scales - there is just one scale. You don't enter buildings, but rather they are just there on the map. That idea has some appeal to me, especially for towns - then everyone is logically on the same map (so you'd see other players about more, etc). I don't know if that is something you considered, or how it would work out, but if you're going to do a completely new world... > > This is really two different features on the server side: > > - All movement is slowed down proportional to the "scale" > attribute of the map. (If you think moving 10x slower on the > city than indoors is annoying, bear in mind you'll probably > move a little faster indoors, and outdoors you'll have > transports, which I want to use more heavily.) This doesn't appeal to me much, and probably not much to other people. I remember when we went from smallworld to bigworld, some people complained about how long it took to get from one town to another (which is still just a minute or two if you know where you're going) But this also comes down to if there is anything happening outdoors. In crossfire, the outside travel is generally safe. So if it takes me 5 minutes to go from one town to the next, and nothing at all happens in that 5 minutes, that is just a waste of time for me. So if you're going to do this, monsters or something has to be happening on that. Flip side might be to have some fast travel mechanism if you have been to a place before - if I've been to navar city, I can get there near instantly. If I haven't, I need to start walking. > > - Objects can have different faces depending on the "scale" > attribute. I suppose if there isn't a match a default could be > used. Those faces can have different (cell) sizes. > > That doesn't mean you'd look 10x smaller outdoors, but a little > smaller. Then I'd go for making the "enhanced" tiles 16 pixels > rather than 12. Is it worth it to have different faces, or just have the client do rescaling? My concern here is that making up lots of images is a big resource sink. I've seen it through 2 times (from XBM to XPM, and then from 24x24 to 32x32 image size). In both of of those cases, an automatic conversion is done as the first pass, but cleanup/colorization is needed to make them proper. From what I've seen above, I see a lot of 'new images' needed. I'm not sure how much work gros has done - maybe there isn't a lot left to do. But at some point, I start wondering if instead of having folks work on 3 or 4 new different image sets if that effort wouldn't be better focused elsewhere (like having those folks make maps). > > The rationale here is that we're trying to make both movement and > window size work for what are two almost entirely different > games; dungeon exploring is one thing and requires one UI, > walking around the city or road or forest is something else. I don't know - I personally don't really have much problem with 2 different games/scales. Maybe that is just me. The UI needs are perhaps more different based on the action - selling items needs a different interface than when I'm adventuring. The one thing I can think of here is that in many dungeons, amount of spaces visible will be less than outdoors, and thus some larger scale is desired (we still want to fill up the screen, but since there are fewer spaces, each image would be bigger). I think we'd need to look at more of the dungeons - many dungeons have a problem where the rooms and hallways are too small, making it hard for people to party together. If this is revamped, so hallways are generally 3+ spaces wide and rooms 10-15 wide, now you're back in the case where you are filling up a good portion of the screen with dungeon views. > > We could even go back to Smallworld ways and use 3 scales rather > than two, I'll put that up for discussion. The problem I had with smallworld is that it was just too small - it started to get to the point that with the number of dungeons, there was one almost every 5 spaces - it just didn't feel that good. As noted above, I'd almost go to the other direction - the hugeworld. Maybe it does take you 30 minutes to get from scorn to navar city - I don't have a problem with that, so long as I can save along the way. From lalo.martins at gmail.com Wed Dec 24 07:53:49 2008 From: lalo.martins at gmail.com (Lalo Martins) Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2008 13:53:49 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [crossfire] Platform statement References: <4951CED5.7000006@sonic.net> Message-ID: quoth Mark Wedel as of Tue, 23 Dec 2008 21:55:33 -0800: > Lalo Martins wrote: > (various bits snipped here and there) >> Gameplay >> ======== >> >> (use attacktypes more, add more attacktypes) > > Like so many things done in crossfire, the discrete damage > changes is something that was never followed up to fruition. > (...) > I'd make a strong case that every 'attacktype' line get > removed and replaced with appropriate discrete damage name. > The complication here is that if we do use AND logic, automatic > conversion isn't as easy (but for items with only 1 attacktype, > still would be). Since I'm proposing going manually through every single arch anyway for other reasons, I don't think adding this to the task list would be a problem. Or here's a crazy one. How about doing away with the percentage-based resistances, and making resistances an absolute value? That would allow items to keep improving more or less indefinitely, and would greatly help making higher-level characters more powerful. (Dragon logic would probably need adjustments, I guess.) To me it makes sense that someone with a super-duper Mostrai armor takes no damage at all from an Orc's club but takes some from a Holy Avenger or whatever. > The entire magic attacktype is also odd, because for lots of > things it is used to denote a magical affect (thus magic > resistant creatures take less damage). Maybe we just do away > with that logic? Yeah magic is different... have to think about that. > As far as new attacktypes - are you talking physical types, > or other ones? Both I guess. I have a list somewhere that I compiled for a different game... I wouldn't be able to use it directly > For physical, the mix of slashing/blunt/piercing is popular. Yes, I like that idea. Maybe replace physical with these three new types, reusing the physical code for blunt. >> An important point that was raised in the list is that when you meet >> something way above your level, it should hurt you badly but not kill >> you instantly, so you can run away. Of course if the monster is TOO >> MUCH above your level (let's say 4x to keep consistent with the >> definition of extra), then it's reasonable that you die without ever >> knowing what hit you. > > That's reasonable. I'd make a strong case that in general, > it should be difficult for characters to wander into places in > which the enemy is 4x your level (low level dungeons are sort > of an exception - if you're level 2, 4x is level 8 - not as > unreasonable, as level 10 vs 40) Agreed. Again, since every map will be edited for the reboot, that's not unreasonable to ask. Although I'd argue there are cases where an exception is part of the story.... look at my Valk temple for a good example :-) (the excessively hard monster is used to mark "hey, this is the wrong way, and the seemingly easy path is not the one Valkyrie approves of"). > I think the slower combat has helped this out already - > monsters generally do less damage per hit, so less likely one > hit will take a character out, unless there is a real high > level difference. Yes, I think the slower combat made things a lot better in this aspect. >> What I think the gameplay lacks most in 1.x is goals. (...) > > I agree that more goals are needed, and this can also help > change the H&S focus - some goals may not be kill everything in > a dungeon, but rather get some item, transport and item, etc. Yes but that's not what I meant :-) I'm thinking higher level. Why are you doing that dungeon? In Pupland, for every dungeon you finish, you're presented with the next thing to do for one quest. For every quest you finish, you're given the next quest in the meta-quest. So you have fun and you know what's next. Sometimes what's next is beyond your abilities, but you know what you need to improve in order to continue, so you go find a way to do that. This way you have more fun and before you know it, 40, 60 levels have gone by. >> Generally I tend to go with Nicolas' idea of making the world truly >> dynamic and persistent. > > I'm not completely adverse to this idea, but I think it needs > to be fleshed out more. How do you deal with those > goals/quests when the dungeon(s) related to them might have > been cleared out. How fast does stuff repopulate, etc. As > said before, my biggest concern is that the various maps are > cleared out and haven't been repopulated. True, and that's a decision to be made now before the rebootworld starts being built, because it results in a radically different world. It's a wholly different game design. Bear in mind also... with a persistent world, different servers would "evolve" differently. A fresh server would still have all the initial quests and dungeons around. There's a big question of how to integrate updates with this... I guess I need to catch Nicolas online one of these days (weekend?) and brainstorm, anyone else interested is invited. >> Another important point: I want to make level progression a lot slower. >> Not the actual gaining of levels, but what that means; how fast your >> SP pool, HP pool, etc increase, things like wc (or whatever Nicolas >> replaces it with); and also, make permanent stat increases a lot >> harder, so that you only reach "perfection" typically at level 100 or >> so. > > I don't really see much problem with that. Note that the > balance work I've already done with melee combat presumes a > certain level of WC, AC, and HP progression - if those are > drastically altered, it may mean all that stuff has to be > rebalanced (not that it can't be done, just want to raise that > point) Noted. One more for the reboot arch to-do list :-) >> I don't know... strongly tempted to kill overall level entirely. What >> is it really good for anyway? I like the concept of item power, but >> I'd replace it with something you get from quests. > > Overall level isn't used for much. Item power. Hit points. > That's about it I think. Overall exp is still used to record > your score. Yeah that's what I was thinking. It isn't used for much anymore, so it's of arguable value. > For hit points, it could be done away with. Why should one > necessarily get a big blob of hit points every level, and > nothing in between? Historically, this has been because you > got a random number of hit points per level. > > But it would be simple enough to change it to some basis > where you get 1 HP and these different points. But see note > above about impact of changing HP. Or, again, possibly you gain HP on quests. A long, arduous journey to bathe in the Wellspring of Gaea... I guess that would make HP increases happen less often, but I'm fine with that, since armor will probably be going up faster. (Then of course each such increase needs to store a force so it can't be used twice...) >> Loot and money >> -------------- >> >> Also selling flesh shouldn't give you that much money (I >> usually get my non-dragon characters started basically with >> selling livers). > > I often thought that all flesh should basically have a timer > (like the demon ichors) - they only are 'fresh' for so long, > then become rotting, and then eventually disappear entirely. Good point, that's entirely reasonable. Heh, could even be creatures that *prefer* rotting flesh. > But most flesh should really be of very little value. If it > isn't used for some recipe, it really has no value beyond its > food, so why would someone pay much money for it? Well, the problem now is with the ones that *can* be used in recipes... for balance reasons they end up having high values (or maybe they have no value and the server calculates it automatically) > My quick thoughts: > Changing the name doesn't really change value. If silver is replaced > with bronze piece, and gold with copper, etc, that doesn't really do > much to change actual wealth, all that really changes is what we call > it. True. Changing the names is separate from gameplay; it's for ambiance. The gameplay leg of this section was, as I said on Kevin's reply: putting more granularity in server values, and re-thinking the value of things for balance and ambiance. Like, IMO things like enchanted armor should cost in the gold range. Even *normal* swords/armor should be very expensive... in the dozens of reggries (thousands of dollars) range I guess. As a partially-related aside, I don't see orcs and goblins having swords at all. Clubs, spears, stoneaxes... hatchets maybe... are more reasonable. > I'd strongly suggest a decimal system be used (10:1 or 100:1 ratios). I > really don't want to have to be doing 64:1 multiplication to try and > figure out values of different items. Yes but that doesn't arise. What happens is that things will go in ranges... and we can even hardcode it that way. So like, food will always be quoted in cleekins (and if the merchant says "three and a half", you do know half a cleekin is 4 aytbits); clothing, weapons, armor, books, horses, etc always in reggries; enchanted stuff, high-level books, etc, in the silver/gold system; and houses, magical beasts, ships, and the like always in plat only. > I had suggested at one time that instead of actually having all those > coins about (and extra code to deal with it), a characters money is just > another attributed like hp or exp. That's another possibility. It detracts (IMO) from the feeling of immersion, but it makes things simpler. I guess it depends on how much the game would focus on accumulating money. I want to focus more on RP, build a "believable" world, and for that I prefer coins. > I'm also not fond of regional currencies. While realistic, this tends > to just become more of a bother to players to go in and exchange > currency than actually adding much. Now maybe you have some special > quests (someone will only take regional currency or something), but have > to keep in mind point is to have fun and not get bogged down in details > of real world economics. Again, depends on how much money is in focus. If you want to go to a different nation "trivially", just to complete a quest or something, I'd expect you to be able to do that without spending any money. But if you want to stick around, do the places' quests, etc, then you'd want local money. But that's something to think about only later. For probably the next year or more there will be only one nation on "rebootworld" :-) >> Setting >> ======= > < much about reboot removed> >> I'll write something up the next few days. > > Am interested in seeing that write up. Do you envision doing > all new maps them? Including new world, new cities, etc? Yes. World and cities are all new. Dungeons will be a mix of new and ported, but porting requires some actual editing, not just copying the file -- as per the cell size changes below, and new features like tall faces, but more importantly, making sure it fits the setting and the guidelines we agree on wrt gameplay. >> Visual >> ====== >> >> - Facesets can have different pixel-per-cell sizes. I think >> that's already the case, right? > > Sort of. While different facesets can have different sizes, > I'm not sure if the clients actually use that information or > not. The server doesn't even care about the face pixel size, though, right? (Or even know...) From lalo.martins at gmail.com Wed Dec 24 15:04:59 2008 From: lalo.martins at gmail.com (Lalo Martins) Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2008 21:04:59 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [crossfire] [Rebootworld] Priests and prayers and cults Message-ID: Some thoughts on Rebootworld religion. This is mostly to set priestly types further away from magic-users. - Devotion and priestly magic will go by cult (religion) rather than god. Some cults may have multiple gods, or none. Think Devourers in 1.x. - POSSIBLY (still thinking about it) conversion happens on a different object, not the altar. So praying on the "wrong" altar just means you get no benefits. (Except -- you'd lose grace rather than gaining it.) This means altars "in the wild" and in particular random maps won't allow you to convert to a religion you'd otherwise not have access to and short-circuit a quest :-) - No prayerbooks. Prayers will be learned in the temple and different for each cult. (Sometimes it will be the exact same spell but with different name; same internal spell code but different archetype.) The only spell off the top of my head I see pretty much every cult having is Cult Monsters (which will probably have a better name though). Maybe Word of Recall. - Prayer names to be thematic, reflecting the mythology. This is the place to make heavy use of individual gods. - Some cults may be "specialized". For example... let's say... Valkyrie, Sorig, Gaea and Ixy are all part of the Imperial pantheon, so a priest of the Imperial cult can switch to the cult of Sorig without punishment, other than becoming unable to cast some prayers. Going back does incur a punishment, though. Ideally, I think "branch" cult followers should be able to pray at "parent" cult altars, but I don't know how hard that would be coding-wise, and it's not a huge loss if they can't. The idea here is that these cults wouldn't be available for starting characters, but as you progress you can specialize more and more, getting cooler perks. (Not only godly perks, but also things like access to cult facilities.) In story terms, your religion is still the same (Imperial), but you've been induced into Sorig priesthood... compare with general Olympian devotion in heroic Greece as opposed to being ordained into, say, the Order of Apollo that ran things at Delphi, or the temple of Palas-Athena in Athens. - The Imperial Cult would be the social norm, and at least in Scorn, there should be minor social drawbacks to being openly a follower of anything else. Minor villages may be even more conservative, or then again they may follow a different cult. It will be a pretty standard polytheistic cult with 12 major gods (nice number with a lot of significance) and innumerable minor deities. Not every god has his/her own order, and not every order is centred on a god, tho. - Statues and frescos and shrines aplenty around the