Re: [crossfire] Crossfire server code cleanup/janitorial
> - Variable length arrays (may be useful in future) Which the C11 standard kindly removed. The stupidest decision by any standards committee ever: to remove perhaps the most important improvement in the previous standard just because some fool compiler manufacturer had not been able to implement it in ten years. > It would be nice to sit down and come up with a roadmap. I've been doing > so much 'cleanup' work lately because I didn't have anything specific in > mind to work on. What happened to that rebalancing-related roadmap from a few years ago? Did it ever get finished? I must admit I have not even logged on to a Crossfire server for years, which is pretty sad. I will go back to my cave now. ;) -- ------- | Juha Jäykkä, ju...@iki.fi | | http://koti.kapsi.fi/~juhaj/ | --- signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] TODO list
> them. But maybe this just goes back to me playing a troll character at one
> time, and having to deal with carrying large amounts of food (due to the
> trolls bonus is HP regeneration, food usage goes up).
Fireborn have the same thing, they also need lots of food. So these two races
need serious tweaking if food is removed as a stat (and I think wraiths as
well, since they have the advantage of not requiring any food).
I have had times where my fireborn was in trouble killing the monsters faster
than food stat went down, so I would say that food is not too abuntant at all!
Also, dragons' ability gains by food must be tweaked if food is reduced in any
significant amount.
> and eat it like nothing has happened. Just adding some form of rotting
> would probably reduce available food by a bit.
Indeed, this is nice. Of course, lembas etc might not rot at all and hearts
and livers rot faster than apples or cooked meat...
After one gets create food spells, food becomes moot anyway in any case
(except the special food and dragons).
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Re: [crossfire] Bug 2789515: output-count broken since 1.11 server
> After looking over the server code, it seems quite clear to me that > mwedel's suggestion to move it to the client is a good idea. Do you have any idea how this affects the latency on longer network links and when there are huge numbers of messages flowing? The output-count helped me a lot sometimes. > Comments welcome. The changes are sitting in my SVN checkout, but I'll > hold back a bit in case there is any life out there that cares. Contrary to you expectations, someone answered? =) -Juha signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] clients
> As long as x11 doesn't have a maintainer, it will be considered > unsupported, and disabled by default in configure (you'll have to pass an > explicit --enable argument to build it). Binaries will not be included > in releases. Just my quick thought: this seems like a very nice solution. Good work. -Juha P.S. Didn't try the new version - yet. signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] What about a gameplay revolution?
> Following previous discussion about highest skill level determining hit > points, one could refine it further such that highest skill level of those > associated skills determines hit points. That sounds good. This would certainly deter too many class-defections. I still think that something else besides hit points must also be tied to this skill level, but I'm not sure what. Perhaps the types of quest rewards you're given could be one. And item_power could be checked against this level, too. > But I'm also sort of inclined that not all classes should necessarily > have all skills available (or even most). So I've noticed. =) And I disagree, but that's a matter of taste. It'll eventually be up to Lalo I think. I'm happy with both, but I'm happier with freely learnable skills. Even the system you proposed later, which dumps the classes alltogether and simply has skills. > Some skills are ones that I'd say are not as adventure related (item > creation skills, etc), and so sure, everyone can have those. Yes. And a way of getting decent xp in them too. Perhaps there could be three types of skills: primary and secondary class -based skills and a third set of general-purpose skills. The class-skills are those that gain XP by killing monsters and completing quests and they either can or cannot be learned by everyone and the third set has a different xp table and all, for creating rings, arrows, scrolls, even mining and fishing if we come to that. There are a lot of different ways to handle class-skills. At least the following come to mind: 1) Primary skills cannot be learned, secondary can 2) Both can be learned, but your class-primaries need less XP to advance 3) Your class-primary must always be at least 2x your highest secondary level (perhaps you'd change classes otherwise?), but they are both learnable 4) They are both free to learn, you just have the primary initially There are also some mixes of the four that can be quite ok, too, like take both 2) and 3) and you have pretty heavy punishment for fighting wizards. -Juha -- --- | Juha Jäykkä, juo...@utu.fi| | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | --- signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] [Rebootworld] Priests and prayers and cults
> If a magic user wants to get the basher reward, maybe not a problem. > That said, just as the scorn nobility quest is a chain quest (you have to > do them in order), same could basically be true for these class based > quests. If you've done the first 4 as a wizard, and try to get the fighter > reward for the fifth one, they might say 'who the hell are you?' type of > thing. > > Or maybe base it on skill level. The fighter guild may not care about > order of quests, but they are not going to give out some good item to some > newbie fighter, even if the character has lots of exp. However, if the > character has 10 levels of a fighter type skill, that may be considered > good enough for them to give the reward. Sounds fair enough. The reward might also not be static at all, but depend on the skill level. Or perhaps even the number of previous same-type quest rewards given to the player. So if you suddenly decide you want the basher reward after first getting 10 wizard rewards, you'd get the "low-level" reward. -Juha -- --- | Juha Jäykkä, juo...@utu.fi| | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | --- signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] What about a gameplay revolution?
> And just like spell books having been made more available by the bookshop > (sells common spells but at inflated prices), same could perhaps be true of > recipes - finding more recipes should be easier to do, but maybe it costs > something. This sounds reasonable and actually quite good, too. > don't think there is necessary a right or wrong answer to it, but that > answer probably needs to be decided. Yup. And you raised a good point about reducing xp when not using skills. Something else would need to be done - or nothing. > This sort of goes back to that decision above - should crossfire have > stricter classes, or should classes be meaningless (aside from starting > skills). I'd prefer to find a middle ground. Something where we can let everyone be capable of using all skills, but with some class-features still intact so that there is no way a basher can become as good a magic-user as a wizard. Perhpas simply requiring the "main skill", i.e. whatever is tied to the class, to always be higher than any other skill? Or higher than all other skills combined (this would need some adjustment on first level). There could be a guild whose services are necessary to gain a new level (or something) and the guild would simply kick you out if you violate the above rule. Or something. > Yes - race bound items should be used more. Could not agree more. -Juha -- --- | Juha Jäykkä, juo...@utu.fi| | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | --- signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] What about a gameplay revolution?
