[crossfire] Seeking life...

[Mark Wedel]

Nicolas Weeger wrote:
> Hello.
> 
> So, anyone working on something? Anyone having plans for working on CF? Or can 
> we close the shop down?

  I've been fairly busy for the past few months on a kitchen remodel which took 
away my time from other projects - that's finishing up just now, so will be 
getting more into crossfire work again.

  I plan to resume work on rebalancing the spells.


> 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.

  I can certainly understand some of that.  I've run into th same feeling now 
and again.

  The one that we usually always come back to is new maps.  As a long term 
player/developer, I've played most all the maps, and playing them over and over 
again isn't that interesting (when I do player commercial games, I'll tend to 
play them through once - it doesn't really interesting me to play the game again 
with a different character or play the same areas over and over again with that 
first character - I might go explore areas I haven't done yet, but more often 
than not, just stop playing that game.  Given how often I play such games, that 
tends to work out - something new will come out.

  At some level, it is probably unrealistic to think that new maps can be 
created at a pace faster than they can be played - a lot of map makers would be 
needed.  It takes quite a bit of time to make up a good map - certainly longer 
than it takes to play it.  And perhaps the other side of that is that it can 
often be difficult to come up with good maps.  Everyone could sit down and spend 
several hours a week doing new maps, but if they are uninspired maps (more of 
the same), I'm not sure how much is gained.  One could just play the random maps 
for that type of experience.

  The flip side is that many of the maps are so old that they predate many 
features since added (lighting immediately comes to mind, but probably many 
other aspects), so even new maps of the same type of things may still be an 
improvement.