city... - "Valrielism" is a somewhat old religion that never really caught on but never really died. At times in the past it was even majority, and there have been Valrielist kings. Based a lot on Zoroastrianism and the cult of Ra, not so much Christianity and Judaism, despite the angels. Like Zoroastrianism and most Christian branches, it's superficially monotheist but really, in essence, bitheist (by putting evil, in this case Gorokh, below Valriel but above mortals). Gorokh cultists are officially and publicly Valrielists, and in game terms, the Gorokh cult is a branch of Valrielism. Apart from that particular bizarre case, branches would focus on light, summoning, enchanting, cold, and healing, off the top of my head. (Not sure I want to keep the cold association though. It strikes me as a solar cult. Angel = cold was originally because demon = fire, I think, but maybe there's a better way to do that.) - I don't really think orcs, goblins, etc should have an organized religion. I'd like at least one species to scoff at gods in general. Others should be more shamanic or animistic. What of poor Gnarg then? Well, he can get the Loki/Set seat on the Imperial pantheon, focusing on his focus on poisons, assassins, and treachery in general. Most people don't worship him as such, just pray/sacrifice to appease him and keep him out of your business. - "Evil" cults should be really underground and hard to find. The Cult of the Devourers, the Brotherhood of Gorokh, and the Order of Gnarg start the list. Devourers... I'm uncomfortable with there being such an easy and cheap way to get all the undead benefits. Maybe you need to be undead *before* you can join. Or maybe joining doesn't make you undead, it's just... encouraged. Gorokh I've written about above. Note that going on the Zoroaster direction, this is really literally an evil cult; the Valriel/Gorokh religion will have to have a clear and clean definition of good and evil, and followers of Gorokh quite simply believe in doing what they see as evil. Gnargites are, of course, to be found between thieves and assassins, and if there is such a thing as a guild of thieves or a structure of organized crime, it will be strongly tied to this cult, although probably with "religious tolerance" towards the other "evil" cults. This concept is a pretty good source of villains and quests. - Elves and dwarves should have their distinct cultures and religions, although of course many Elves and Dwarves are tenth-generation Scornians or more, so they may have converted to other religions. I'd like to make dwarves monotheistic, just because I'm really in love with the dwarven creation myth I wrote years ago. Elves I'll leave for later... maybe someone will chip in while I'm doing other stuff :-) - More and more interesting options should be available as well. Some shamanistic option sounds reasonable, native-American style or Taoistic. Some form of ancestor worship/Shinto. - No meta-fiction. No Builders, no legends that reflect the history of the game itself. If you want to introduce homages, like making Skud an ancient hero or, say, Peter M. a god, do so in a way that fits the setting, the "believability" rule. - Make the cult more present on character life. One thing could be a reaction modifier depending on how "far" apart your cult is to that of an NPC. This modifier could be made stronger by an attribute (on the NPC's praying skill?), so that for example, a stout Valrielist may decide to deny service to a Mostrai follower. But that requires not simply being in the cult, but showing it. Maybe by wearing some kind of holy symbol/emblem. (So that people can be Devourer cultists or Gorokhists in secret.) It would be cool if there was some kind of reputation/gossip system so that if your allegiances got out, soon everyone would know it. But that's coding, and not top priority, so let's shelve it for now. best, Lalo Martins -- So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable. ----- http://lalomartins.info/ GNU: never give up freedom http://www.gnu.org/ From mwedel at sonic.net Wed Dec 24 16:41:59 2008 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2008 14:41:59 -0800 Subject: [crossfire] [Rebootworld] Priests and prayers and cults In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <4952BAB7.1090508@sonic.net> Lalo Martins wrote: > Some thoughts on Rebootworld religion. This is mostly to set > priestly types further away from magic-users. Quick question - how does this affect non priests? Does it make sense for a fighter to decide to worship a good just for the cool bonuses but otherwise never do anything for that good? One thought may be the bonuses adjust based on priest level (so a level 1 follower gets very little resistance bonus or other benefits, while that level 100 follower gets really good bonuses?) > - No prayerbooks. Prayers will be learned in the temple and > different for each cult. (Sometimes it will be the exact same > spell but with different name; same internal spell code but > different archetype.) The only spell off the top of my head I > see pretty much every cult having is Cult Monsters (which will > probably have a better name though). Maybe Word of Recall. What about the healing spells? One things that make priests somewhat specialized is they get healing, and wizards don't. I'd be a bit reluctant to make priests into another damage dealing class without healing type spells. Certainly, some cults may have better/faster access to certain spells than others. And the idea of each cult basically having its own spell list makes sense (the number of priest spells has greatly proliferated). > - The Imperial Cult would be the social norm, and at least in > Scorn, there should be minor social drawbacks to being openly a > follower of anything else. Minor villages may be even more > conservative, or then again they may follow a different cult. This may depend on the class I think - priests are likely to be very open about who they worship. But someone like a wizard probably wouldn't have much reason to advertise it, and as such, shouldn't have much of a reaction. In the past, there has been discussions about some form of reputation. It may make sense to revisit it. A starting character would have a reputation of 0 in their home city, and perhaps a negative reputation in foreign cities (foreign in this context could be elf or dwarf). So the character would actually have many reputations - one for each well defined region. doing quests should help ones reputation. That said, there may be some quests that hurt a reputation (one could envision quests that actually help smugglers, etc - the character still gets some reward, but the town won't like it). Being of high priest level of the religion in the area should also help ones reputation. And in foreign lands, perhaps reduce it. > Apart from that particular bizarre case, branches would focus > on light, summoning, enchanting, cold, and healing, off the top > of my head. (Not sure I want to keep the cold association > though. It strikes me as a solar cult. Angel = cold was > originally because demon = fire, I think, but maybe there's a > better way to do that.) Way back in crossfire history, there was only a single religion, and that might be where fire=devil, cold=angel came from. When multiple gods were put in, godpower was added IIRC, which was special in that it would only damage those of opposing religion. So that could be used for some of those match ups. > > - I don't really think orcs, goblins, etc should have an > organized religion. I'd like at least one species to scoff at > gods in general. Others should be more shamanic or animistic. Most all intelligent societies tend to have some religion. That said, reasonable that in some cases it may not be organized, or even none at all. > > - No meta-fiction. No Builders, no legends that reflect the > history of the game itself. If you want to introduce homages, > like making Skud an ancient hero or, say, Peter M. a god, do so > in a way that fits the setting, the "believability" rule. > > - Make the cult more present on character life. One thing could > be a reaction modifier depending on how "far" apart your cult > is to that of an NPC. This modifier could be made stronger by > an attribute (on the NPC's praying skill?), so that for > example, a stout Valrielist may decide to deny service to a > Mostrai follower. > > But that requires not simply being in the cult, but showing > it. Maybe by wearing some kind of holy symbol/emblem. (So > that people can be Devourer cultists or Gorokhists in secret.) > > It would be cool if there was some kind of reputation/gossip > system so that if your allegiances got out, soon everyone would > know it. But that's coding, and not top priority, so let's > shelve it for now. Hmm. See my note above. Note that for many things, actions may speak louder than an item. Not a lot of weight should be given to someone wearing a holy symbol if anyone can pick them up for a few silver. Things like skill level may be recognized - that tends to suggest you've done enough that folks may recognize you as a hero of Gaea or something. Likewise, one has to be careful about just being able to hide ones affiliation. If someone is a level 50 priest of Gorokh, they've probably done enough that there are at least rumors floating about town about that affiliation, etc. One could perhaps have some value on each cult which sort of denotes level of fame on level. The major gods may see the biggest benefit, as everyone would recognize it. While the hidden cults may have a lower negative impact. In absolute terms, a level 10 gorokh has same (in)famy as a level 50 Gaea, simply on the fact that the later is more open. At some level, just not getting any bonus could be a disadvantage - one could see high level characters getting fairly decent bonuses for that, which makes life easier - the fact an evil religion doesn't is a problem in itself. That said, I think there still has to be some balance in the religions here - there isn't a lot of point spending time detailing a god and his spells if no one ever uses it because it sucks badly. > > best, > Lalo Martins From mwedel at sonic.net Wed Dec 24 18:37:08 2008 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Wed, 24 Dec 2008 16:37:08 -0800 Subject: [crossfire] Platform statement In-Reply-To: References: <4951CED5.7000006@sonic.net> Message-ID: <4952D5B4.6000508@sonic.net> Lalo Martins wrote: > quoth Mark Wedel as of Tue, 23 Dec 2008 21:55:33 -0800: >> Lalo Martins wrote: >> (various bits snipped here and there) >>> Gameplay >>> ======== >>> >>> (use attacktypes more, add more attacktypes) >> Like so many things done in crossfire, the discrete damage >> changes is something that was never followed up to fruition. >> (...) >> I'd make a strong case that every 'attacktype' line get >> removed and replaced with appropriate discrete damage name. >> The complication here is that if we do use AND logic, automatic >> conversion isn't as easy (but for items with only 1 attacktype, >> still would be). > > Since I'm proposing going manually through every single arch anyway for > other reasons, I don't think adding this to the task list would be a > problem. > > Or here's a crazy one. How about doing away with the > percentage-based resistances, and making resistances an absolute > value? That would allow items to keep improving more or less > indefinitely, and would greatly help making higher-level > characters more powerful. (Dragon logic would probably need > adjustments, I guess.) > > To me it makes sense that someone with a super-duper Mostrai > armor takes no damage at all from an Orc's club but takes some > from a Holy Avenger or whatever. Its an option. Like most of the changes it is a pretty big one - there wouldn't be any clear/simple replace this value with that (a resist_fire 50 doesn't directly correspond into fire_dam_reduction 5 - it really depends on lots of factors, like level of monster (or targetted level of item), etc. In comparison, Ryo's proposed WC/AC change is a fairly straightforward change, and a simple WC X means new_wc Y through some formula could easily be done. I'd be a bit reluctant to start a task that basically requires a rebalance of all monsters/items. It can certainly be done, but since we just finished one up (with the combat rebalance) and I hope soon to finish up spell rebalance (have the next 1.5 weeks off from work, so should get it done then), I'd like to see that get used more before revamping it. A more general question on the platform statement or just in general is how much of existing crossfire are we keeping? In a sense, are we evolving crossfire or writing a new game? This may just help define the scope of the project. >> For physical, the mix of slashing/blunt/piercing is popular. > > Yes, I like that idea. Maybe replace physical with these three new > types, reusing the physical code for blunt. I'd suggest just do 3 new keeps, and obsolete physical. It makes it easier to see what stuff has been updated and hasn't been. Also, I'd rather see dam_blunt, dam_piercing and dam_slashing vs just having 'dam' mean dam_blunt. > >>> An important point that was raised in the list is that when you meet >>> something way above your level, it should hurt you badly but not kill >>> you instantly, so you can run away. Of course if the monster is TOO >>> MUCH above your level (let's say 4x to keep consistent with the >>> definition of extra), then it's reasonable that you die without ever >>> knowing what hit you. >> That's reasonable. I'd make a strong case that in general, >> it should be difficult for characters to wander into places in >> which the enemy is 4x your level (low level dungeons are sort >> of an exception - if you're level 2, 4x is level 8 - not as >> unreasonable, as level 10 vs 40) > > Agreed. Again, since every map will be edited for the reboot, that's not > unreasonable to ask. > > Although I'd argue there are cases where an exception is part of the > story.... look at my Valk temple for a good example :-) (the excessively > hard monster is used to mark "hey, this is the wrong way, and the > seemingly easy path is not the one Valkyrie approves of"). But there are better ways to balance that now - give it lots of HP, so it may take a long time to kill, and at the same time, reduce the damage it does to a more reasonable level so most characters will survive a little time. I also think it would be reasonable in many such cases to put a weaker monster (say half as powerful, or maybe only 25% as powerful) before that one a ways - like 'this is your first test'). Really weak characters wouldn't be able to defeat that, but it probably won't kill them right away. Characters that are meant to be able to kill that next monster probably wouldn't have much problem with this first one. And characters that are able to defeat it, but find it challenging (have to use lots of magic, etc), are probably still tough enough not to get killed instantly by the main boss creature. >>> What I think the gameplay lacks most in 1.x is goals. (...) >> I agree that more goals are needed, and this can also help >> change the H&S focus - some goals may not be kill everything in >> a dungeon, but rather get some item, transport and item, etc. > > Yes but that's not what I meant :-) I'm thinking higher level. Why are > you doing that dungeon? In Pupland, for every dungeon you finish, you're > presented with the next thing to do for one quest. For every quest you > finish, you're given the next quest in the meta-quest. So you have fun > and you know what's next. Sometimes what's next is beyond your > abilities, but you know what you need to improve in order to continue, so > you go find a way to do that. This way you have more fun and before you > know it, 40, 60 levels have gone by. Yes - overall plot lines that have many parts can be nice also - it tends to give some focus. >> For hit points, it could be done away with. Why should one >> necessarily get a big blob of hit points every level, and >> nothing in between? Historically, this has been because you >> got a random number of hit points per level. >> >> But it would be simple enough to change it to some basis >> where you get 1 HP and these different points. But see note >> above about impact of changing HP. > > Or, again, possibly you gain HP on quests. A long, arduous > journey to bathe in the Wellspring of Gaea... I guess that would > make HP increases happen less often, but I'm fine with that, since > armor will probably be going up faster. > > (Then of course each such increase needs to store a force so it > can't be used twice...) I personally don't have a problem with certain things, like HP, being based on characters level/total exp. I'm not sure how I'd feel with it going up by quests. One question would be how do you deal with death in these cases? Is there still a penalty? Another problem is that I could see players picking the quests that only give these bonuses. IMO, there should be some reward in just adventuring for adventuring sake - right now we have random dungeons, which can be useful places to pick up some experience. If experience doesn't mean much, you now get folks doing quests constantly - maybe not a bad thing, but you have to make sure you have enough quests out there for people to do. > >>> Loot and money >>> -------------- >> But most flesh should really be of very little value. If it >> isn't used for some recipe, it really has no value beyond its >> food, so why would someone pay much money for it? > > Well, the problem now is with the ones that *can* be used in > recipes... for balance reasons they end up having high values (or > maybe they have no value and the server calculates it automatically) I believe the certain body parts are considered valuable, regardless if there is a use or not. For example, legs and arms have little value, no matter what creature, where as someone noted, livers are a good source of money (as are brains IIRC), because they are consided valuable no matter what creature they come from. This is all calculcated internally if my memory serves. > >> My quick thoughts: >> Changing the name doesn't really change value. If silver is replaced >> with bronze piece, and gold with copper, etc, that doesn't really do >> much to change actual wealth, all that really changes is what we call >> it. > > True. Changing the names is separate from gameplay; it's for > ambiance. The gameplay leg of this section was, as I said on > Kevin's reply: putting more granularity in server values, and > re-thinking the value of things