[crossfire] NPC respawning

[Nicolas Weeger]

>   Having new ones spawn is reasonable, but I then start wondering what do
> we really get from that vs making them unkillable?  If the bar tender is
> killed and in a minute a new one shows up with all the same information,
> not sure what letting them kill gains us.  Sure, it may be more realistic,
> but having a new person show up isn't, so your trade one point of realism
> for another.  If anything, if people kept getting killed in a tavern, you'd
> think people would actually stay away from it.

Yes, actually. If someone is killed in a tavern, NPCs should either flee or 
fight the killer.
And then guards should be called.
And the killer should be unable to enter various shops for some time.
Though of course if you kill the magical shop merchant, maybe you'll get 
rewarded (by an item, a special thing) by the holy priest of Gorokh of the 
town because he hated him!




>   I'd think both of these cases would not really alter the case of maps
> resetting - if map resets for whatever reason, tavern would go back to
> default setup.
>
>   One could even see the tavern closing down (people can not enter it),
> which would force a reset sooner.  Could be said that new workers need to
> be found, damage repaired, etc.

I was thinking of a delay before a new NPC appears - transmission time?


>   I'm not really adverse to any of them - it just seems like writing
> respawn code could be a fair amount of work.  One thing to keep in mind is
> that a solution that can only be done in maps is best - I know that not
> everyone knows the scripting system, so I could imagine some folks wouldn't
> bother with the scripting work.
>
>   From a maintenance point, if changing the conversation of an NPC means
> having to load up the map, see that it points to a script, go to that
> script, and then update it, that also becomes a bit more of a pain.
>
>   I wonder if instead the NPC's could somehow be stored/associated with the
> map, and there is a script that goes and places them (during initial load
> an periodically during the life of the map).

Yes, I was thinking of handling NPCs plugin-side directly, for those reasons.
And also because it's IMO the easiest way to "link" characters, have 
interaction between them / the actions of the player.



>   Now I'm not sure if this approach is easier or harder.  A plus here is
> that all conversation is stored on the map, not in scripts - the script is
> just used for the placement (and maybe having NPC's wander about).  So a
> person without any scripting knowledge could add new NPC's and have them
> behave like the rest.

Could be done, for some NPCs, yes.


Nicolas
-- 
http://nicolas.weeger.org [Mon p'tit coin du web]
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