> > 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. This would imply that one cannot learn recipies by talking to other players, would it not? That may be good but it could also be bad. (I'm assuming a character cannot create items whose recipies are unknown to the character.) Either some recipies would have to be much more common or there would need to be a shop for them. > 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 belong to the sect which supports almost meaningless classes, but there would need to be some incentive to specialise in a single class. Somewhere in this (or some other?) thread the suggestion of using the highest skill level for HP and perhaps something else, too, would be one step in that direction. Another might be gradual loss of skills if they are unused. That would definitely be realistic, but would it be fun? I don't know (I usually only play heavy magic users without much focus on melee so it would not matter much to my style of playing). > 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 agree that the prevention must go both ways, but I have always disliked the [A]D&D way of class preventing use of an item. There might be a skill to use wand (one that magic users initially have) or something, but not a total block. Also, to increase the effectiveness of wands in magic users' hands, their power might be tied not only to the level of the wand, but also to the magic-skill-level of the user, or even Pow score or something (Str gives fighters bonus to damage, why not Pow to wands?). Also, it might be nice to have race-bound items. There's a lot more basis for requiring a certain race to use an item - no other race has a fireborn's tentacles or an elf's pointy ears, for example; skills to use items can be acquired, racial features cannot - especially racial "mystical" features like "elven soul" or something. Bind items to those and they effectively belong to that race (there might be a quest brewing here, too...) A little less drastic race-item would be one which acquires an extra powers (or loses some) or becomes more (or less!) powerful when wielded by members of certain race(s). A mystic dwarven battle axe might give an additional "slay orcs" power when wielded by a dwarf etc. (And if wielded by an orc it might behave as a Damned weapon?) -Juha -- --- | Juha Jäykkä, juo...@utu.fi| | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | --- signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] [Rebootworld] The true (hi)story
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 Jäykkä, juo...@utu.fi| | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | --- signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] [Rebootworld] Priests and prayers and cults
> 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 Jäykkä, juo...@utu.fi| | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | --- signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Platform statement
> 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 Jäykkä, juo...@utu.fi| | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | --- signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] What about a gameplay revolution?
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 Jäykkä, juo...@utu.fi| | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | --- signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] What about a gameplay revolution?
or 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 Jäykkä, juo...@utu.fi| | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | --- signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Release 1.12
> > (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 Jäykkä, juo...@utu.fi| | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | --- signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Seeking life...
> - there is no common goal, so everyone is doing his own stuff > - there is no leadership who could define areas > > solutions: > - define a common goal => need some leaders > - enforce content rules (reject maps that don't integrate into the timeline > / overall story) Heartily agreed! I have had no time for cf (I haven't even played it!) for over a year now. Expect this state of affairs to continue until next summer (with *very* good luck, just next January). At that point I'd be more than happy to take on any task given me by the leader(s). Do we need a leader election?-o -Juha -- ------- | Juha Jäykkä, [EMAIL PROTECTED]| | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | --- signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Maps for spellcasters (and melee vs. ranged attacks)
I'm a bit late replying due, but... 1) Instead of no_spells, use player-moving floor tiles (I don't remember the name of the archetype): no way of getting close to monster, but spells and missiles still can. This needs a monster which will not close in itself, though. And is less than elegant since it means there is absolutely no way of using melee, *at* *all*. 2) I find it frustrating to have maps impossible or almost impossible to finish with a certain type of character - party-maps aside, the rest of the maps should be doable with any kind of character, given a proper level etc. If a melee-fighter needs son über-weapon to finish the map, then it's ok for the spellcaster to need a comparably hard-to-come-by spell, but I think that's it. And most maps should need neither. Which brings me to another point: I'm still keen on being able to devise new equipment and spells on the fly, something like enchanting weapons on the fly... But since I'm in a hurry... later! -Juha -- --- | Juha Jäykkä, [EMAIL PROTECTED]| | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | --- signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Resistance calculation
> Both apply a ring resist+30. Then one of them has resistance 51, the
> other comes out with 36. What happened? The first one started out with
Even though I know how resistances are computed and understand the formula, I
have to agree, this is highly confusing for anyone who does not.
I second the idea that something is changed about this, but overrall the
current system is quite good. The fact that having *any* negative resistance
prevents total immunity is good. The fact that using 4 resist fire +25 items
does not give 100% resistance is good.
But there are problems as well, like the above and:
> Concerning race penalties: Take a fireborn, whose fire immunity evens
> out the severe penalty of not being able to wear weapons and armour,
> but is broken by any item that does fire vulnerability. The race
> immunity should IMO be untouchable.
I second this, too. At least as long as racial vulnerabilities cannot be
totally overcome by items, the immunities should not be changed either
(except perhaps by damned items). The proposed spell to lower resistances is
a good one, though I wonder what it would do to resist magic +100 creatures?
=) With regard to fireborns, btw, I think the immunity to fire should be
unbreakable unless some of the limitations are significantly reduced. The
fire immunity is about the only thing keeping low level fireborns alive (and
quite often high level as well).
> One thing that should be avoided though is stacking potion effects.
Good point.
-Juha
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Re: [crossfire] Spell rebalancing notes/thoughts
> That's not to say all parts of the game should just be combat - getting > elected mayor, etc, is reasonable, but that is a bit different than > adventuring. I'd like to establish my own city... Or at least build a headquarters for my adventuring band (should I ever get one together). Building a building is already possible with acme (I gather - haven't actually tested), but getting npc's to move over to your city might be nice, too. This, of course, produces a problem: is the number of npc's fixed or should they reproduce? If the number is fixed, moving would mean depleting other places, which may or may not be desirable. If they reproduce, some must also die... again, we may or may not want that. One thing is certain, though: the npc who gives quest related information in Scorn should always live in Scorn and not move elsewhere. (Perhaps if the quest is not at all Scorn-related, this could be relaxed.) The npc could travel around, though, but should definitely be in Scorn almost always (but could go home to sleep at night etc). > It may not be bad to have NPCS to help provide clues, like the old mage > saying "I wouldn't venture into the caves with less than half a dozen > potions". I'd say "of course they should provide clues". It's just a matter of getting around writing them. All in all, some more clues about various places around the world might be nice - if someone just wrote them! =) I could drop in a few npcs for the few places I know of, but I haven't really looted every single dungeon in the game and I do not know the point or story behind quite a few places I've been to. For example the elven tree houses North-West of Scorn or the archaeological dig East of Scorn, the whaling village (and the antarctic island you can get to from there) etc. I have no idea about the stories behind those. Skud's tower looks unfinished etc. > have regen go up even faster - the idea being here that character is > presumably in a 'safe' location if they are not taking damage or doing > combat, so why not have them get stats back faster. Sounds good, but does it incur much load for the server? The more different things we offload to the server, the sooner we need to start thinking about multithreading it... (if we are to support really massively multiplayer stuff, of the order of tens or hundreds of players). > And within crossfire, that could also work - have fewer tougher monsters > that are more interspersed with open space. Sounds good, too. Some puzzles would be nice, too. Although I admit puzzles are really difficult to invent in a game like this. -Juha -- --- | Juha Jäykkä, [EMAIL PROTECTED]| | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | --- signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Spell rebalancing notes/thoughts
> > If a fighter has a tactic to defeat a monster and take no damage, that > > is no problem, as long as he can't do it a lot faster. For example, > I'd rather see different classes meaning different tactics and possibly > different time... I tend to agree with Nicolas here. It is not a problem if it takes longer to gain a level as an X than as an Y. But that would need to be balanced by a high level X being more powerful than high level Y, otherwise I don't see many people playing X at all. OTOH, perhaps even that is not a problem: in many fantasy worlds, being a powerful wizard takes decades of study, whereas becoming a powerful fighter is much faster. It's also quite logical: a 60-year fighter won't be quite so agile and enduring as a 30-year old, whereas in a wizard, the age is not so much of an issue. But since we do not have character ages in the game, I'm not sure how applicaple this is. -Juha -- ------- | Juha Jäykkä, [EMAIL PROTECTED]| | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | --- signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] GTK V2 client default layout and map size
> I think that I suggested a solution a long time ago: highlighting the
> changes for the protections. Basically, every time a protection changes
Something like this would be very helpful. Perhaps accompanied by a warning
sound (should the user have sounds), too. This has been so big a problem,
that I have considered writing a small script to recast all protection spells
whenever they expire, but never got around to do that.