for balance and ambiance. > > Like, IMO things like enchanted armor should cost in the gold > range. Even *normal* swords/armor should be very expensive... in > the dozens of reggries (thousands of dollars) range I guess. > > As a partially-related aside, I don't see orcs and goblins having > swords at all. Clubs, spears, stoneaxes... hatchets maybe... are > more reasonable. I was sort of thinking the opposite - a problem with money is because even right now, the values of items are huge from low level to high level. One could say that ones level goes by a factor of 100. A normal longsword has a value of 45. A darkblade has a value of 143000 (3000+ times increase). And that probably isn't even the most valuable weapons. Most games tend to collapse the price difference - maybe more like 100:1 from high to low. I realize darkblade is an exception, but you start getting into other high priced magic items you can find in a dungeon, adds up to a lot of money. If you want to reduce amount of money in the game, reducing the value of items is probably the direction to go, not increase it. > >> I'd strongly suggest a decimal system be used (10:1 or 100:1 ratios). I >> really don't want to have to be doing 64:1 multiplication to try and >> figure out values of different items. > > Yes but that doesn't arise. What happens is that things will go > in ranges... and we can even hardcode it that way. So like, food > will always be quoted in cleekins (and if the merchant says > "three and a half", you do know half a cleekin is 4 aytbits); > clothing, weapons, armor, books, horses, etc always in reggries; > enchanted stuff, high-level books, etc, in the silver/gold > system; and houses, magical beasts, ships, and the like always in > plat only. But what happens if I have 200 food? Is it still quoted in cleekins? And at that point, I probably do have to know the value of it - do I have enough of the next currency up to pay for it (as I probably don't have 2000 cleekins or whatever). For that matter, even if I'm just buying 5 food, change may be needed from my next higher currency, so keeping things decimal makes things easier. I'd also suggest that names of currencies by intuitive. I don't think anyone would know valuy of cleekins to aytbits, and if anything, I think crossfire should be easier to learn/play not harder. If more currencies really are needed, one could add iron pieces and copper pieces to current system. That now gives 5 different levels of currencies (iron/copper/silver/gold/platinum), and I think most folks would recognize increase of those values fairly easily. If one did a 100:1 ratio between each of those (100 copper/iron, 100 silver to copper, etc), the platinum coin is worth 100,000,000. Note that an amber coin is currently worth 500,000. One could in fact lose the iron coins, and just do copper/silver/gold/platinum, and the platinum would be 1,000,000, which is still twice as much as the amber coin. > >> I had suggested at one time that instead of actually having all those >> coins about (and extra code to deal with it), a characters money is just >> another attributed like hp or exp. > > That's another possibility. It detracts (IMO) from the feeling > of immersion, but it makes things simpler. > > I guess it depends on how much the game would focus on > accumulating money. I want to focus more on RP, build a > "believable" world, and for that I prefer coins. So I've played many other CRPG's, and they don't put money in the inventory, but instead represent it as coins (or such a type of currency) someplace. Likewise, when buying equipment, it is still quoted in gold or something. For such a system in crossfire, I'd so something like: In the client, have the different coin icons near the inventory, and next to them, client displays amount of each those character has (but it does automatic consolidation to currencies). In a sense, one can think about this in real life - if one asks you how much money you have, you say $97. You don't say I have 4 20's, and 10, and 5, a 1, and 4 quarters. The server just stores net worth of in the player object. It treats this like any other attribute - player picks up money, that goes up, send update to client. The two trickier parts are this: 1) When describing value of an item, you don't want it to say 45,253. You want it to say 4 gold, 52 silver, 53 copper. So the server still has to have some idea of different ratios for descriptive purposes. 2) A mechanism is needed to drop coins (for altars, etc). This could probably be done by using some special command and have a 'drop' type button next to the coin display. > >> I'm also not fond of regional currencies. While realistic, this tends >> to just become more of a bother to players to go in and exchange >> currency than actually adding much. Now maybe you have some special >> quests (someone will only take regional currency or something), but have >> to keep in mind point is to have fun and not get bogged down in details >> of real world economics. > > Again, depends on how much money is in focus. If you want to go > to a different nation "trivially", just to complete a quest or > something, I'd expect you to be able to do that without spending > any money. But if you want to stick around, do the places' > quests, etc, then you'd want local money. > > But that's something to think about only later. For probably the > next year or more there will be only one nation on "rebootworld" :-) IMO, the main focus of playing crossfire is to have fun, not necessarily for it to be realistic. Does needing to go in and exchange currency add to the fun factor? Probably not. I'm not saying everything has to be fun, but we should probably try to look at these things and see how do they improve gameplay. As a side note, right now crossfire server doesn't have any concept of foreign/different types of currency. > >>> Setting >>> ======= >> < much about reboot removed> >>> I'll write something up the next few days. >> Am interested in seeing that write up. Do you envision doing >> all new maps them? Including new world, new cities, etc? > > Yes. World and cities are all new. Dungeons will be a mix of > new and ported, but porting requires some actual editing, not > just copying the file -- as per the cell size changes below, and > new features like tall faces, but more importantly, making sure > it fits the setting and the guidelines we agree on wrt gameplay. I suspect automatic conversion for cell size changes could be done, but review for guidelines clearly has to be something done manually. > >>> Visual >>> ====== >>> >>> - Facesets can have different pixel-per-cell sizes. I think >>> that's already the case, right? >> Sort of. While different facesets can have different sizes, >> I'm not sure if the clients actually use that information or >> not. > > The server doesn't even care about the face pixel size, though, > right? (Or even know...) Correct. > > From what I remember of client code, adding this intelligence to > v2 and jx shouldn't be *too* hard. No, it shouldn't be that hard. >> So while we now have each cell use 32x32 pixels, the basic idea >> is divide that cell in 64. > > Em, no. > > Ok. A human is currently 1x1x1 cells (let's assume tall faces > are already supported), 32x32 pixels. > > On rebootworld with the "small" faceset (which uses the same PNGs > as the current "standard" faceset), the same human will be 2x2x4 > cells (meaning, for those not up-to-date with tall faces, it's > rendered as 2x4 cells, but occupies a 2x2 area on the ground), > and 16x32 pixels, so it would use (basically) the same image. > I think I follow, but just to make sure I'm clear. In this case, the human uses 4 cells on the map (2x2), and obscures 4 more cells (its tallness in this context). The main think we're looking to gain here is finer placement/movement of items (with each cell being smaller, movement steps are also smaller) > So yes, there would be more map positions to keep track of. Not > really more objects in the sense of cf objects. But yes more tails. I wonder if there may be better ways to deal with this. In any case, we're not really going on design here, but general goals. But my quick thinking is that it could be more efficient not to use all those head/tail archetypes and instead have some form of footprint in the archetype. When some action happens, look for nearby archetypes and check that footprint. > Yes, impact needs though. Especially in things like speed, and > having all those tails around, and how many map cells the client > and the protocol can reasonably handle. > I thought one of Ryo's goals was to remain protocol compatible. This change sort of seems to go away from that. >>> True multi-scale >>> ---------------- >> One time in the past, someone toyed with the idea of there >> not being multiple scales - there is just one scale. You don't >> enter buildings, but rather they are just there on the map. >> >> That idea has some appeal to me, especially for towns - then >> everyone is logically on the same map (so you'd see other >> players about more, etc). I don't know if that is something >> you considered, or how it would work out, but if you're going >> to do a completely new world... > > I have considered it long, and FWIW it's still on the table as a > possibility, but I'm afraid it may cause "the bigworld fail"; as > in, going from home (or the inn) to the restaurant or the dungeon > you want to hit takes ages, assuming you can even find it, until > people get bored of the game and leave. > > But it's up for discussion :-) > > (Like everything else... I'm running for content leader, not dictator) > Yeah, I don't know how that would really work out. I'd say that the extra/unused stuff in town should get removed, so the only things in towns are things you'd use (temples, taverns, shops, etc). I recently thought of redoing shops some. Currently, there are the shop listing signs which lets you see what is in the shop. It would be even more convenient for that to be interactive - this is what's in the shop, this is how much it costs, and you click here, and its yours type of thing. In such a model, shops don't need to be very big anymore. I personally have no idea how a hugeworld thing would work out. It does help with the different scale problem (you don't have one anymore). And for small villages or taverns along the road, probably improves immersion, doesn't remove it. Most of the CRPGs I've played have pretty much had a single scale - even if there were indoors, they would be same scale as outside. >>> This is really two different features on the server side: >>> >>> - All movement is slowed down proportional to the "scale" >>> attribute of the map. (If you think moving 10x slower on the city >>> than indoors is annoying, bear in mind you'll probably move a little >>> faster indoors, and outdoors you'll have transports, which I want to >>> use more heavily.) >> This doesn't appeal to me much, and probably not much to >> other people. I remember when we went from smallworld to >> bigworld, some people complained about how long it took to get >> from one town to another (which is still just a minute or two >> if you know where you're going) > > This is to me a matter of fairness; walking across town shouldn't > take as long as across the room. But this is a game, so the > proportion doesn't need to be realistic; walking outdoors should > be a *little* slower, not necessarily a lot. One thing partially corrected with the combat rebalance was movement speed - it was generally moderated so slow characters wouldn't move as slow, as fast ones not as fast. But lots of games don't penalize players for carry lots of loot. So could be fair that speed is really just based an armor being worn, and not on how much crap is being carried. > > OTOH, I do *want* to make walking to another city annoyingly > slow. Why? Because you just shouldn't do that. Yes, walk to > the town nearby, but then expect that to take a while. That is reasonable in my mind. > > But to go to a different kingdom, you'll want a horse at least. > You'll probably want to camp along the way. And there may be > goblins. Or bandits. Or goblin bandits. Or bandit zombie > pirate goblin cultists. To me, that is the big thing currently lacking - the outdoor world is static and safe. There should be danger here and there. That said, with current map scale, travel from scorn to navar city doesn't take very long. To make it take any significant amount of time would mean slowing the characters down so much that it becomes painful (oh - I moved a space. Maybe in another second, I'll move another). IMO, the fix for that isn't to slow down movement, but to increase number of spaces between those two places. Make it 5000 spaces - now it really will take some amount of time. That said, point of the game is to have fun, not be totally realistic. > > Or you take a ship, or the dragon, and get there faster and with > no stress. But it costs money. Completely reasonsble. >>> The rationale here is that we're trying to make both movement and >>> window size work for what are two almost entirely different games; >>> dungeon exploring is one thing and requires one UI, walking around the >>> city or road or forest is something else. >> I don't know - I personally don't really have much problem >> with 2 different games/scales. Maybe that is just me. The UI >> needs are perhaps more different based on the action - selling >> items needs a different interface than when I'm adventuring. > > Let's think in terms of non-game software development. Doing a > dungeon, or walking in your house, or interacting in the tavern, > working on the workshop, etc, is a "task" UI; you're actually > doing something, and the UI needs to support you optimally at > that. Walking around outdoors is really a "menu" UI; what you're > there for is to select a place to go, to select a task to do. So > presenting more choices, in a way that's reasonable, accessible > and "rememberable", is the optimal thing to do. > > And I guess that, really, is the whole motivation for the > multi-scale idea. > > But after this conversation I'm more and more tempted to make it > a zoom button on the client. I guess it depends on how the outdoors is done. If outdoors is really just a time sink to get from town to a dungeon (or other town), then maybe a different interface is needed. But I'd make an argument that if that is all that outside is, then that needs to be rethought. Wasting my time getting from point A to point B in a game isn't fun - it has to add something, be interesting, whatever. In fact, of the CRPGs I've played, they don't really have this problem - if you've been to a place before, you can get back instantly. > >>> We could even go back to Smallworld ways and use 3 scales rather than >>> two, I'll put that up for discussion. >> The problem I had with smallworld is that it was just too >> small - it started to get to the point that with the number of >> dungeons, there was one almost every 5 spaces - it just didn't >> feel that good. > > I get that. But that's what "scale visibility" is for. So those > dungeons would simply not be visible on scale level 3 (travel). > How you actually get to the dungeon depends... > > - If doing per-map scale attribute: then you'll walk around in > scale 3, until you find an entrance to a "forest" map, which is > scale 2, and in this forest there may be one or more dungeons. As long as it is easy to find those entrances, I don't really have much of a problem on this. But if I have to spend a bunch of time hunting for it, that once again doesn't become very interesting. > > - Or if doing client zoom button... then scale 3 will simply help > you find the forest more easily, at which point you zoom to 2 > in order to find the actual dungeon. (Cool side effect: there > could be some abandoned treasure just lying around, which you > only find if you zoom in to 1 in unexpected places...) But it seems this zoom of the client still has some relation to movement - so how do you handle that? In a sense, are you just adding multiple levels of maps? I'm just not really clear what we're zooming in on here or what that really gets us. > From lalo.martins at gmail.com Thu Dec 25 12:15:33 2008 From: lalo.martins at gmail.com (Lalo Martins) Date: Thu, 25 Dec 2008 18:15:33 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [crossfire] Platform statement References: <4951CED5.7000006@sonic.net> <4952D5B4.6000508@sonic.net> Message-ID: (If someone should think this message seems clashy or confrontational, bear in mind we're snipping out all points on which we have already agreed, and/or explained what the other wanted to know, which is more than half of them...) quoth Mark Wedel as of Wed, 24 Dec 2008 16:37:08 -0800: > I'd be a bit reluctant to start a task that basically requires a > rebalance of all monsters/items. Actually, I think I'm over-reaching here. All considerations of *how* to deal with gameplay, especially game mechanics, are just IMHO and suggestions. I'll say what I think, reply on threads when asked, but in the end, go with whatever the coders decide :-) OTOH... I'd much rather rebalance all monsters/items now, while I'm editing everything anyway, than later. > A more general question on the platform statement or just in > general is how much of existing crossfire are we keeping? In a > sense, are we evolving crossfire or writing a new game? This > may just help define the scope of the project. A little bit of each. It's a rewrite, "Crossfire 2" so to speak, but not completely from scratch; you could say it's like Nicolas wants to do with the C++ server, starting from scratch and copy-pasting chunks of code. I want to design the world from scratch but adapt or adopt maps, arches, images, etc. The reasons for that are many... For one, I don't think the game as it is needs radical changes. It's fun as it is; yes there are a few problems, but fixing those would change the game so much that would probably introduce others. I'd much rather start from scratch, with an eye of those problems, and leave 1.x more or less as it is, so that people have a choice to keep playing it. Second, it's a big and patchy world with a lot of history. It's been in development for way too long. It gets to a point where any encompassing changes will break stuff you don't expect to be affected at all, or that you've never heard of but is someone's favourite map. Also, some "problems" I've heard complaint of are arguably a matter of choice. CF1 is basically combat, and many people have expressed a desire to be able to do other