[crossfire] How to integrate old stories in the game?

[Mark Wedel]

Nicolas Weeger wrote:
>>   If one were to go on this logic,than for any given message, it would be
>> reasonable for what the player sees to vary based on literacy.
> 
> I was thinking of script-based text garbling, actually, but your approach 
> works too.

  I think we have sort of learned over time that coding in such solutions tends 
to lack flexibility we generally desire, or don't give as good results as we 
might hope.

  We could certainly have script based text garbling, but having it do it so 
that it doesn't look like something that was script based would be hard.

> 
> 
>>   I do agree that some way for the player to handle/deal with these
>> messages would be nice.  I use to resort to copying information down in
>> another window, but that takes things out of the game experience.  One
>> could imagine something like a special folio object that holds all these -
>> the issue is still how to present them to the user.
> 
> Client issue that can be fixed.

  I don't think this is a pure client solution.  That's just my thought.

  It's never really clear where the split between client and server is.  But my 
thought is something like this:

  On the server side, there is something like a folio object which characters 
can put all those different notes into.  Perhaps there is even code to see if 
the character already has a copy of that message.  This could basically be just 
a container object with some special handling.

  On the client side, it perhaps brings up a window which shows everything in 
the follow, so you can quickly read through it.  Maybe in the form of a book 
which you just page through.

  Ideally, each written note would have a title, so there could be a table of 
contents.  Things like 'Dungeons of the Deserts', 'Monsters of the Southern 
Forests', 'Characteristics of Ogres', etc.

  While this could perhaps all be handled on the client (when you read 
something, it automatically records that information in a file), that doesn't 
seem ideal.  The information we are talking about here is really character 
information - while there is nothing that prevents one from sharing this 
knowledge, I just don't think it would be a good user experience that if you 
switched to a different client (or perhaps same client running on a different 
machine), you've suddenly lost all that information.

  Things like window positions, keybindings, really are client properties, and 
in fact, probably would different in different ways based on system I am using 
(window size/layout is likely going to be different on my laptop than my 
desktop.  Same for keybindings for that matter, since the laptop has fewer keys 
and some are in different locations).


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> Nicolas