> > Ideally something like a spell monitor would be nice - protections on
> That would require a bit more coding effort, but that would certainly be
Wait a second, I don't quite follow you now. Don't we already have this? At
least protection spells cause a message "your protection from X is running
out" some time before it actually runs out. Could we not use the same code
(base) for an overall monitor? This warning was actually so big improvement
when it was introduced that it probably was the main reason I did not write
the above mentioned script.
> That's right, but this also has a cost: a top-level window has some
> decorations that can take valuable space on smaller screens. So if you
> have a small display, then it is better to have as much as possible
> inside a single main window.
You can always request a decorless window from the window manager. I think any
decent ;) window manager disregards the application's request, though, since
it should be the user, who decides that. But the user with such a window
manager can always tell the WM to remove the decors if they are too big.
Unfortunately, according to the above requirement, I know just two
decent window managers and I know no one who uses either. Luckily most wm's
are almost decent and can add/remove decors when user wants.
> I couldn't agree more. All options that are currently hidden behind
> some strange combinations of button clicks and modifiers would be much
> more discoverable by the users if there was some kind of context menu for
Agreed. Although, I hate menus - shortcut keys and mouse-key-click -combos are
so much faster, when you know the magic combo. But, like you already noted,
these have the problem of being obscure and hard to remember (unless you use
them frequently), so having a "slow" way of accessing these functions is very
helpful.
-Juha
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Re: [crossfire] GTK V2 @ 640x480!
> > http://krayvin.home.att.net/gtk-v2-modified-640x480.png > > http://krayvin.home.att.net/gtk-v2-modified-640x480-22x22-map.png These two are gorgeous! Note one point below, though. And my apologies if my previous email sounded to hostile. It was not meant as such. I was simply concerned (as I said). As what comes to actually making the widgets float and be rearrangeable, I think it should not be very difficult to look at the freeciv client code and see how it's done. I will do it, it this is still relevant next autumn - before that, I have no time to spare. That's why I've not been helping with the balancing, new spell system etc either, I'm sorry about that. > And what about making the map 50% larger? like, tiles 48x48? There has been (I do not know about the newest trunk) a bug in the map scaling algorithm. I have used the 50% map extensively and it has a bug which makes places disappear from map-window (you can click to see them, though). Is this a known bug? If so, skip the rest. =) This happens, for example, with certain types of "hole" on "hills". One of the holes close to Scorn vanishes this way. I think it is the place where there are lots of earth walls to bash. It may be the ogre chief cave as well. I do not have any copies of cf installed at the moment, so I cannot check. -Juha -- ------- | Juha Jäykkä, [EMAIL PROTECTED]| | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | --- signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] GTK V2 client default layout and map size
Hi!
I've been following the discussion on client layouts with great concern. What
makes me concerned is the fact that most people seem to be fixed on the idea
that a) the game window dimensions equal screen resolution and b) the window
layout is (at least almost) fixed.
For point a) please note that some people (at least me) never use full screen
size windows for any purpose (except on my htpc, but that does not even have
a keyboard and mouse so I won't be playing on it) and the current unability
to let the window manager resize the window is simply absurd. If a user wants
to resize crossfire window to 20x20 pixels, it's the user's problem when if
becomes totally useless. Almost all programs scale their internal window
widget sizes according to the window size (or introduce scroll bars). Why
would crossfire not do this? For the map-view-widget this would probably be
pointless, but at least everything else could scale. Even the map widget
could scale at least is tile-size steps: if 16x16 tiles no longer fit on
whatever size the user adjusted the window to, then only draw 15x15 - and
leave some blank if the actual size is 15.5x15.5 or resize the info widgets
to fill that space.
For point b) Raphaël already noted GIMP, my example would have been from
gaming: FreeCiv. It has *exactly* the same situation as crossfire: a current
map view based on tiles and some informative widgets displaying, for example,
an overview of the whole world map etc. If you resize the window, the map
view shrinks etc. No fixed map window sizes or anything. User can do whatever
one likes, even float some of the widgets to separate windows (I would not
like that feature myself in a real-time game like CF, but rearranging the
widgets within the master window would be useful).
Is there a reason for points a) and b) being as they are 1) now, 2) in the
future? I hope there is no reason to keep them such in the future...
-Juha
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Re: [crossfire] Map logical linking
> Proposal for logically linking maps:
> * in one of the maps, probably the one with quest starting point or quest
> end, describe the quest in the lore field, and include what maps are linked
> to the quest, maybe more information like player level or reward? Minimum
> is the linked maps
> * in each quest map, add in the lore a reference to the quest and the map
> with all the information
> Opinions? Suggestions?
I would vote for obligatory lore fields in all maps (old and new) describing
the above mentioned minimum. It is extremely frustrating to stumble upon a
map, especially in the editor, and not know what it is related to.
-Juha
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Re: [crossfire] New plugin: citylife - help needed
> Since the players are heroes, they could be opinion-makers and trend-
> setters. If they are seen favouring one shop, the NPCs will start
> preferring that one as well. If they avoid one, its popularity with the
> general populace will drop very fast...
Yea, this is reasonable, but in case there are no players around, I think my
idea is worth having anyway. And when players eventually turn up, giving the
players more impact than npcs could will be implemented either in the way you
describe. It has the same idea as my proposal, but it has perhaps more ingame
consistency in it.