stuff. Well, just in case we get that wrong, I'd rather still have CF1 around, so that the H&S crowd can keep playing it until the heat death of the universe. Same about "realism", same about the world and the stories lacking backstory and consistency; I've heard that a lot but I acknowledge that some may prefer it as it is. >>> For hit points, it could be done away with. Why should one >>> necessarily get a big blob of hit points every level, and nothing in >>> between? Historically, this has been because you got a random number >>> of hit points per level. >>> >>> But it would be simple enough to change it to some basis >>> where you get 1 HP and these different points. But see note above >>> about impact of changing HP. >> >> Or, again, possibly you gain HP on quests. A long, arduous journey to >> bathe in the Wellspring of Gaea... I guess that would make HP >> increases happen less often, but I'm fine with that, since armor will >> probably be going up faster. >> >> (Then of course each such increase needs to store a force so it can't >> be used twice...) > > I personally don't have a problem with certain things, like > HP, being based on characters level/total exp. I'm not sure > how I'd feel with it going up by quests. > > One question would be how do you deal with death in these > cases? Is there still a penalty? > > Another problem is that I could see players picking the > quests that only give these bonuses. IMO, there should be some > reward in just adventuring for adventuring sake - right now we > have random dungeons, which can be useful places to pick up > some experience. If experience doesn't mean much, you now get > folks doing quests constantly - maybe not a bad thing, but you > have to make sure you have enough quests out there for people > to do. You'd still want exp, because that's what makes your skills go up. I believe in the current system, either damage or wc is based on skill, right? (Or both?) For magic-users it's even more obvious... > I was sort of thinking the opposite - a problem with money is > because even right now, the values of items are huge from low > level to high level. One could say that ones level goes by a > factor of 100. > > A normal longsword has a value of 45. A darkblade has a > value of 143000 (3000+ times increase). And that probably > isn't even the most valuable weapons. I think it's perfectly reasonable that a darkblade costs 3000x more than a normal sword, assuming you can buy it at all. But a slightly better sword shouldn't cost 100x more. What I see is dividing a lot of things, not only weapons and armor, in really two categories; mundane and heroic. Up until a certain point, you'll use mundane items because that's what you can afford. Then you'll buy or find one single heroic item, related to what you're specialized in -- sword or shield for fighter, ring for mage, etc. Then another. Until at some point (let's say equivalent to today's level 50) you're living a basically "heroic" lifestyle, including the stuff in your house or guild. Then of course items in both categories still vary a lot in cost; from the cheap iron shortsword to a finely crafted steel two-handed, from a stoneaxe to a battle axe, from a trivial artifact (say a sword with bonuses) to the truly legendary. > Most games tend to collapse the price difference - maybe more > like 100:1 from high to low. That would work if the rate at which you get money was a lot more linear, but I think it's less fun that way :-) > I realize darkblade is an exception, but you start getting > into other high priced magic items you can find in a dungeon, > adds up to a lot of money. If you want to reduce amount of > money in the game, reducing the value of items is probably the > direction to go, not increase it. I disagree; I'd rather increase the value and reduce their number. The problem, as you said, is finding one just lying in a dungeon; well, but I don't think you should. Truly awesome items are the rewards of long quests, and you probably won't want to simply dump it on the sale store. >>> I'd strongly suggest a decimal system be used (10:1 or 100:1 ratios). >>> I really don't want to have to be doing 64:1 multiplication to try and >>> figure out values of different items. > > I'd also suggest that names of currencies by intuitive. I > don't think anyone would know valuy of cleekins to aytbits... Well... I strongly disagree. But since this seems to be a matter of opinion, I don't know that anything can be done about it. So I propose I do it my way, and we see how it looks, and in say, a year from now, we evaluate how much it sucks. If it doesn't work or makes the game too hard, it's a simple matter to edit only the coin archetype files. For one thing, I think it's clear to me from the last few emails that the whole way you use money in the game would be different; and at that point, I'd rather make the money more, , rather than less. > IMO, the main focus of playing crossfire is to have fun, not > necessarily for it to be realistic. I singled out this statement to make a point which I think is central to my whole vision. I'm not saying this in the context of money, but everything. The driving word I'm aiming for is "believable". Not exactly realistic, because if you wanted realistic you wouldn't be playing a fantasy game. But why do people like LOTR, Narnia and Oz, while pretty much all other pre-1970 fantasy worlds have been forgotten? As I see it, it's because it's believable. That doesn't mean you'll read LOTR and end up thinking all that stuff really did happen. It means there is depth, internal consistency, and detail enough that you can suspend your disbelief and, for the duration of your reading, treat the story as "real". On that aspect many games can be instead compared to Wonderland. It's a fun ride and you may even want to read it again and again. But there's no internal consistency or detail. If either Alice book was as thick as the Return of the King, I doubt many people would have had patience to read it to the end, let alone go after the sequels. And on a tangent, there's a lady in Britain who made millions upon millions of pounds from the realization that children do, too, care about detailed worlds with depth and internal consistency and over-arching sagas :-) >>>>> (tall faces, etc) > I think I follow, but just to make sure I'm clear. > > In this case, the human uses 4 cells on the map (2x2), and > obscures 4 more cells (its tallness in this context). Right. I *think* much of this work is already done in the server and jxclient. But there are no arches that use it yet. > The main think we're looking to gain here is finer > placement/movement of items (with each cell being smaller, > movement steps are also smaller) One of two. The other is finer granularity of shapes, so eg humans and elves don't have to be "square" anymore. >> So yes, there would be more map positions to keep track of. Not really >> more objects in the sense of cf objects. But yes more tails. > > I wonder if there may be better ways to deal with this. In > any case, we're not really going on design here, but general > goals. But my quick thinking is that it could be more > efficient not to use all those head/tail archetypes and instead > have some form of footprint in the archetype. When some action > happens, look for nearby archetypes and check that footprint. Sorry, I don't follow. >> Yes, impact needs though. Especially in things like speed, and having >> all those tails around, and how many map cells the client and the >> protocol can reasonably handle. >> > I thought one of Ryo's goals was to remain protocol > compatible. This change sort of seems to go away from that. Again, I believe this work has already been done at least partially. > Most of the CRPGs I've played have pretty much had a single > scale - even if there were indoors, they would be same scale as > outside. Hmm, my experience is different... most 2d CPRGs I played, at least this century, have 2 or 3 scales. > I guess it depends on how the outdoors is done. If outdoors > is really just a time sink to get from town to a dungeon (or > other town), then maybe a different interface is needed. It's not a time sink, it's a, hmm, progressive multi-level menu. For a metaphor, try to find something on Google Maps without changing the zoom level. The idea is that I want to make a "dense" (as opposed to sparse) world; not add 1000 miles of nothing in one direction and then a city. So let's say you go out of Scorn to find that dungeon in the forest, or a village. There will be a lot of interesting things around. There's also a chance that many (most?) of those aren't interesting to *you*, so you'd rather not have to think about them too much. So you zoom out to the big picture; Ah, all right, there's a forest here, there's a village there. You go to the forest, then zoom back in to find the grotto... or go to the village and zoom back in to find the house you want. That's not realistic. Realistic would be forcing you to wander around, maybe follow the road, maybe consult a map, and hope for the best. But IMO having a "zoom out" would improve gameplay. >> - Or if doing client zoom button... then scale 3 will simply help >> you find the forest more easily, at which point you zoom to 2 in >> order to find the actual dungeon. (Cool side effect: there could be >> some abandoned treasure just lying around, which you only find if you >> zoom in to 1 in unexpected places...) > > But it seems this zoom of the client still has some relation > to movement - so how do you handle that? In a sense, are you > just adding multiple levels of maps? We can think of this as a sort of mipmapping. When you zoom out, you're essentially making the images smaller, without changing anything else in the map. However, some objects may have optimized images for the new zoom level, so we use those instead. And some images are configured to disappear below a given zoom (or in some cases, above a given zoom -- think a "village" or "forest" object, smallworld-style). The thing with simply scaling things on the client is that if zoom 3 is 10x farther than zoom 2, then things like grass and mountains will look stupid. But then again maybe not. best, Lalo Martins -- So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable. ----- http://lalomartins.info/ GNU: never give up freedom http://www.gnu.org/ From mwedel at sonic.net Fri Dec 26 23:40:25 2008 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Fri, 26 Dec 2008 21:40:25 -0800 Subject: [crossfire] Platform statement In-Reply-To: References: <4951CED5.7000006@sonic.net> <4952D5B4.6000508@sonic.net> Message-ID: <4955BFC9.2060202@sonic.net> Lalo Martins wrote: > quoth Mark Wedel as of Wed, 24 Dec 2008 16:37:08 -0800: >> I'd be a bit reluctant to start a task that basically requires a >> rebalance of all monsters/items. > > Actually, I think I'm over-reaching here. All considerations of *how* to > deal with gameplay, especially game mechanics, are just IMHO and > suggestions. I'll say what I think, reply on threads when asked, but in > the end, go with whatever the coders decide :-) > > OTOH... I'd much rather rebalance all monsters/items now, while I'm > editing everything anyway, than later. I'd hope that things don't change so much that everything _has_ to be re-edited. May be good to do so, etc, but there is a difference between that and something that must be done. From my past experience at rebalancing, a lot of rebalancing work also requires actual playtesting - that is the harder/more time consuming part. Pretty easy to change archetypes into values that seem balanced, but the question is are they really balanced, and that requires actual play testing. Could things get rebalanced again? Sure. But in a general form 'Can xyz be done?', the answer is almost always yes, but how much time/resources it takes to do it, is it worthwhile, etc, are all parts of an answer that need to be taken in consideration. My concern is that some of the changes being discussed are very large. I'd rather have a more concise/limited set of directional changes that actually has a chance of getting done in a reasonable time fashion than a very large set of changes that may never get done. We've done (or not done) that later case more than once. > >> A more general question on the platform statement or just in >> general is how much of existing crossfire are we keeping? In a >> sense, are we evolving crossfire or writing a new game? This >> may just help define the scope of the project. > > A little bit of each. It's a rewrite, "Crossfire 2" so to speak, > but not completely from scratch; you could say it's like Nicolas > wants to do with the C++ server, starting from scratch and > copy-pasting chunks of code. I want to design the world from > scratch but adapt or adopt maps, arches, images, etc. I'm not adverse to redoing the world - it has been redone once, so there is some proof it could get redone again. But there is a pretty big gap of redoing the world vs redoing all archetypes/images/skills/spells/whatever. See note above about something that can get done. Start with the presumption you will need to do all the work yourself, as from past things I've done, that pretty much seems to be the case. >> One question would be how do you deal with death in these >> cases? Is there still a penalty? >> >> Another problem is that I could see players picking the >> quests that only give these bonuses. IMO, there should be some >> reward in just adventuring for adventuring sake - right now we >> have random dungeons, which can be useful places to pick up >> some experience. If experience doesn't mean much, you now get >> folks doing quests constantly - maybe not a bad thing, but you >> have to make sure you have enough quests out there for people >> to do. > > You'd still want exp, because that's what makes your skills go > up. I believe in the current system, either damage or wc is > based on skill, right? (Or both?) For magic-users it's even > more obvious... Yes, skills give spells and mana. One could change it so that the highest skill you have determines hit points. This has an interesting side benefit of it would be incentive for folks to focus on certain skills. As things are now, you could be good in many skills, and your HP still goes up at a nice rate, since it is based on overall level/exp. If it was based on highest skill level, it means being good at a lot of different things wouldn't give you very good hit points. > >> I was sort of thinking the opposite - a problem with money is >> because even right now, the values of items are huge from low >> level to high level. One could say that ones level goes by a >> factor of 100. >> >> A normal longsword has a value of 45. A darkblade has a >> value of 143000 (3000+ times increase). And that probably >> isn't even the most valuable weapons. > > I think it's perfectly reasonable that a darkblade costs 3000x > more than a normal sword, assuming you can buy it at all. > > But a slightly better sword shouldn't cost 100x more. But if you could buy it, would anyone actually pay that much money for it? If the answer is no, then it is overpriced. That IMO is the basic problem of the crossfire economy - it isn't really supply and demand. Now to be fair, you can't really do a true supply and demand economy in a game world - you sort of have to let folks sell the stuff in stores. But the basic failing is that there isn't gear to buy, or there may be gear but it is so expensive it isn't worth buying. >> I realize darkblade is an exception, but you start getting >> into other high priced magic items you can find in a dungeon, >> adds up to a lot of money. If you want to reduce amount of >> money in the game, reducing the value of items is probably the >> direction to go, not increase it. > > I disagree; I'd rather increase the value and reduce their > number. The problem, as you said, is finding one just lying in a > dungeon; well, but I don't think you should. Truly awesome items > are the rewards of long quests, and you probably won't want to > simply dump it on the sale store. Certainly depends on many factors. If I can't use it (Am a race/class/follower), dumping it for huge sums of gold may very well be worth it. Reducing numbers it key - until that is done, hard to see how things play out. But even now, you find various good items worth lots of money here and there. How much should a +4 item be worth compared to a normal one. Most of the CRPGs I've played tend not to have such huge value differences - probably because in many cases they know that players will not spend those large amounts of money, so better to just not even given it out. > >>>> I'd strongly suggest a decimal system be used (10:1 or 100:1 ratios). >>>> I really don't want to have to be doing 64:1 multiplication to try and >>>> figure out values of different items. >> I'd also suggest that names of currencies by intuitive. I >> don't think anyone would know valuy of cleekins to aytbits... > > Well... I strongly disagree. But since this seems to be a matter > of opinion, I don't know that anything can be done about it. > > So I propose I do it my way, and we see how it looks, and in say, > a year from now, we evaluate how much it sucks. If it doesn't > work or makes the game too hard, it's a simple matter to edit > only the coin archetype files. > > For one thing, I think it's clear to me from the last few emails > that the whole way you use money in the game would be different; > and at that point, I'd rather make the money more, there's a word for what I'm thinking but it refuses to come to my > mind... fitting the theme, mood-building, more part of the story > than the game system>, rather than less. I don't know. If I'm leaving the game to find out how much a cleekin is relative to a silver piece (going to the docs, using a calculator, whatever), I'd think that also ruins the mood quite a bit. I find most games that make up new terms for money or other game aspects instead of using already well known words just annoying, and not really in any way more immersive than those that do use the standard words. After all, everything else in the game is in English (or local language of your choice), and to just take out certain terms almost seems more noticable than not. >>> So yes, there would be more map positions to keep track of. Not really >>> more objects in the sense of cf objects. But yes more tails. >> I wonder if there may be better ways to deal with this. In >> any case, we're not really going on design here, but general >> goals. But my quick thinking is that it could be