Here is a quick summary of what was discussed a few hours ago on IRC. These are basically some additions and clarifications to what was posted here. Eventually, this information should be summarized and added to the wiki (dev_todo) and of course this should materialize as real code...
* In order to explain why the readable items disappear after being read, it may be better to think about the "player books" as binders: the player finds some useful pages and stores them in her binder in order to carry them around easily. * A player who has collected a lot of information could get additional "player books" (binders) to organize this information. Another idea would be that each player starts with predefined binders, one for each type of information: one for monsters, one for religions, one for alchemy (or each sub-type: smithery, woodsman, ...) and so on. * It may be better to replace the current random books by scrolls or "scraped book pages". The information contained in the random books would usually fit on a single page anyway. * Spell books are magic items. This could explain why they disappear after being read. * Besides the non-random books used in some maps, we could still have a few random books. These would contain many pages and would be both (very) rare and (very) valuable. Their value would depend on their number of pages. * To explain the scattering of pages throughout the game: complete books are hard to find. In most cases, individual pages have been ripped out of the books by those who found the information interesting. * Since the server keeps track of what the player knows (contents of the "player book"), it is possible to only give litteracy exp for new information. * Although the players would never drop any pages from their binder (unbinding pages would be impossible), those who have the writing skill (pen) and sufficient experience could copy the information into new scrolls or books and re-sell the result. * As an added twist, the information copied from the books might not always be accurate. Depending on the player's writing experience compared to the number of pages of the book from which the data is copied, some errors could be introduced at random. In the copy, the description of an Ogre could be mixed with that of an Orc, for example. Or even worse: mixing up some spells and creating an incorrect copy that would result in a mana explosion when used. The player would not even know that she is selling or giving away some garbled information. These writing errors and their side-effects may not be easy to implement: if the server keeps track of what each player knows (maybe using a list of <type><id><part> for each character as described in my first message) then we have to find a way to allow these errors. The server must remember what kind of erroneous information the player has. It must also allow the player who got some incorrect information to replace it by a correct version if it is found somewhere. But on the other hand, the player who wrote it should not be able to tell the difference (otherwise it would be trivial to check it by trying to read what has just been written). This is a bit tricky... -Raphaël _______________________________________________ crossfire mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