-Juha
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Re: [crossfire] New plugin: citylife - help needed
> If I'm running a private server and don't log in for a few days, it would > be annoying for all the shops to be closed. This should not be a problem: it should be easy to only count "active" ticks (i.e. ticks when someone is actually logged on to the server) when considering which shops thrive and which die. > Related to that you are likely to get some towns that may not be used > much even on active servers - if I have a private server, I'm likely only > working in one town at a time. This is more difficult. Perhaps the npcs themselves could help with this? Perhaps the npcs could be made to go to the shops as well? They might not need to buy anything, just enter and exit. Also, their influence in determining whether a shop lives or dies could be made orders of magnitude lower than players' influence. What I have in mind, is that if no player visits a shop in Scorn, the npcs can keep the shops alive, but as soon as players start visiting the shops, their "vote" counts so much more that if players do not go to shop A at all, the npcs' influence can't keep that alive. Some kind of differential metric between the shops, not an absolute one. An npc entering the shop is worth one "life point" for the shop, while a player is worth a 100. Then, whenever the lowest scoring shop is, say, 1000 points below the next lowest scoring, it dies. Also, this means that whenever the highest scoring shop is that 1000 above the next, it should expand its business... > that driven more my player actions - eg, folks can by plots of lands > outside of cities, etc or what not. This sounds nice. But... how do we keep track of who owns what? And how do the players find out if the beautiful spot they fancy is already owned by someone? > At some level, if we let a player do it, then we could also let NPC's do > it (some number of NPC's buy farms or whatever) Naturally, the npcs must basically be able to do whatever the players do. I'd like to see them enter dungeons themselves and join parties with players as well. Though the last type of npc probably would not be controlled by the sim code (if we choose to use that). (And I do not count the current hired hands in Scorn as npcs. They do nothing unless you hire them - not really very "c" in npc.) -Juha -- --- | Juha Jäykkä, [EMAIL PROTECTED]| | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | --- signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Weather code
> not even sure I have ever seen it in use, and presently do not see it
I have used it, but it has two drawbacks: it only ever seems to make snow fall
on the ground, making all the world (well, the parts I checked) basically a
big puddle of water (making moving very slow unless you levitate). The second
drawback is that with slower "weather speeds" (I fail to recall what the real
name of the setting is) it never does anything and the moment it starts to do
something (i.e. fast enough to be noticed), it changes way too fast (and
produces the puddles).
IMO it's absolutely useless as is. And I agree with Kevin: there are more
important things to work at at the moment.
-Juha
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Re: [crossfire] Balance changes
> I think many recipes may be too hard (or do not generate enough of an > item) for the ingredients required - that is certainly another balance > issue there - alchemy has never been balanced, it should be done. But > that isn't quite as main part of the game as say magic and fighting is, > and is also balance in a different nature (difficulty of ingredients, > difficulty of recipes, etc) This certainly has been an issue - both with alchemy and other item creation skills as well. (I will use alchemy as a synonym to item creation skill.) Basically, an arrow of slaying X should be equally difficult to create as actually going to kill X. Of course, some characters will have easier time killing X than others (follower of gaea killing a dread is probably having a lot easier task than someone else), so the best situation would be where creating Y of slaying X is easy for a character who would have a hard time killing X and not so easy for others. That would be difficult to do, though. All in all, just try to keep creating things about as difficult as producing the same effect without the item. Arrows of slaying are easy: the kill a single monster, so the effect is quite clear. Obviously, rod of lightning bolt is a little more difficult to judge... > Just doing damage/range gains per level may be workable with the revised > monsters. In the past, that didn't work when a first level monster had 20 > hp and the level 20 monster had 2000 - there just wasn't any good way to > scale up the damage on the spell properly. But it is probably too early to > really say if that is the case. There is an infinite amount of functions to choose from. There *is* a suitable function to scale up the damage no matter how the monsters' HP scale. The question is how to figure out the correct function... > But the other issue with different versions is a mix of area vs damage. Is this really so hard? Can't we just say that a spell with maximum inflicted damage (on stationary targets) of X hit points costs f(X) mana points? That way, a bullet which hits a single target and has maximum damage X, costs f(X); a bolt which has maximum damage Y per square and envelops N squares, costs f(Y*N) etc. That would be quite fair and it would really discourage the use of area effect spells against individual targets (although that is the player's choice, not something we want to prevent). > The harder part IMO is trying to sort that out on the server side. It is > fairly straight forward to say 'a fireball of radius=3, base damage=20, > duration=5 cost X sp' and 'a fireball of radius=6, base damage=10, > duration=6 costs y SP' an balance out those SP or other values. Could we not use small/medium/large balls/bolts/cones for this? It would be less flexible, but easier for players. The damage could scale the same way, but damage/area would be less for the large versions than medium than small. Total (maximum) damage would be the same. Even if we let players specify the kind of spell they want (which is, btw, a nice touch, I think!) the above mentioned f(X) -method of figuring out the sp cost should work fine. I also think players should be able to create more powerful bullets as well, not just balls/cones/bolts. I might well imagine a situation where a player has enough mana to cast a bunch of bullets at a single target, but would prefer using a single, more powerful bullet to achieve the same result faster. Oh, this also means, that we need to discard the easiest method of handling player-adjustable area/damage: we cannot simply fix the maximum damage of a given spell (and let the player just alter the area). What we CAN do, however, is fix the function f to be the same for all spells (except perhaps the "fifth" element weaponmagic spells which almost no monster has protection against). (I really hope this "fifth element" we discussed in the summer is part of what Mark's doing now.) One further note: perhaps maximum damage in all of the above should really be "expectation value of damage" instead. It's more fair since for any large area of effect spell you expect never to actually achieve the maximum damage - too low probablility - whereas for bullets you expect to achieve it every now and then. > Traps need to be retuned for higher HP. Can't we just bind trap damage to dungeon level? If a 1st level player enters a 50th level dungeon, he is expected to die - it does not matter if it's a monster or a trap that kills him. This would solve the problem that traps are either harmless to higher level characters or immediate death to lower level ones. > What would probably be good to add to crossfire, especially for traps, is > some idea of bleeding wounds. Could this not be done with a new type of disease? -Juha ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Balance changes
> Having the action take a long time would just be perceived as lag, and
> so should be avoided if at all possible.
Brewing potions (or beer!) could easily have a time lag: it takes time for the
stuff to brew. BUT it does not mean the player should stand immobile: the
player should keep the forge hot while the steel is heating etc. Hammering
the blade into shape DOES take some time, but if we make the preparations
time consuming (without making the player immobile), the balance can be
achieved without making the hammering last too long. This has two advantages:
scripting does not make it any faster and it is realistic (except for the
hammering-takes-no-time-part, which is game-technically required so that
players don't think it's lagging or get bored): it takes some time to heat a
forge, it takes some time for the metal to heat up etc.