more >> efficient not to use all those head/tail archetypes and instead >> have some form of footprint in the archetype. When some action >> happens, look for nearby archetypes and check that footprint. > > Sorry, I don't follow. I didn't really mean to go into a code design on it, but briefly: In crossfire/maps, there are really 3 types of objects: 1) Immutable objects - these never change and have no interaction with the players. Walls and floors are the main objects in this case. These are also typically the most common objects on the maps. 2) Objects with speed. Spells, monsters, players. These objects go off and do things, whether controlled by AI on the server of by a player. In some cases, the AI could be very simple (damage things on this space, propogate to next spce in case of spells). These may be the least common objects on a map. 3) Items - swords, chests, levers, etc. Things the player may interact with in some way, are not immutable, but on their own, they will never do anything. Now under the changes you propose, a player, which is currently 1 object, would likely become 4 objects. a 2x2 monster (4 objects now) would become 16. Granted, there are cases here where changes in footprint may not mean that actual number of objects, but useful as an example. Rather than use all those more pieces, the object itself could denote its size. Exactly how that is done is an implementation detail, but could be done as a radius, which probably makes the most sense. So instead of that 4x4 monster using 16 objects, it uses one and notes it has a 2 radius. Now instead of the global list of objects like we have now, the objects are stored for each map (this is also useful in threading). To continue with the example, when the player tries to move to some space near that big monster, it gets the P_ALIVE flag on that space just as it does right now. But instead of traversing the objects on that space to find the monster, it just traverses that linked list of monsters to find out what monster is occupying that space. This may be more efficient than adding in all those additional heads/tails - at some sense, with such a logic, you don't even need that support anymore. > >>> Yes, impact needs though. Especially in things like speed, and having >>> all those tails around, and how many map cells the client and the >>> protocol can reasonably handle. >>> >> I thought one of Ryo's goals was to remain protocol >> compatible. This change sort of seems to go away from that. > > Again, I believe this work has already been done at least partially. I believe the client would handle that change without problem. However, such a change in images effectively reduces the amount visible in a 25x25 space. Under what you describe, the same number of pixels would now need to be drawn in a 50x50 map grid, since each space is effectively divided in 2 in both the x and y axis. The max supported coordinates in the protocol is 25x25 IIRC. So under the changes, this means player would now have the equivalent viewing area of 12x12 (client would still get 25x25 spaces, but each now conveys less information). As you noted in another messsage, your idea of amount of spaces viewable was lower - if 12x12 matches, no problem. But if you are looking for something equivalent of 15x15, then that would require protocol changes. >> I guess it depends on how the outdoors is done. If outdoors >> is really just a time sink to get from town to a dungeon (or >> other town), then maybe a different interface is needed. > > It's not a time sink, it's a, hmm, progressive multi-level menu. > > For a metaphor, try to find something on Google Maps without > changing the zoom level. > > The idea is that I want to make a "dense" (as opposed to sparse) > world; not add 1000 miles of nothing in one direction and then a > city. So let's say you go out of Scorn to find that dungeon in > the forest, or a village. There will be a lot of interesting > things around. There's also a chance that many (most?) of those > aren't interesting to *you*, so you'd rather not have to think > about them too much. So you zoom out to the big picture; Ah, all > right, there's a forest here, there's a village there. You go to > the forest, then zoom back in to find the grotto... or go to the > village and zoom back in to find the house you want. That part is simple enough to understand. But how the player gets from scorn village is now the question - is the player effectively just playing on the zoomed out map? What about monsters, etc? And does he move faster? Clearly, zooming out is useful for finding things. But what I'm not sure is how that interacts in the game. Is it purely just a mechanism to help one find their bearings (I'm in the wilderness someplace, I zoom out, and now I can see where Scorn is relative to me). That helps me travel back to Scorn, but if I'm still moving at a slow pace, then I probably go back into 'normal' zoom level - once I know I have to travel southeast, being zoomed out probably doesn't do me much good. Now I may zoom out now and again to get my bearings, but I don't see myself playing the game in a zoomed out mode. > > That's not realistic. Realistic would be forcing you to wander > around, maybe follow the road, maybe consult a map, and hope for > the best. But IMO having a "zoom out" would improve gameplay. One could do it right now. But the issue is filling in those additional spaces. It's not that useful if I zoom out and everything appears at 25% of old size, and all that is drawn in the middle 25% of my screen, with the rest being black because there is no information for those spaces. What's perhaps confusing to me is you're talking different zoom scales, which is really just something the client can do, and different scales in the game world itself, and how those interact is what I'm not sure of From nicolas.weeger at laposte.net Sat Dec 27 16:27:58 2008 From: nicolas.weeger at laposte.net (Nicolas Weeger) Date: Sat, 27 Dec 2008 23:27:58 +0100 Subject: [crossfire] Platform statement In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200812272328.01824.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> Hello. > I want the world to have a distinct personality and a > clearly-defined history. Common people (and beginning > characters) don't know the whole of this history of course, but > if you play every single quest, you should learn it to the extent > that an average cultured modern person knows ours. > > The world *will* be rebooted from scratch. If you want your > favourite map to be in it, adapt it to the new status quo and > submit it. > > I'm also throwing out the current world history. It feels > inconsistent and less than ideally interesting to me; the reason > I was behind keeping it before was that with Yann as content > leader, it was in safe hands ;-) as he is always able to come up > with interesting-sounding answers to anything. If I'm the one > who has to do the hard work, then I prefer to go with a more > "traditional" fantasy setting, with a more mythological emphasis > and a history that is more present and visible. (Meaning, > ancient cities, ruins, sacred places, etc.) I'll actually distinguish two histories: the "real" one, that should be put on the wiki and mostly be consistent if possible - that'd be the reference one ; and an "ingame" one, that doesn't need to be consistent at all, after all stories do get distorted in time, and manipulated for various goals. So being inconsistent ingame doesn't matter at all imo. And I for one would go for adjusting existing lore rather than throwing perfectly good stories that aren't integrated ingame like they should. Also I'd rather try to match Yann's story level than "reduce the level" and be content with something common. Nicolas -- http://nicolas.weeger.org [Petit site d'images, de textes, de code, bref de l'al?atoire !] -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 197 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. Url : http://mailman.metalforge.org/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20081227/097aaac2/attachment.pgp From lalo.martins at gmail.com Sun Dec 28 02:17:38 2008 From: lalo.martins at gmail.com (Lalo Martins) Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2008 08:17:38 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [crossfire] Platform statement References: <200812272328.01824.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> Message-ID: quoth Nicolas Weeger as of Sat, 27 Dec 2008 23:27:58 +0100: > And I for one would go for adjusting existing lore rather than throwing > perfectly good stories that aren't integrated ingame like they should. > > Also I'd rather try to match Yann's story level than "reduce the level" > and be content with something common. The existing lore doesn't work for me. So if it's me doing the work, I have to start over, in order to get something usable out of it. If something else were to do it, then that person would do it the way it works for them... the way it works for me is building a new story from the ground up. Recycling elements yes; many names, places, and even entire tales will be there. But the existing lore, especially the world history and mythology, is not something I'm able to work with. best, Lalo Martins -- So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable. ----- http://lalomartins.info/ GNU: never give up freedom http://www.gnu.org/ From kbulgrien at att.net Sun Dec 28 12:16:59 2008 From: kbulgrien at att.net (Kevin Bulgrien) Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2008 12:16:59 -0600 Subject: [crossfire] Platform statement In-Reply-To: <4955BFC9.2060202@sonic.net> References: <4951CED5.7000006@sonic.net> <4952D5B4.6000508@sonic.net> <4955BFC9.2060202@sonic.net> Message-ID: <20081228121659.0fb504c5@a850srvr.kbulgrien.att.net> > >>>> I'd strongly suggest a decimal system be used (10:1 or 100:1 ratios). > >>>> I really don't want to have to be doing 64:1 multiplication to try and > >>>> figure out values of different items. > >> I'd also suggest that names of currencies by intuitive. I > >> don't think anyone would know valuy of cleekins to aytbits... > > > > Well... I strongly disagree. But since this seems to be a matter > > of opinion, I don't know that anything can be done about it. > > > > So I propose I do it my way, and we see how it looks, and in say, > > a year from now, we evaluate how much it sucks. If it doesn't > > work or makes the game too hard, it's a simple matter to edit > > only the coin archetype files. > > > > For one thing, I think it's clear to me from the last few emails > > that the whole way you use money in the game would be different; > > and at that point, I'd rather make the money more, > there's a word for what I'm thinking but it refuses to come to my > > mind... fitting the theme, mood-building, more part of the story > > than the game system>, rather than less. > > I don't know. If I'm leaving the game to find out how much a cleekin is > relative to a silver piece (going to the docs, using a calculator, whatever), > I'd think that also ruins the mood quite a bit. > > I find most games that make up new terms for money or other game aspects > instead of using already well known words just annoying, and not really in any > way more immersive than those that do use the standard words. After all, > everything else in the game is in English (or local language of your choice), > and to just take out certain terms almost seems more noticable than not. I have to say that while conceptually the idea of "realistic" money types is nice, during play, it is not. Even with the current silver/gold/platinum, I always have to figure out how much of one is worth one of another. I end up just dropping all the money and letting the computer figure it out. That makes the money types being "realistic" causing gameplay to be less "realistic" or "immersive". Who ever thows down the contents of their whole purse and tells the storekeeper to only take what is needed? Aren't they prone to be cheats, anyway? All these fancy names being proposed sound nice, but express no relative value to the player. I'd have to think long and hard to come up with any (other) game I have played that had anything other than a single monetary type. From lalo.martins at gmail.com Sun Dec 28 13:21:48 2008 From: lalo.martins at gmail.com (Lalo Martins) Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2008 19:21:48 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [crossfire] Platform statement References: <4951CED5.7000006@sonic.net> <4952D5B4.6000508@sonic.net> <4955BFC9.2060202@sonic.net> Message-ID: quoth Mark Wedel as of Fri, 26 Dec 2008 21:40:25 -0800: > I find most games that make up new terms for money or other game > aspects instead of using already well known words just annoying, > and not really in any way more immersive than those that do use the > standard words. After all, everything else in the game is in English > (or local language of your choice), and to just take out certain terms > almost seems more noticable than not. I still don't agree with this... but in a way, I think we're both right on different aspects. Maybe the right solution is to call the coins something other than gold and silver, and still keep them in your inventory, BUT also keep a total account as you suggested, display that directly in the client, and work with that for most sales. In fact -- and this is coding, not content, so read it as a low-priority suggestion rather than a plan -- I think it would be best if buying and selling had a separate user interface. Local currency... I still think it would be cool, but in practise, it's a moot point; because I look at the story I'm working on, and really, it doesn't make sense to have different currencies there. >>>> (discussion on tall faces) I'll leave that one for the coders, although I need a decision before I start actually making arches and maps. However, I'll repeat what I said before: I believe tall faces are already implemented, at least partially, and that would make that, by definition, a simpler solution than any alternative :-) (If I'm wrong, then ok... but either way it's not up to me. I'll just make arches and maps using any system the coding people tell me to.) > As you noted in another messsage, your idea of amount of spaces > viewable was lower - if 12x12 matches, no problem. But if you are > looking for something equivalent of 15x15, then that would require > protocol changes. That's a point worth considering. Again, it's not up to me, though. > That part is simple enough to understand. But how the player gets > from scorn village is now the question - is the player effectively > just playing on the zoomed out map? What about monsters, etc? And > does he move faster? He would not move faster, that's why I wanted movement to slow down proportionally. Or then again he could move *a little* faster but not too much; so if zoom out is 10x and you move the same "apparent" speed, then you're really moving 10x faster, and I think that's unfair. But maybe you could move 2x faster (5x slower apparently), on the excuse that you're paying less attention to your surroundings. Combine that with a transport (horse) that moves 3x faster, and you're moving 6x faster. Monsters is a good point, I suppose at some point there should be objects (ground?) that force a zoom out. But this is getting too deep, and it involves both coding and content. So here's what I propose: let's postpone this whole aspect. I'll start the content on the assumption that there is a single scale (hugeworld as you say), and if we decide that's unplayable, we think about how to do zooming and how many levels and what the UI will be. Even if we end up doing it exactly as I envisioned it, we'll all be able to fine-tune it better by having actual content to test against. best, Lalo Martins -- So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable. ----- http://lalomartins.info/ GNU: never give up freedom http://www.gnu.org/ From mwedel at sonic.net Sun Dec 28 23:52:08 2008 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Sun, 28 Dec 2008 21:52:08 -0800 Subject: [crossfire] Platform statement In-Reply-To: References: <4951CED5.7000006@sonic.net> <4952D5B4.6000508@sonic.net> <4955BFC9.2060202@sonic.net> Message-ID: <49586588.70704@sonic.net> Lalo Martins wrote: > quoth Mark Wedel as of Fri, 26 Dec 2008 21:40:25 -0800: >> I find most games that make up new terms for money or other game >> aspects instead of using already well known words just annoying, >> and not really in any way more immersive than those that do use the >> standard words. After all, everything else in the game is in English >> (or local language of your choice), and to just take out certain terms >> almost seems more noticable than not. > > I still don't agree with this... but in a way, I think we're both right > on different aspects. > > Maybe the right solution is to call the coins something other than gold > and silver, and still keep them in your inventory, BUT also keep a total > account as you suggested, display that directly in the client, and work > with that for most sales. > > In fact -- and this is coding, not content, so read it as a low-priority > suggestion rather than a plan -- I think it would be best if buying and > selling had a separate user interface. I do tend to agree on that buying/selling - I think I mentioned that in another e-mail. But this is more an interface refinement than a content change (that said, one can relate to another). As I said in my other message, the idea of getting a list of all items in the shop you can scroll through, see the price, and click on it to buy would make shopping easier. But it also changes the way shops can be done - now you don't need a bunch of spaces to spread stuff out - it can all be held in one space (or even inventory of the shop type object). For selling, I've often thought that an inventory window for the client could be useful - the current listing in the client is a pretty basic listing. Bring up a new window (I'm thinking on how it would be done in the gtk2 client - java client would be different) - that inventory window would contain detail information for all objects - name, weight, where it goes on the body, and value (not probably 2 values are needed - what player thinks it is worth, and what shop is willing to pay). The later case would only show up if in a shop, and player could click on something to sell that item. I'd also have this window be able to set up different favorite lists for the client (instead of the entire locked/unlocked thing, should be able to set things up like 'this is list 1, list 2, etc' But that is really programming/client, not content again. That said, it is beyond just client, because server would have to communicate these values to the client also (but that isn't hard to do). >>>>> (discussion on tall faces) > > I'll leave that one for the coders, although I need a decision before I > start actually making arches and maps. Once all decided, probably good to figure out priorities/what order the work will be done in. That lets better planning be done - is the answer needed in 2 months or 12 months for example. Now from my thinking, going one way or the other shouldn't be too hard - its a matter of adding/removing the more links in the archetypes and merging images. > > However, I'll repeat what I said before: I believe tall faces are already > implemented, at least partially, and that would make that, by definition, > a simpler solution than any alternative :-) (If I'm wrong, then ok... > but either way it's not up to me. I'll just make arches and maps using > any system the coding people tell me to.) I believe it is true that tall faces will work right now without any real changes. However, if you divide what is currently a 1 part object into a 4 part object, there are different ramifications. Number of objects. Effectively reduced viewable area. Another one I also thought of is it changes balance with respect to damage and area of effect spells (a creature (including player) takes damage for each part of the creature in the spell IIRC. So if a player is now a 4 part creature, I believe it would now take 4 times as much damage from a fireball). None of these are insurmountable, but can extend the scope of the project. It just something one has to be aware of and plan accordingly. >> That part is simple enough to understand. But how the player gets >> from scorn village is now the question - is the player effectively >> just playing on the zoomed out map? What about monsters, etc? And >> does he move faster? > > He would not move faster, that's why I wanted movement to slow down > proportionally. Or then again he could move *a little* faster but not > too much; so if zoom out is 10x and you move the same "apparent" > speed, then you're really moving 10x faster, and I think that's > unfair. But maybe you could move 2x faster (5x slower apparently), on > the excuse that you're paying less attention to your surroundings. > Combine that with a transport (horse) that moves 3x faster, and you're > moving 6x faster. > > Monsters is a good point, I suppose at some point there should be > objects (ground?) that force a zoom out. One has to be careful how all this is done. There is not any way (other than honesty) to know what the client is showing the player. So for example, the client could tell the server I'm zoomed out, and thus I move faster, but in fact the client is showing me a zoomed in interface. So I get the advantage of moving faster, but still at the higher zoom level. Now with different images, maybe it doesn't make a difference - in zoom out mode, as you say, maybe we don't transmit certain bits of information to the client. How all that gets controlled is perhaps trickier (I guess you could add a flag to all objects to denote what zoom levels it is visible at. But from what you describe, you are also adding something to denote preferred faces at different zoom levels). > > But this is getting too deep, and it involves both coding and > content. So here's what I propose: let's postpone this whole aspect. > I'll start the content on the assumption that there is a single scale > (hugeworld as you say), and if we decide that's unplayable, we think > about how to do zooming and how many levels and what the UI will be. > Even if we end up doing it exactly as I envisioned it, we'll all be > able to fine-tune it better by having actual content to test against. Hugeworld was just one thought. You could still keep the multiple scales as now, but not allow zooming either (basically things act as they do now). One thing I like about lots of games is that they do provide some form of world map (zoomed way out) the the player, that gets filled in as play goes on. In a sense, player starts with something like http://dooler.woosworld.net/cf_map/, althought maybe some level of blurring gets applied so you can't distinguish the roads and towns. As you play, it fills in details. For example, if we presume you start in Scorn, it would generate a label for Scorn and put it on the map. When we finally get to Navar City, it labels it. Maybe even some number of dungeons or other landmarks. And of course, it shows you where you are on that map. this is a bit different than you are talking about, as you are just talking about zooming in/out information player already knows - in this model, even a starting player would have a world map, just nothing filled out on it. I always liked such games because it helped give a feeling of what the world is. And if you see an areas without any notations on it, may be an indication you haven't been there (or there is nothing there either) > > best, > Lalo Martins From lalo.martins at gmail.com Mon Dec 29 05:37:52 2008 From: lalo.martins at gmail.com (Lalo Martins) Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2008 11:37:52 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [crossfire] [Rebootworld] The true (hi)story Message-ID: ========================================= Core history of the new Crossfire world ========================================= ------------------------- The Tale of Nine Worlds ------------------------- With this story I am, in a way, taking the narrative easy way out. While I want to make our world "believable", by focusing strongly on the three pillars of internal consistency, detail, and depth; the truth is that the existing Crossfire content has a lot of mish-mash content that wouldn't fit in a strict framework without a lot of effort, but at the same time are too good to discard carelessly. So this story allows for and explains those differences, and leaves things more or less open-ended for future content developers, while still providing a few ground rules and an over-arching theme and meta-story. It also justifies the name "Crossfire", which wasn't a requirement but I think is nice ;-) This history isn't common knowledge, but parts of it are, muddled with myth, known to pretty much anyone of enough culture, at least as legend. Elves in general will know the whole of it. Scornians will known partial and conflicting legends, except for the great sages, scholars, and high priests, who will tell it exactly as written below. Navarish know a different version, to be covered in another document. I'm working on what distorted or completely made up versions most people believe in... Khelens ======= The story begins in a world now lost and all but forgotten, a world ancient and powerful, where the boundary between science and magic was ancient history. Their single city was larger than their world, and in every house there was a little box, inside which the whole city was kept. They traveled through the skies, for pleasure and curiosity, in ships made of song and formula. Its population numbered higher than grains of sand in the desert; yet, although Khelens wasn't a large world as worlds go, their techno/magic was so advanced that it provided more than enough space and food for everyone. In fact, over the millennia, the whole population had converged into one single city, for convenience; and as their techno/magic evolved, the city grew larger and larger, while at the same time occupying less and less space on their world, until it looked like little more than a bunch of gates. The city wasn't underground, nor high in the sky, nor was it outside the world like the realm of our gods; it was right there, on the ground, like our own cities, but folded upon itself many times over, in a way that our science can't even begin to understand. The gods that had created that world were still around. They were respected and revered as elders and precursors, and for, after all, having created the world and its inhabitants; but they were no longer beseeched for help and protection, because their followers had long equaled their power, and then surpassed the power the gods had originally. Although it's not fair to say they had surpassed the gods; as the gods, as the techno/magic evolved, began to make use of it as well, until at some point they became citizens like any other, save for their special status. Khelens was not entirely free of trouble, for they had not abolished crime or madness; on occasion, something bad would happen, but response would be swift. And sometimes, some of their sorcerers/researchers would cause an accident or discover something dangerous, maybe even kill many people in the process; but again, their peers would rush in succor, and minimize the consequences. Yes, even bringing back the dead; if resurrecting the dead is within reach of our modest magic, why would it be otherwise for the mighty Khelentians? Death in Khelens was purely an inconvenience, and their plane of death, where spirits used to be sent in ages gone, had already been annexed and converted into a functional part of their society. Like any other world known of, their world was the center of their universe. All that existed had been created by their gods or their gods' ancestors, with the world in its center. As the Khelentians evolved, they explored and understood every last corner, every alternative plane, until there was nothing else. But one day, a group of scientists dared to speculate that maybe there was, in fact, more. According to their laws of physgicks, the infinite possibilities of enquantum theory meant that their whole universe was but a pocket of existence floating in the greater void of nothingness, an enormous but tiny bubble of fact drifting through absence. And since their world had nothing new left to explore, this theory gradually gained acceptance, until a project was started to actually seek out other worlds. The philosophers debate to this day whether the theory was in fact right, or whether it was their belief that made it true. The fact remains that, by the time their project reached prototype stage, the theory was true; and their probes did find evidence of other worlds. First Contacts ============== Now, obviously it's beyond me how the Khelentian techno/magic worked, and how they navigated the nothingness, or even whether they did. But the tales say they did have some manner of choice in what worlds to reach, and so they preferred worlds that were, like theirs, ancient, reasoning that contact with younger civilizations would be less interesting and possibly unfair. So the world they encountered first was, indeed, about as old as their own. Its people had no word for it, for they didn't have the concept of a world in their culture; the closest they did have referred not only to the world, but the universe around it and all life in it. So their world is known to us simply as First World. Its inhabitants lived in almost complete harmony and peace with the world itself, in glorious living cities; their peace disturbed only by their perennial enemies, a second sentient race of fierce barbarians who lived to hate, breed, and fight; some claim this race was created by the First World gods only to give their children something to do. You know the people of this world as the First Ones, the Beautiful People, or simply Elves; their counterparts are known as the Orcs. For a long time, the Khelentians and Elves enjoyed each other's company, and learned with one another. But eventually, the sorcerers/researchers grew restless, and went in search of another old world. What they found was hardly as peaceful as the First World. It was a cruel and harsh world, where one ascended mainly by eating others. We call it simply the Dragon World. And yet, things went better than would be expected; after the initial conflicts, the Dragons, who are after all hungry for treasure and knowledge as well, decided it was profitable to trade with the other two worlds, and some measure of peace was reached. The sorcerers/researches were wary, though, that it could have been worse, and they could have reached a world with an hostile population; by going for old worlds, they risked the chance of a hostile encounter being beyond what they could handle. So next they touched a younger world; and that was Gaea, the world of our own ancestors. It was, for their standards, a primitive world, with fledgling science and with magic that was nowhere near as powerful as in the other three. On the other hand, we had gods that were much more active and willing to intervene. Our world was, then, at relative peace; just a little over a century earlier, a great hero called Skud had conquered the whole world and unified it into one single Empire. By the Day of Contact, he was already long dead, but his legacy lived on; the Empire was thriving, and science was advancing much faster than ever before. But the sorcerers/researchers weren't impressed. So while some other Khelentians did take an interest on us and our world, the world-finding project itself progressed, once again setting their mathemagics to older worlds. So they located the next world, and stepped into it; and these explorers were immediately destroyed, their techno/magic stolen, used to reach Khelens itself, and utterly obliterate it. The Fall ======== For as you may have heard in the temple, our own world started out of the nothingness; a small number of Primal Gods arose from that nothingness, and found each other, and loved or fought, producing more Primal Gods and lesser beings and ruling over all there was; until a group of Primal Gods, their children, and others banded together in an alliance sworn to the greater good, and took on the others. They were victorious, and became the gods; and from the spoils of war they built the world itself, and later created humanity. The origins of Khelens were almost identical, although the details differ, especially the traits of their gods and Primal Gods. And though the religion of the Elves is a secret to all but the initiated, they did recognize that the story was mostly similar; the same on the dragon world, except in their case, one single god emerged victorious, after eating Primal Gods and gods alike. But in this one case, things went differently. Wrong. In this case, the Primal Gods had already created a world and some life. And the group of proto-gods that banded together was a group that believed, essentially, that ultimate beauty and truth was the primordial nothingness, and the Primal Gods and their creation were an abomination. After an arduous war, those nihilists won; they devoured the Primal Gods, becoming even more powerful than them, and devoured the world itself, being left only with themselves in the nothingness they so much loved. And so they slept, satisfied, for ?ons. Until one day, some bratty invaders from Khelens stepped into the place their world was supposed to be, reveling to them that somewhere in the nothingness, whole other worlds existed. They found this revelation to be hurtful and an abomination, and made a vow to put an end to it. So after devouring Khelens, its world, and its gods, they moved onto the Three Worlds. We wanted to resist, but in our primitive state, we were unable to even fully comprehend the nature of the threat. The Dragons responded the only way they knew; with violence. And some contend that it may have even been the correct response, but with insufficient preparedness. For even, for the first time in their long history, fighting all together as allies, led by their dragon-god and his court of demigods, they had no chance. And the Elves, with their advanced knowledge and their keenly sharp martial skill, immediately understood the odds, and despaired. The Escape ========== But all wasn't lost. The few remaining Khelentians ? the ones who had been in one of the Three Worlds when Khelens fell ? seeked out our gods and outlined a plan. And so the gods and Khelentians took a city from our Empire, and the surrounding areas; a minor city, that hadn't yet been targeted by the invaders, but a city with a long, proud history, for it was the birthplace of the great Skud. And likewise, the elven gods took some of their followers, and same with the dragon world. And the three pantheons together, aided by Khelentian techry, built a whole new world, far away where the Others would take a long time to find. They also sealed off the five worlds the Anti-Gods knew about behind a barrier; while the techno/magic says nothing is impossible, in theory it should take thousands of years for them to actually beach it. However, they can reach beyond it. Just like our gods can hear our prayers even when in their houses beyond the world, so can the Others from many worlds away. And they quickly discovered that; they'll extend their tendrils into a new world, and slowly influence some of its people, until they become followers of the Anti-Gods; and as the number and power of these followers grows, the barrier weakens... or maybe it is that the world is pulled inside the barriers... until they are able to claim it whole. But we knew nothing of this. For many centuries, we lived in our New World, learning to coexist and moving on with our lives. And this story gradually became legend and then myth. Until, a little over a hundred years ago, we made contact with the Dwarves. Apparently, they had been taken to New World quite a bit before that, and had been living in secret, underground, wary of contacting the noisy, absurdly tall surface dwellers. Not long after that, arrived Navar; an entire kingdom, taken from a world of science beyond ours but almost no magic, a world of humans identical to us and yet such a strange world; with their miserable peasants and rich noblemen, with their castles and knights, their rich, fortified, yet tiny city, and their strange one-god religion. And only a few years ago, the half-breeds arrived, from a world that, by the looks of them, must have been interesting; the Serpentmen, the fox-like Fendrakis, the Mewmet cat-people, and the Werewolves. Reaction ======== But now, the high priests and archmages finally got news from the gods. As it turns out, we're not here only to escape and survive. As it has been revealed to us, we're brought here to grow and become stronger; to gain power, until one day we're able to take on the Anti-Gods themselves. This day isn't today and it isn't