> Adopting a similar system to the one used by rods now to prevent
> overuse may be most appropriate.
I have never created a rod. How does this happen?
-Juha
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Re: [crossfire] combat notes
> mean there will be less npc hunter > that catches wild monster, and means ther will be wild monster in > bigworld outdoor? :D Hey! This is a wonderful idea: training centers must be filled by players. For a price, of course. Put big notices in central Scorn (and other cities): "TCI will pay 5 gold for a goblin, 10 gold for an ogre etc upon delivery to the relevant TCI installation." Something like this is already done with guilds' second floor which need a Spectre to "open", so the functionality definitely is there. All that needs to be added is a persistent repository of monsters and the "monster-for-money" -exchange facility. No need for generators and easy way to make some little money if you know how to bring about big numbers of monsters. There might even be some monster infestations here and there around bigworld and some NPCs hunting them. A totally autonomous bot might be too difficult to code, but if the infested areas do not move around (which they optimally should!), the bot could just walk from TCI to infestation, charm some goblins and walk back with them. That would add some depth to the world. -Juha ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] combat, spell & monster balance
hat expectation is based largely on exp of creature - at level 40, > killing level 5 creatures is a lot less dangerous than when you were level > 50, but the amount of exp you get, related to how much you need for next An extra 0 here? > level, is such it probably isn't worthwhile. Exactly. > Likewise, a level 5 character could attempt to take on higher level > monsters, with it being appropriately more difficult, but they also get a > greater reward. This reminds me of the problem with a team of 50th and 5th level character... How to handle the exp so that the 5th level character does not jump to 25th level in a couple of minutes? > A lot of monster speed was really slow, relative to players. There are > very few monsters that players can't easily outrun, because the speed of > them is so slow. I'd almost say that speed of most monsters should be > increased, but that changes balance a whole bunch, so having slow monsters > isn't that big a deal for the most part. I think players were too fast relative to everything else. While traveling the big worldmap would be very boring if players were too slow, I also think it is very stupid for characters to be able to outrun magic bullets, speedballs, magic missiles and such, which currently is almost trivial. Since monsters are slow, spells are slow and we want to make battles longer (or at least slower-paced), I think slowing down players is really the right way to go - like you already have done. -Juha -- --- | Juha Jäykkä, [EMAIL PROTECTED]| | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | --- signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] combat, spell & monster balance
> though the player level is higher and does more damage. A lot of this is > based on maps - most low level maps are just maps full of monsters, where > as when you start to get higher, the maps tend to be more sparse. If it > took 5 seconds to kill a kobold, that would be really annoying really fast, > but taking 5 seconds (or longer) to kill a dragonman likely wouldn't. Agreed. But, then again, it should not take too long. I remember a time the only way for my mage to kill cyclops or dragonmen was leprosy... The amount of waiting in Meganthrop*'s castle was not fun. > potions, spells, scrolls, etc to regain HP. In fact, it seems reasonable > that at higher levels, there may be monsters who %death > 100, implying > that a character can not survive a 1 on 1 battle without using magical > healing True, but this also applies to lower levels. At 1st level, any dragon is a sure death. > - One way in which i'm balancing monsters is by the speed they have - most > monsters have a speed of less than 0.25, and many are only at 0.1 -> 0.2. > Doubling a monsters speed from 0.2 to 0.4 effectively doubles how dangerous > it is (more attacks in that time period) - I expect that may be a way a lot > of the more powerful monsters get adjusted to make up for their loss of hp > (that and increasing resistance values if they are currently low) That's a nice way, as long as the monsters are not unplayably fast (without good reason - some creatures might be ok if there is lore to explain their unnatural speed). > Just sme random observations and thoughts. Likewise. =) -Juha -- --- | Juha Jäykkä, [EMAIL PROTECTED]| | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | --- signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Spell idea: Elemental skills
they wanted to keep their freedom and so they continued the quest and finally figured out a way of tapping into elemental magic without binding their spirits (although it was less powerful this way). They also figured out that the "magic element" also could be used to bring about non-magical things: the weaponmagic-spells. Hm.. perhaps we could even make that rite part of the game: every mana-caster starts as an unbound sorcerer, but later on they can do the rite if they wish. Similar to a dragon eating an ancient elemental residue. One thing that must be given a careful though here is that there must be some reason to focus on an element instead of staying a generalist. One reason would be to make *some* spells inaccessible to generalists (and even different-type elementalists?). This would be very easy if we made some spells level above 50th (if we use my idea of a sorcerer casting elemental spells at half level), but that might result in changing the type only after 50th level (which may not be bad, though: the rite may be so demanding that no low-level character can do it). Other solutions exist, too, I believe. Last thing I want to say is that I really think some generalist (i.e. capable of learning every spell, although at significantly lower level than specialists) wizard type is required. -Juha -- --- | Juha Jäykkä, [EMAIL PROTECTED]| | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | --- signature.asc Description: PGP signature ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Project: Slow down combat
l any relevant number of orcs and when the caster has leveled up the player no longer wants to even hear the mention of an orc, which is not about the toughest monster one's fireballs can kill.) High level spells need a lot of thought. Things like frost nova should definitely be very high level or quest-spells. On the other hand, destruction is nearly useless at the moment but it is currently the highest-level spell there is... strange. I think some of the very highest level spells might not be combat-related at all, but this needs a little more dynamical playing world. (Thinking of combat spells one thought appeals a lot to me: earthquake... think of what that could do in a dungeon!) That's it this time; this has been written during a couple of evenings so if it is incoherent in places, please bear with me! -Juha -- ------- | Juha Jäykkä, [EMAIL PROTECTED]| | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | --- ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Project: Slow down combat
> This gives another way to tune monsters. Now you can have monsters that > move really quickly, but perhaps don't attack very fast - things that are > hard to run from. And you could have other monsters that move slowly, but One example that comes to mind is dragon breath - at the moment dragons basically have unlimited mana and dragonbreath/icestorm/poison cloud/lightning at very quick casting times at their disposal. While the flying dragons (can they really fly in dungeons?) are supposedly quite fast and not easily outrun by PCs, they might well take some time between using their breath weapons. Of course this makes dragons easier prey than currently, which is bad I think (dragons should be tough), but that could easily be fixed in some other manner. Generally, I like Mark's idea. -Juha -- Juha Jäykkä, Application specialist non-e mail: CSC, P.O. Box 405, FI-02101 Espoo, Finland phone: 09-457 2280 ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Redo wc/ac/armor (+dodge)