tomorrow, but it will come. best, Lalo Martins -- So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable. ----- http://lalomartins.info/ GNU: never give up freedom http://www.gnu.org/ From lalo.martins at gmail.com Mon Dec 29 05:57:15 2008 From: lalo.martins at gmail.com (Lalo Martins) Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2008 11:57:15 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [crossfire] [Rebootworld] Priests and prayers and cults References: <4952BAB7.1090508@sonic.net> Message-ID: quoth Mark Wedel as of Wed, 24 Dec 2008 14:41:59 -0800: > Lalo Martins wrote: >> Some thoughts on Rebootworld religion. This is mostly to set priestly >> types further away from magic-users. > > Quick question - how does this affect non priests? Does it make > sense for a fighter to decide to worship a good just for the cool > bonuses but otherwise never do anything for that good? One thought > may be the bonuses adjust based on priest level (so a level 1 > follower gets very little resistance bonus or other benefits, while > that level 100 follower gets really good bonuses?) In-story I think that makes most sense; as most religions in history or fiction have both priests and followers :-) I don't know if we need to change the code though. Maybe the resistances are good enough as they are, and higher level priests are rewarded with altar gifts, such as is already the case, for example, for Valkyrie and Mostrai at least. (And Gaea, Gorokh, Devourers and IIRC Rugilli get nifty spells.) Also with "branch cults" that is kind of handled as well... as you get initiated in higher and higher orders you get cooler bonuses. >> - No prayerbooks. Prayers will be learned in the temple and >> different for each cult. (Sometimes it will be the exact same spell >> but with different name; same internal spell code but different >> archetype.) The only spell off the top of my head I see pretty much >> every cult having is Cult Monsters (which will probably have a better >> name though). Maybe Word of Recall. > > What about the healing spells? One things that make priests somewhat > specialized is they get healing, and wizards don't. I don't think *all* cults should have healing. Even in 1.x it's denied for some. But it does make sense for both the Imperial cult and Valrielianism, which I think will account for the majority of players... if you want to play something advanced, then you probably understand that things will be different :-) One question wrt healing: if a player really wants to focus as a healer, how would he level up? In the pre-skill days, he could just join a party and get his share of exp. Now that still works, in a way (he gets more HP), but his praying level won't go up. > In the past, there has been discussions about some form of > reputation. It may make sense to revisit it. A starting character > would have a reputation of 0 in their home city, and perhaps a > negative reputation in foreign cities (foreign in this context could > be elf or dwarf). So the character would actually have many > reputations - one for each well defined region. Yes, I like this idea and it would be very enriching to the content. >> - I don't really think orcs, goblins, etc should have an >> organized religion. I'd like at least one species to scoff at gods >> in general. Others should be more shamanic or animistic. > > Most all intelligent societies tend to have some religion. That > said, reasonable that in some cases it may not be organized, or even > none at all. I'd say "some sort of spirituality", in some cases it may be something that we wouldn't recognize as religion. And I believe all historical civilizations started on that path through some form of animism; personally, I don't see, say, ogres or kobolds, being able to elaborate much more than that. >> It would be cool if there was some kind of reputation/gossip system >> so that if your allegiances got out, soon everyone would know it. >> But that's coding, and not top priority, so let's shelve it for now. > > Hmm. See my note above. > > Note that for many things, actions may speak louder than an item. > Not a lot of weight should be given to someone wearing a holy symbol > if anyone can pick them up for a few silver. Things like skill > level may be recognized - that tends to suggest you've done enough > that folks may recognize you as a hero of Gaea or something. Ideal is a reputation system as you proposed. You'd get minor cult reputation simply by being seen regularly in the temple... wearing a holy symbol could have a minor influence as well. Cult-related quests could do a lot more (although I'm not too sure what those quests would look like). I suppose known membership in a restricted sub-order could also impress people, as it implies a minimum level in the parent cult, but that requires further thought and it has exceptions (being known as a Gorokhist certainly doesn't make you look better with Valrielians, even though it's a restricted sub-cult). > Likewise, one has to be careful about just being able to hide ones > affiliation. If someone is a level 50 priest of Gorokh, they've > probably done enough that there are at least rumors floating about > town about that affiliation, etc. Yeah. Being seen with other people of very high reputation could have an effect too... if you're always walking around with a group of known Gorokhists then you'll start being treated as "probably one of them". > That said, I think there still has to be some balance in the > religions here - there isn't a lot of point spending time detailing > a god and his spells if no one ever uses it because it sucks badly. Certainly. best, Lalo Martins -- So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable. ----- http://lalomartins.info/ GNU: never give up freedom http://www.gnu.org/ From lalo.martins at gmail.com Mon Dec 29 06:36:01 2008 From: lalo.martins at gmail.com (Lalo Martins) Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2008 12:36:01 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [crossfire] [Rebootworld] Plan of attack Message-ID: These are general stages in the plan to take over ^W^W reboot the world and content. The stages/milestones have no schedule or anything, because this is my free time and AFAIK I'm doing this alone, so they're done when they're done, faster if you help :-) Of course there's one more major point that has been talked about and I'm ignoring here: character creation. I think most active contributors have at one point or another proposed ideas of a better way. So what I'll do is I'll just ignore it; I'll stick to in-game creation exactly as in 1.x until the alternative exists. That implies I'll be doing a HallOfSelection-like thing... I don't mind wasting that work, shouldn't take more than a few hours. 0: Preparation ============== Write stories, make notes about the layout and "personality" of the kingdom and city of Scorn. This ends when both: 1. I have enough notes that I'm comfortable with going on (should have in a week or so). 2. A decision is made on tall faces and stuff; and server, client, and gridarta are able to edit and test content using whatever system was decided upon. Not rushing the coders or anything, I have no problem with doing this for months if that's how things turn out :-) 1: Basic Scorn ============== Arches and maps for a map of Scorn city and vicinities that you can walk around and chat in. Possibly an inn and tavern. 2: Dangerous Scorn ================== Add a few "dungeons" and generally threatening areas, so that people who already play Crossfire can find something to do :-) 3: Amenities ============ Civic buildings, shops, temples, apartments, castle. 4: Super-quest ============== Before we get to this point we should have an agreement on things like world persistence and large changes to gameplay. This milestone consists on a number of maps, NPCs, and backstory woven in a large over-arching quest, Pupland-style. It's not really discrete; this will take a long time, and may start during or even before 3, and continue through other milestones, ending much later, if ever ;-) Maps from 1.x should be re-used/adapted as much as possible. 5: Magic-user stuff =================== Introduce the magic-using classes and skills, make sure it all balances out, add magic shops, equipment, maybe magic-oriented dungeons. 6: Priestly stuff ================= Introduce the priestly classes, prayers, equipment, "branch" cults, make sure it all balances out. 7: Tutorial =========== A collection of low-level quests or mini-quests that teach the basics of the game, branching at appropriate points for class, and eventually chaining into the super-quest. 8: The next kingdom =================== Repeat steps 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 7 and 8 for the next kingdom. Guidelines ========== The motto: believability. The two kinds of quest/activity: getting on with life (like, keeping the city safe, procuring food, pleasing your god(s), etc) and the big picture (fighting cultists, acquiring better weapons...). The three pillars of believability: internal consistency, depth, and detail. The four basic kinds of player: gamer, H&Ser, explorer, RPer; qualify that some players in all kinds will be more interested in the social aspect, but that's more a spectrum than a division. The five primary kinds of character: basher, magic-user, priest, rogue (thief, assassin, pirate), worker (producer, artificer, trader). best, Lalo Martins -- So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable. ----- http://lalomartins.info/ GNU: never give up freedom http://www.gnu.org/ From crossfire at ailesse.com Mon Dec 29 07:09:04 2008 From: crossfire at ailesse.com (Lauwenmark Akkendrittae) Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2008 14:09:04 +0100 Subject: [crossfire] [Rebootworld] The true (hi)story In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200812291409.16430.crossfire@ailesse.com> Hi (and Merry Xmas to all those to which I haven't had the opportunity to say so yet :) ), Le lundi 29 d?cembre 2008, Lalo Martins a ?crit : > ========================================= > Core history of the new Crossfire world > ========================================= > > Lalo Martins Just a small note: please find replacements to coin for the term Khelens. The original name relates to a setting that is not specifically related to Crossfire and existed long before it. Given that you are not in sync with that universe but elected to write your own one, I respectfully request that you use another name instead. If to ever be reused, I'd also ask the terms of Normania ("The Biggest Port of the Old World after Khelens"), M?ossis ("Those Who live in the Great Forest with us Fenxes"), Fax ("the Fenx that travelled far from the Great Forest"), Altamira ("The Ship that Roamed Seven Skies") and Sannista ("The Flying Ship") to also be changed. They all came from various short novels or fantasy stories, and would obviously clash with the events described in Rebootworld if changed the way described. Yours, -- Lauwenmark. ------------ "Drive defensively: buy a tank." -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. Url : http://mailman.metalforge.org/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20081229/0dd3753c/attachment-0001.pgp From lalo.martins at gmail.com Mon Dec 29 07:32:54 2008 From: lalo.martins at gmail.com (Lalo Martins) Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2008 13:32:54 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [crossfire] [Rebootworld] The true (hi)story References: <200812291409.16430.crossfire@ailesse.com> Message-ID: quoth Lauwenmark Akkendrittae as of Mon, 29 Dec 2008 14:09:04 +0100: > Hi (and Merry Xmas to all those to which I haven't had the opportunity > to say so yet :) ), > > Just a small note: please find replacements to coin for the term > Khelens. The original name relates to a setting that is not specifically > related to Crossfire and existed long before it. Given that you are not > in sync with that universe but elected to write your own one, I > respectfully request that you use another name instead. > > If to ever be reused, I'd also ask the terms of Normania ("The Biggest > Port of the Old World after Khelens"), M?ossis ("Those Who live in the > Great Forest with us Fenxes"), Fax ("the Fenx that travelled far from > the Great Forest"), Altamira ("The Ship that Roamed Seven Skies") and > Sannista ("The Flying Ship") to also be changed. They all came from > various short novels or fantasy stories, and would obviously clash with > the events described in Rebootworld if changed the way described. All right, thanks for the heads-up; I don't want to re-use any terms that we don't have the rights to. (Sadly, that also means that Mithrandir and others will be gone as well.) best, Lalo Martins -- So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable. ----- http://lalomartins.info/ GNU: never give up freedom http://www.gnu.org/ From mwedel at sonic.net Mon Dec 29 23:36:58 2008 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Mon, 29 Dec 2008 21:36:58 -0800 Subject: [crossfire] [Rebootworld] Priests and prayers and cults In-Reply-To: References: <4952BAB7.1090508@sonic.net> Message-ID: <4959B37A.4010703@sonic.net> Lalo Martins wrote: > quoth Mark Wedel as of Wed, 24 Dec 2008 14:41:59 -0800: >> Lalo Martins wrote: >>> Some thoughts on Rebootworld religion. This is mostly to set priestly >>> types further away from magic-users. >> Quick question - how does this affect non priests? Does it make >> sense for a fighter to decide to worship a good just for the cool >> bonuses but otherwise never do anything for that good? One thought >> may be the bonuses adjust based on priest level (so a level 1 >> follower gets very little resistance bonus or other benefits, while >> that level 100 follower gets really good bonuses?) > > In-story I think that makes most sense; as most religions in history > or fiction have both priests and followers :-) > > I don't know if we need to change the code though. Maybe the > resistances are good enough as they are, and higher level priests are > rewarded with altar gifts, such as is already the case, for example, > for Valkyrie and Mostrai at least. (And Gaea, Gorokh, Devourers and > IIRC Rugilli get nifty spells.) Maybe. It always just seemed a little odd that the starting character goes and becomes a follower of a cult and suddenly gets a fair set of nice bonuses (and in some cases, penalties). Sort of begs the question - is pretty much all citizens in the town having various benefits/penalties like the character? It may just be a case of characters getting more gifts more often, but less powerful. For example, every 10 levels you get a 5% increase to that resistance - means a level 100 priest has 50% resistance to whatever - probably not that unreasonable, but probably unreasonable to give them that at first level. It also means that someone who chooses a religion but never does anything with it (doing anything being a broad term) shouldn't get all that much in the way of bonuses/benefits. >>> - No prayerbooks. Prayers will be learned in the temple and >>> different for each cult. (Sometimes it will be the exact same spell >>> but with different name; same internal spell code but different >>> archetype.) The only spell off the top of my head I see pretty much >>> every cult having is Cult Monsters (which will probably have a better >>> name though). Maybe Word of Recall. >> What about the healing spells? One things that make priests somewhat >> specialized is they get healing, and wizards don't. > > I don't think *all* cults should have healing. Even in 1.x it's > denied for some. But it does make sense for both the Imperial cult > and Valrielianism, which I think will account for the majority of > players... if you want to play something advanced, then you probably > understand that things will be different :-) Fair enough. It should probably be pretty clear which ones do and don't, so a newbie doesn't play a priest expecting healing, but chooses the wrong god because the information isn't out there. > > One question wrt healing: if a player really wants to focus as a > healer, how would he level up? In the pre-skill days, he could just > join a party and get his share of exp. Now that still works, in a way > (he gets more HP), but his praying level won't go up. There is a general problem with all skills that don't involve killing or risk. Some games handle this by whenever the skill is used, you get exp. But that just gets tiring - every time you're wandering someplace, you just cast a spell repeatedly to get that exp. Some of this could be quests - doing a quest gets exp in praying skill. But that requires a lot of quests, and sort of gives a bonus (character is presumably getting exp in other skills to do the quest, and then gets a bonus on top of that). One idea discussed in the past is sacrificing items to your god. Each god would have a different list of acceptable sacrifices - for example, a god that prohibits weapons may take those as a sacrifice (disarming the world). Sacrificing body parts of your gods enemy races also makes sense (fewer of them, the better). All that said, I pretty much think most call cults should have damage spells. It otherwise may not be a very interesting character to play if all you set around and heal people. One oddity right now is that if there was another character in the party with praying skill (to different god) and did kill monsters, that one with only healing skills would still get exp. > Ideal is a reputation system as you proposed. You'd get minor cult > reputation simply by being seen regularly in the temple... wearing a > holy symbol could have a minor influence as well. Cult-related quests > could do a lot more (although I'm not too sure what those quests would > look like). I suppose known membership in a restricted sub-order > could also impress people, as it implies a minimum level in the parent > cult, but that requires further thought and it has exceptions (being > known as a Gorokhist certainly doesn't make you look better with > Valrielians, even though it's a restricted sub-cult). Cult related quests could fall into many different areas, broadly defined: 1) Recover item of importance to cult (it was stolen, etc) 2) Kill monster the cult doesn't like Those above 2 are things that could already be done - following would require more work: 3) More followers for cult. This sort of presumes there are folks to convert - probably don't want to include players, as too easy to solve then, but if there are villagers, etc, in the world. Note this could fall back to one of the above - villagers are like 'hey, you kill those wolves eating our livestock, we'll worship whoever you say' type of thing. 