> > Remove this bonus from pretty much all armor currently in the game, > > and/or perhaps add penalty for most of the armors. > Keep ac of armour. But this value will reduce dodge. So a plate mail > with ac 5 will reduce the dodge value by 5. So we'd have AC, armour (resist_physical) and dodge? Three things? Not good, imo. > Let us discuss a little bit more about a dodge skill. It would have > some advantages having dodge as a skill. This way you're able to keep > up with wc and also mages will be able to dodge without the need to > train physical combat... Agreed. Some incarnation of D&D has a skill "tumbling" which in essence is the same as "dodge" here. It can be improved by the skill point system. Perhaps we need that 10% XP pool, after all, but make it allocatable ONLY to those skills which cannot advance in any other way, perhaps? Or even make the 10% player-selectable? Or simply let dodge gain XP from missing attacks? Like 1 XP per missed damage? This needs a major change in the server: currently (I think) the player will not even know whether the monster has tried to hit and missed or not tried at all. And I think damage is computed only after hit is scored, that would need to change as well. One more thing: would dodge help evade things like magic missile? I think not, since they are spells and supposedly "guided" (missile). It might be ok to help evade comets, asteroids and other non-guided stuff (firebolt comes to mind), though (not lightnings, they are supposed to be too fast). > But wc will increase with a skill which may reach level 100, dexterity > will stay around 30. > You won't be able to dodge anything on higher levels. True, unless we ramp up the maximum stats to 100 - not likely (I'd up them to at least 40-50 range, because fireborns, for example, can easily get Pow > 30 with very little equipment - their maximum Pow with all equip should be more than that of other races.). Dodge needs to rise with levels. > > certianly races/classes may get a dodge bonus, > This will make it easier on lower levels. But at high level the problem > will still exists. This is the old problem with racial/class bonuses all again! We should decide here and now that all racial/class bonuses need to either a) not exist or b) improve with level, as fireborn ac and dragon resist_physical do at the moment. (This does no apply to such things as fireborns' resist_fire +100 or undeads' disease immunity or even fireborns' extra "fingers" - just numerical bonuses (except those that are already maximal).) > That forces mages to learn physical combat to avoid being killed on > higher levels. Or avoid melee and missiles - like in many pen&paper rpgs. Though it is sometimes pretty difficult in CF. > Sounds reasonable. But than we need to increase the enchanting level. > A maximum armour enchanting up to +4 won't have such a big impact than > ac +4. One ac point is worth a 5% chance (due to the d20). True. > And will it take effect on all resistances or just physical? Why would it? Just AC is being altered and it never affected any other resistances anyway. BUT I'd alter the alchemy/jewellery/etc as per one of my earlier posts and that would enable you to alter the other resistances of items as well. Perhaps it might also be nice to limit the total sum of bonuses an item can give by something else than jeweller/etc level as well: iron rings might be able to give less bonuses than mithril rings? > Do we want to stay with the d20 based system? It allows us just 5% > steps. We don't need to implement pen & paper systems. I can only see one problem with 5% steps: it means 5% of the attacks hit no matter what. This might be considered unrealisticly high. But since beings with AC 100 are pretty tough anyway, they'd probably have so good resist_physical as well that those who should not realistically be able to hit them will not do any damage even when they hit. -Juha -- --- | Juha Jäykkä, [EMAIL PROTECTED]| | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | --- signature.asc Description: PGP signature ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Priority feature list
> I agree that in principle, most of the classes and races should be > about equal in power/balance. A certain race/class shouldn't always be > the best to play. And in broad terms, fighters and spell casters should > be about equal. Agreed and an Nth level fighter should be better in melee than an Nth sorcerer - if we keep the class distinctions. If not, Nth level member of warrior's guild should be better in melee than Nth level member of wizards' guild. One question, though: do we need the overall level at all? We could bind HP, dragon abilities etc to the relevant skill level or, in case of dragon abilities and such that are not related to any skill, to the highest skill level. (If highest skill level is pyromancy when dragon eats the ancient elemental residue, we track pyro as long as it is highest. If clawing exceeds it, we switch to trackin clawing, but do NOT forget how many levels the dragon had already gained in pyro.) I especially like the idea that the accuracy of melee and missile weapons would increase with the relevant skill. Perhaps AC could also increase (and really, we should change this to "higher better"; the lower better system is a D&D relic), when "evading attacks" skill improves? > However, I don't think all races/classes have to be equal. I know in > the past, certain races were made available, but made available as > 'challenge' classes, for lack of better term For those players who > have played a lot, you can now play this other race for a different > experience, as well as something a bit more challenging. Agreed here as well. The "balance" I was referring to, is just that there should be some point in playing all races/classes. If it's harder in the beginning, it should be more rewarding in the end. For example, fireborns are immune to fire, very magical, but fear cold and are physically weak - this is about what the game tells in character selection phase. I think this should mean that fireborns make better spell casters than any race which is not "very magical", but on the other hand they should never be able to carry as much loot as a troll. If, furthermore, we want to keep some races more challenging, like fireborns really are, that's ok, as long as there is some in-game reward for it as well (like dragon immunities or fireborns being the best spellcasters possible). Hard to play means you must be more careful, think more beforehand and so on, but I do not think just thinking and being careful are goals for our players, the in-game rewards are. -Juha -- --- | Juha Jäykkä, [EMAIL PROTECTED]| | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | --- signature.asc Description: PGP signature ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] xp gaining
> IMO, adding new regions when characters reach the cap is completely > unrealistic, so I dismiss it as an option. Sure, it sounds great, and > could happen, but past experience shows it won't happen. Making a Ok, you're more experienced on that, I trust your judgement. How about the kingdom and politics side? Could that be implemented? Or researching new spells or items? > the other problem with this, and the other idea of limiting exp gain > based on overall level, is that it really means you need balance your > skill usage as you advance your character. It does not have to be overall level, it could equally well be the highest skill level as well. Or, when killing monsters, it could even be the skill you use to kill it (although then we again will have high level characters in low level maps when they start a new skill). > I personally dislike games that force some style of playing. I'd > dislike crossfire if I say 'I must improve my evocation skill right > now, because if I don't, I won't ever be able to get very good at it'. That's true, it's not very nice. But "if I do not improve my evocation now, improving it later will be more difficult" is ok with me. It's like growing older: it's easier to learn new things when you're young and becomes harder with age. (At least that's the common belief, I do not know if it's true.) > Whenever a character gains exp through any method, some portion (<10%) > goes into a reserved pool - these exp don't go into any specific skill, > but do count for overall level. That might be a good solution. Anyone any objections or other thoughts on this? > And maybe the game should be that way - really focus on just a couple > skills per character. But that really has to be clearly documented - I I think it should. It should not enforce it, but it should make it much more difficult to be exceptionally good at very many skills. This fosters both class distictivity and multiplayer adventuring. > basically messed up and I should start a new one. I much prefer games > that are forgiving - maybe you didn't make ideal choices, but what you > did before doesn't have a huge impact now. Agreed. -Juha -- --- | Juha Jäykkä, [EMAIL PROTECTED]| | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | --- signature.asc Description: PGP signature ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Priority feature list
;s an artificial limitation into what a character can do in a world. I dislike those. I even dislike the fact that I cannot simply break any wall I choose (but realise that it is something that can not be changed without huge amounts of work). Segregating players into different areas is something that is not necessary in my opinion. I believe there are other ways to prevent abuse as well. > Having regions for the same level will increase the fun for the players. > I saw so much newbies unable to find suitable dungeons. Some got their That's a totally different thing. It would be difficult to find dungeons even with level-based segregation if there are not enough clues around. If there are enough clues around, there should in no case be any difficulty. Warnings when entering a too difficult dungeon, otoh, would be nice to have for players how, for example, get lost or simply want to try to take it to the limit. > fun spoiled by high level characters boosting them ten or more levels by > a short party at a high level map. I think xp sharing in a party is > very bad and should be disabled. Two things here: 1) joining a party is voluntary, so if someone voluntarily spoils his game, why should we care? 2) sharing xp in a party is paramount, especially if we move towards "healers stand back and cast cure wounds and do not kill monsters" -type of play. Xp sharing can be tuned, however. It would be, for example, be possible to not give any xp to party members who are 10 levels lower than the guy killing the monster is. Or, we could figure out other ways to prevent people from spoiling their gameplay. > And did you never saw a character above level 100 harvesting in raffle1? Raffle1 is generally accepted to be a map that should not exist. Not with all those generators around. -Juha -- --- | Juha Jäykkä, [EMAIL PROTECTED]| | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | --- signature.asc Description: PGP signature ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] xp gaining (was: Priority feature list)
-modification function look like. We can easily make the modification dependant upon Heaviside(monster_level-character_level), where Heaviside is the Heaviside unit step function. Or anything like that. If the problem is in altering xp gained from monster, altering the function does not solve it. I do not personally see from Mark's explanation, what the problem really is. It looks like it was simply implemented suboptimally. > Fix that. Don't make high level items equipable for low level > characters. Apart from rods, they aren't: they have item power specifically to prevent low lever characters from using high level stuff. The item powers are quite strange for some items, though. > > Also, the crossfire exp table is almost an exponential system, where > > as AD&Dv3 is more linear (the exp needed for level 20 is 10 times that > > of level 2). So adding this extra adjustment really just amounts to > > extra penalty/bonus. > Making level 100 as hard to reach as level 115 is right now, won't make > level 101 characters more likely even if the xp table is more linear. I do not think Mark was referring to level caps here. What he said is true: D&D 3rd ed has (almost? I'd need to get up, go to bookshelf and check...) linear xp tables, crossfire does not. Crossfire has ~exponential xp tables. Though I am at a loss at to how he reached the conclusion that is is a penalty/bonus. If all the current monsters are given the "correct" level and killing the monsters at "right" (i.e. when you are at the same level as the monster) level gives you the listed XP, there is absolutely NO difference from the current situation UNLESS you kill too easy monsters, which would get penalised (which was the whole point). Linearity vs. exponentiality has nothing to do with it. The only thing that has is the modification-function, which must give listed XP when killing monsters at proper level AND monster XP(level)-function must follow the same formula as player XP(level)-function. (Unless we want to make it so that reaching level N from N-1 needs more kills than N-1 from N-2 etc, but even that has nothing to do with penalising for killing too easy monsters.). > But rebalance the gaps, make it more linear. Actually, the form of the XP(level) function is totally irrelevant. It may even be logarithmic. The only thing that matters is that what you DO (kill monsters, do alchemy, read scrolls, use wands etc) gives you XP according to the same function. This is, of course, provided there are difficulty levels in what you do: I think woodsman gives the same amount of XP for all food, a reflection of the fact that it is equally easy to identify an orc chop as a dragon steak, whereas brewing a very complex potion (level 10 potion, say) is harder than brewing a simple (level 1) potion, so the former should give such an amount of XP that it advances you equally towards 11th level as the simple potion advances you towards 2nd level. If we always follow the method of "completing a task that has difficulty level N gives M% of the XP needed to advance from level N to N+1", it never matters what the XP(level) function looks like. Keeping the function exponential, however, is intuitive. It is easy to think that advancing from 10th to 11th level needs 10 times the xp of advancing from 1st to 2nd (or any such). If the function is very complicated, figuring out the correct amount of xp becomes a pita. Making the function linear, on the other hand, makes things very easy: every potion would just give the exact same amount of xp; same for the monsters. What you need to think about now, is the level. Is this monster worth M% of the difference between 10th and 11th levels or 11th and 12th? Since there are only ~100 levels to choose from, but exponential xp tables give you easily tens or hundreds of millions of xp values to choose from, I'd say exponential table is easier - and safer when introducing new things (the choice of correct level has less impact than in linear system). > > > No, it's not. But don't make monsters getting a higher level than > > > the maximum of the xp table. > > Sure we should. High level (150) monsters you can only kill with 4 > > 100+ level players. > No, we shouldn't. ;) Err... I do not quite agree here. It is a very intriguing idea to have monsters that are simply too powerful for (practically) any character to kill. Whether the xp table goes up to the level of the monster is irrelevant, though. What does it matter if there is 100 lines instead of 150 in the exp_table file? (I know it's not organised one per line, but that's easier to write.) It can always be extended any way the server admin sees fit. And if someone creates a 110th level region in the world, even the offi
Re: [crossfire] Priority feature list
ation of two rings and an amulet from the spell casting point of view. Not to mention there are weapons and armour with spell casting bonuses as well (you left torso, hands and weapon slots free in your example; I assume Idaten boots). Also, I think "of Magi" is an artefact modifier which can apply to pretty much any item, at least I think it can apply to armours (I have a character with a crown of magi - I'm not sure if its random or unique item, cannot recall). > "reorganizing the entire world" thread: > http://mailman.metalforge.org/pipermail/crossfire/2007-June/011532.html I have read that and I dislike the idea of segregating players of different levels. Much better would be warning signs immediately after entering a dungeon - or the "magic mouth" -kind of warning someone suggested: "You get the feeling this dungeon is extremely dangerous/very easy". Of course, high level players repeatedly cleansing low-level dungeons for various reasons is a problem. Testground for new spells might help that, though. (I admit having gone out to newbie tower to test some new stuff and spells.) > Don't make CF2 compatibel with CF1.x and everybody has to start with > level 1. This is necessary after big changes in the system. Ok. No argument here. > I'm still a friend of having quests only solvable once for each > character. No rerun