4) could also have competing quests. Maybe half a dozen different folks want the goblin king killed. Player has to decide which one he really goes for (an example here could be that basically all the different classes (skills) want him killed and give some form of exp reward or maybe something different. In this way, every class can get something from it - do you want that fighter experience of praying experience. Sort of counters the problem I mentioned above with only healers having quests for exp. This also helps out the problem where in a sense, you don't have to write as many quests - a bunch of quests could use the same maps. 5) The cult could take on something that doesn't directly affect it, but other folks aren't solving. Something could be hurting followers of the cult, but the city just isn't bothering to do anything, so the cult is looking for those adventurers to do it. I don't think being able to find quests for a cult to give out would be hard to do. > Being seen with other people of very high reputation could have an > effect too... if you're always walking around with a group of known > Gorokhists then you'll start being treated as "probably one of them". But that is sort of odd - right now, there isn't anything preventing a party of mixed gods - you could even associated with followers of an opposing god. I'm not sure how much that should be changed - hard enough right now to find folks to adventure with - if you started excluding a bunch because of religious differences, no matter how realistic, that probably isn't an improvement. From nicolas.weeger at laposte.net Tue Dec 30 02:02:46 2008 From: nicolas.weeger at laposte.net (Nicolas Weeger) Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2008 09:02:46 +0100 Subject: [crossfire] [Rebootworld] The true (hi)story In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <200812300902.50057.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> Hello. > ========================================= > Core history of the new Crossfire world > ========================================= Based on your history, I wonder: - will we have research lab on magic/technology, aimed at improving the powers of this new world? - where is the super technology that was used to create the new world? - why do inhabitants of this world fighting, instead of cooperating to become more powerful? - why aren't inhabitants formed to this history during their childhood, and left in ignorance? you'd definitely want "endoctrined" people to work together and don't waste time fighting each other Nicolas -- http://nicolas.weeger.org [Petit site d'images, de textes, de code, bref de l'al?atoire !] -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 197 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. Url : http://mailman.metalforge.org/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20081230/1d2524d0/attachment.pgp From lalo.martins at gmail.com Tue Dec 30 06:59:12 2008 From: lalo.martins at gmail.com (Lalo Martins) Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2008 12:59:12 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [crossfire] [Rebootworld] The true (hi)story References: <200812300902.50057.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> Message-ID: quoth Nicolas Weeger as of Tue, 30 Dec 2008 09:02:46 +0100: > Hello. > > Based on your history, I wonder: > - will we have research lab on magic/technology, aimed at improving the > powers of this new world? The science of the world-yet-to-be-renamed is too far beyond what the younger peoples can understand. Magic labs, yes, sure. There seem to be a bunch of those around in the 1.x world, no? ;-) > - where is the super technology that was used to create the new world? Most of it was the gods, actually. As for the people-yet-to-be-renamed, I'm not sure yet, still pondering their fate. Maybe they're travelling the nothingness trying to locate worlds where the Devourers are reaching into and combat their influence before it's too late; when that fails, it becomes necessary to contact the local gods and bring a sample to "New World". Maybe they're preparing the people to be able to share their magic/ science. And it's a difficult to understand plan that will take a long time; maybe too long, if the Anti-Gods arrive first. Or maybe they believe the way to do that is to pick a select few, and that's part of what the "hero project" is really about. Or maybe they have their own agenda. > - why do inhabitants of this world fighting, instead of cooperating > to become more powerful? For a number of silly reasons. Many (most) don't believe this story; remember, it happened a long time ago, for most of them, and exactly how and why it happened, they have only the words of the people-yet-to-be-renamed and the elves. A subset of those who don't believe is those who, even if they heard the story, would be too simple to understand it, or those who would understand it and blame it on you; that's a large portion of the monsters in the game. Others know all about it, but don't expect the consequences will reach them in their lifetimes. After all, in our world, every Christian supposedly believes in the Judgement, but how many do you see preparing for it? A lot, but hardly the majority. Many simply don't believe there's anything they can do about it; those are, if you will, the fatalists. When the Anti-Gods come, it's over, so I'd better take as much as I can from life. I'd expect that to be a rather common view in the Church of Gorokh, for example. Finally, some are on the side of the Anti-Gods. Some think the worlds *should* be destroyed, for either philosophical or emotional reasons, or passed-down doctrine, or simply insanity. Some are in it out of interest; reaping the benefits they get as cultists, and knowing that these benefits will grow the stronger the Devourers influence gets, until a day when it abruptly ends ;-) > - why aren't inhabitants formed to this history during their childhood, > and left in ignorance? you'd definitely want "endoctrined" people to > work together and don't waste time fighting each other In the first few generations, yes. Then people start finding more pressing things to do. Then things degenerate into myth and the younger ones stop believing it. And when the unbelievers grow up they choose not to tell the story to *their* children. And in a few centuries life is pretty much back to what it was before the Fall, except with stranger neighbours. best, Lalo Martins -- So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable. ----- http://lalomartins.info/ GNU: never give up freedom http://www.gnu.org/ From juhaj at iki.fi Wed Dec 31 11:31:21 2008 From: juhaj at iki.fi (Juha =?iso-8859-1?q?J=E4ykk=E4?=) Date: Wed, 31 Dec 2008 19:31:21 +0200 Subject: [crossfire] Platform statement In-Reply-To: <4955BFC9.2060202@sonic.net> References: <4955BFC9.2060202@sonic.net> Message-ID: <200812311931.46001.juhaj@iki.fi> > Yes, skills give spells and mana. One could change it so that the > highest skill you have determines hit points. This has an interesting side > benefit of it would be incentive for folks to focus on certain skills. I very much like this idea. It would give us the possibility of encouraging fighters to stay fighters while not enforcing anything. Perhaps something else could be tied to the best skill as well to further encouragement? > Clearly, zooming out is useful for finding things. But what I'm not sure > is how that interacts in the game. Is it purely just a mechanism to help > one find their bearings (I'm in the wilderness someplace, I zoom out, and > now I can see where Scorn is relative to me). That helps me travel back to > Scorn, but if I'm still moving at a slow pace, then I probably go back into > 'normal' zoom level - once I know I have to travel southeast, being zoomed > out probably doesn't do me much good. Now I may zoom out now and again to > get my bearings, but I don't see myself playing the game in a zoomed out > mode. I thought the idea here was something like this: in all zoom levels, moving one "square" on the map takes N seconds on *real clock* time; on zoomed out mode, you'd therefore "move faster". That would be the advantage and I like the idea. But that brings with it a problem when someone else is playing at the same map, but fully zoomed in: would that player see the other dash by at unbelievable speed or what? If using transports would be the only way to travel at zoomed out modes, that could be explained; the only other solution I can think of is that the different zoom-levels are actually different maps. That implies that, either you have many different maps covering all the world or you cannot zoom in everywhere - just where appropriate maps exist. On the other hand, if all "base maps" are at the most zoomed in level, the server could generate the zoomed out maps on demand, solving the problem of not having maps of every place at different levels (and keeping them in sync) and also that of other playes moving at incredible speed. Coding-wise, I have no idea how difficult that would be to introduce in cf. -Juha -- ----------------------------------------------- | Juha J?ykk?, juolja at utu.fi | | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | ----------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 197 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. Url : http://mailman.metalforge.org/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20081231/e387f98d/attachment.pgp From juhaj at iki.fi Wed Dec 31 16:57:27 2008 From: juhaj at iki.fi (Juha =?iso-8859-1?q?J=E4ykk=E4?=) Date: Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:57:27 +0200 Subject: [crossfire] [Rebootworld] Priests and prayers and cults In-Reply-To: <4959B37A.4010703@sonic.net> References: <4959B37A.4010703@sonic.net> Message-ID: <200901010057.41026.juhaj@iki.fi> > 4) could also have competing quests. Maybe half a dozen different folks > want the goblin king killed. Player has to decide which one he really goes > for (an example here could be that basically all the different classes > (skills) want him killed and give some form of exp reward or maybe > something different. In this way, every class can get something from it - > do you want that fighter experience of praying experience. Sort of > counters the problem I mentioned above with only healers having quests for > exp. This also helps out the problem where in a sense, you don't have to > write as many quests - a bunch of quests could use the same maps. This sounds excellent. There is a big problem in 1.x giving mainly weapons as quest rewards. The above would both help that AND help keeping map-making work at a sane level. There should be some way of handling parties, though, in this case. And also perhaps a way to prevent the magic-using class from getting the basher reward. Perhaps most quests would be given out by guilds/kings/temples/ and they might not accept you since you "are too low in bashing level/have too little reputation/are of wrong religion/pick your favourite again". -Juha -- ----------------------------------------------- | Juha J?ykk?, juolja at utu.fi | | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | ----------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 197 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. Url : http://mailman.metalforge.org/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20090101/90d74692/attachment.pgp From juhaj at iki.fi Wed Dec 31 17:08:31 2008 From: juhaj at iki.fi (Juha =?utf-8?q?J=C3=A4ykk=C3=A4?=) Date: Thu, 01 Jan 2009 01:08:31 +0200 Subject: [crossfire] [Rebootworld] The true (hi)story In-Reply-To: <200812300902.50057.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> References: <200812300902.50057.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> Message-ID: <200901010108.35349.juhaj@iki.fi> I know Lalo already replied to this, but I find the topic so funny that I'll just reply, too. > - where is the super technology that was used to create the new world? This is valid, nothing funny. > - why do inhabitants of this world fighting, instead of cooperating to > become more powerful? The same could be asked of the people of Earth. Not seeing much of this around. There is definitely an end coming to Earth, when Sun reaches the end of its main sequence stage and goes red giant, so the situation is actually similar (except we know approximately the absolute maximum amount of time we have left before our world is incinerated). > - why aren't inhabitants formed to this history during their childhood, and > left in ignorance? you'd definitely want "endoctrined" people to work > together and don't waste time fighting each other Again, look at Earth. Quite a few people have no idea of the atrocities of the crusades, for example. And I would guess some don't even know about the world wars and there are definitely some who claim that there was no holocaust. And even those who know history (as it is written in their respective countries) still go around killing, stealing, whatever. While the Elves should probably be "better", why should be think the humans of rebootworld would be any saner than those here on Earth? Asking these whys is a *very* good question, unfortunately they are questions that apply to Earth as well, so perhaps that is rationale enough for them to apply to rebootworld as well? Rationality, reason and human behaviour do not seem to belong together - as sad as that is. -Juha -- ----------------------------------------------- | Juha J?ykk?, juolja at utu.fi | | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | ----------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 197 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. Url : http://mailman.metalforge.org/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20090101/01390ca9/attachment.pgp From lalo.martins at gmail.com Wed Dec 31 20:51:25 2008 From: lalo.martins at gmail.com (Lalo Martins) Date: Thu, 1 Jan 2009 02:51:25 +0000 (UTC) Subject: [crossfire] Release 1.12 References: <200812201322.53224.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> <200812220839.46663.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> Message-ID: quoth Lalo Martins as of Mon, 22 Dec 2008 14:24:28 +0000: > :-) let's make it official then. If nobody objects until 2009, I hereby > proclaim myself "content leader". Well. I've seen discussions about the fine points of my plans, but no objections to my proclamation proper. So I'm assuming the post as of today. I'd strongly suggest someone (*cough*) do the same for the code... potentially, if you prefer, different people for client and server (I think it's pretty clear who those would be today). Here are my first acts and plans as content leader: - Codename "rebootworld" will progress at whatever speed I'm able to implement it, as outlined in the "attack plan" thread, with the target of being the official content for 2.x. - As suggested earlier on this thread, current trunk will become further 1.x releases. I remind you, that's for content; the decision whether or not to do the same wrt server and clients will be left to the people who take charge of code. - I'll be using launchpad for release planning and stuff. Feel free to use it too. It's not really worth the trouble to move bugs from sourceforge to malone for 1.x, especially since launchpad is more than able to integrate with sf bugs; but I'll use malone for 2.x (which is a separate project on launchpad). For "blueprints", the best is still the metalforge wiki; again, launchpad is able to link and integrate those in its process. (The 2.x "attack plan" has already been entered in the form of launchpad milestones, coded "drs" for Developer Release - Scorn. It's still unclear how much content constitutes a "releaseable" 2.0; offhand I'd say three kingdoms.) - By January 20th I'd like to merge all trunk changes that are sufficiently tested into branch and cut a RC1. Since I haven't been following everything that happened in the last year and a half, I kindly ask people to tell me which changes are known good, which are known bad, and the rest we'll make an effort to test in this time window. - After the RC please test thoroughly and report any bugs; I'd like us to have a clean release. - There may be an RC2 and even if necessary an RC3 in February. - Between January 20th and whenever the 1.12 release happens, the branch is to be considered bugfixes only. - The 1.12 release is planned for March the 1st. That may be a pipe dream but I intend to make it happen. - I think the great 1.12 question is: do mwedel's rebalances go in or not? Assuming he does have time to do the magic rebalance, will we have enough time to test it? If we don't, or if he doesn't, should we release combat rebalance without its magic counterpart? Personally I'd like them in 1.12, but if the people who have played with it more (especially mwedel proper) think it's not mature enough, I wouldn't mind waiting for 1.13. (For those confused: the changes were mainly to archetypes, so yes, they do go in the content release.) - After the release, the 1.x flow should be: radical new features or major changes in a "feature branch", somewhat experimental or in-progress new features or major changes in trunk, bugfixes in the branch; new features and major changes to be integrated from trunk to branch as they're tested and deemed stable. - I'd like to put out two 1.x releases per year until about a year after 2.0 happens. (By which time if anyone else wants to go on maintaining 1.x I won't object.) Early February and early August should get us into Ubuntu and Fedora releases, so that's what we'll be aiming for from 1.13 on. - Of course if server and client do *not* decide to cut 1.x releases out of trunk, it will be part of my job to make sure these content releases are compatible with whatever server versions are available at the time. What I shall *not* be doing for 1.x is deciding whether new content is consistent, fits the story, etc; or quality. New content will be checked for balance and whether it fits the place where it's located. Changes to existing content, of course, are expected to make it better than before. ;-) best, Lalo Martins -- So many of our dreams at first seem impossible, then they seem improbable, and then, when we summon the will, they soon become inevitable. ----- http://lalomartins.info/ GNU: never give up freedom http://www.gnu.org/