possible. How often will King Arthurs Excalibur be > stolen by the same crowd? How about a party solving a quest? Should each character who participated be prevented from doing it again or only the one who "receives" the quest and the reward? This sounds like a nice idea, but I am also afraid it means that soon some characters will have nothing else except the random hack-and-slash dungeons left. > But don't mix up the regions. So you don't have to care about rebalance > the system again, because you have well balanced lower level regions. > If player with powerful items from high level regions are able to > harvest on lower level regions the balance is gone... That should be pointless. If you can go kill dragons with impunity and get 10 gold from each one's hoard, there is no point harvesting the few dozen silver you get from newbie tower. Also, gearing towards D&D 3rd edition -type XP system might help. In the mentioned system, a 20th level fighter killing a kobold gets no XP what so ever. Thus you can't even level up by map camping in newbie tower (waiting for the generators to spawn you a million orcs). > > IMO, pretty much every generator could be removed from the game and > Yes, or make them run out of monsters. And hidden. Or how do you > explain a "monster generator" in the real world? ;-) Aah, that would be a nice solution! It would fit nicely in a "real" game world even. Ok, now the summary - if anyone bothered reading this far... =) Numbering is as in original post. And I will try to be brief, not mention any specifics and only write what I feel has been agreed upon by all posters. 1) Quest rewards must be rebalanced to be usable to all characters solving the quests. 2) Races must be rebalanced and allowed race-specific items (or at least feature-specific, like "human(like) finger" or "human(like) torso"). Class balancing is also warranted, but there has also been a proposition to scrap classes as they now exist alltogether. Finally, (magically adjusted) max stat limits should be increased and maximum magical bonuses for items specified. (Just got an idea: what if magic bonuses from items stacked up non-linearly like resistances do? That would make it a lot harder to get to maximum?) 3) Maximum level should stay. Perhaps even be lowered, but made much harder to reach in any case. 4) This was not commented much, so I take it everyone agrees that all spell casting "fields" (i.e. all separate deities, evocation, pyromancy, summoning and sorcery) should have equally powerful "best" spells. Preferably even equally powerful "best" spell for each spell level (or few levels); i.e. not just have the ultimate most powerful spells equally powerful, but the best first level spells as well and 10th and 20th and so on. No need to have them equal at every single level, but every few. Preferably when the previous best spell has become almost useless against monsters the character is supposed to be fighting. I.e. if spark shower is the best sorcery spell at 1st level and since is useless against 10th level monsters, at 10th level there should be another spell which should equal whatever other spell "fields" have acquired by 10th level. 5) Spells need to become more useful compared to running into monsters. No definite solution was found for this yet. 6) This was not in my original list. This is the alchemy/jewellery/etc change I propos
Re: [crossfire] Priority feature list
> I think the issue is more to reduce weapon speed, and less so actual > speed. High level characters have weapon speed 5+ - that really isn't Ah, what I meant was to reduce damage dealt per unit of *real* time, so this is exactly the situation you described: changing weapon speed by *A and tick length by /A gives no change in damage dealt per unit of real time. The problem was "dying before able to react" and that refers to real time since it is the player who needs to react, not the character. Thus reducing weapon speed would be an excellent solution. That would immediately mean also that spells become relatively more effective. There may even be no need to alter them at all (at least not from "they are useless because sword/karate is so much faster" -perspective). > think charactes can get speed 2.0+ without a huge amount of difficulty, > and that causes problems. Except in rare circumstances, speeds above > 1.0 (which means 1 move/tick) shouldn't really be allowed. Well, outrunning magic missiles, speedballs etc is not difficult, but I think it should be, so I agree: max speed down (or spell speed up). > Hopping between exits is a problem - it could be changed so that > monsters follow the players, but there will always be cases where even > that isn't foolproof (monster too big to fit in previous map). More > use of tiled maps would sort of fix this problem, but at some point, > map hopping can be seen as a tactic (at higher levels, things like word > of recall and town portal could effectively allow the same thing, and I > think most people would agree that monsters shouldn't be able to follow I'd prefer tiling since that would be "natural" - exits as they currently work are more or less teleporters. This brings with it a myriad of game world -questions: why are there so many teleporters around? Who created them? Why? Etc. More later, Jürgen made a nice summary - I'll reply to that. -Juha -- --- | Juha Jäykkä, [EMAIL PROTECTED]| | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | --- signature.asc Description: PGP signature ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Priority feature list
> > First, most quest-reward and artefact items are weapons. This makes > Scripting, scripting. Of course need to design quests for that > particular reward :) Cannot we alter some existing ones as a first aid? Inventing dozens of new quests is quite a big task. > There will always be a maximum level. It can be 112, it can be 200, it > can be 100. But there will always be a maximum :) Using arbitrary precision arithmetic library (like GNU MP) makes that limit limited only by the amount of digits the server can store in its virtual memory - which will probably be growing faster than any character gains levels, so in practice there would be no limit. Even a less radical method of using 64- or 128-bit integers to represent experience, I think we could increase the "bitness" of the experience-variable faster than anyone can consume the bits. Anyway, this is not what I was after. I was after the fact that there is a hard-coded value "MAX_LEVEL" (or MAX_64BIT_INTEGER, for that matter) used in the code. Is *this* doable? In that case increasing the maximum level would be very easy, no matter how it is represented. > My opinion: let's keep things as they are for level, but rebalance how > you gain experience, maybe. That's otherwise ok, but what about old characters at 110th level? At the least we'd need to give them some new levels to achieve. Something needs to be done about generators, however. It is currently too easy to sit around, letting a generator spawn a map full of monsters, kill them but not the generator and repeat until 110th level. This is particularly easy in Hell, where the monsters give zillion XP, there is a grate behind which to recuperate and numerous generators spawning more and more cannon fodder. > > Fourth, the spell system needs rebalancing. First, meteor swarm and > That's part of the whole game balance. Isn't it all? =) I thought we were discussing specific points of concern with regards to whole game balance. > My opinion is to totally rebalance combat / spells / speed. Reduce > speed, add more "strategic" elements to the game. Make it so you can > actually use rune/trap writing to lure monsters, and so on. That's fine. It is also huge task... sounds like a challenge, I'm on! BTW, runes are essentially single-shot devices, so they might well be significantly more powerful than currently (or, rather, more powerful *compared to other spells* than currently). Traps are more difficult because they can contain arbitrary spells. But what works for traps works for runes as well - and runes still need more power imho. -Juha -- --- | Juha Jäykkä, [EMAIL PROTECTED]| | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | --- signature.asc Description: PGP signature ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Priority feature list
> There has been some discussion on speed/combat balance (basically: > reduce speed, so combats take some more time, and enable players to > actually flee before getting killed easily), though it isn't on the > page. Could this be added to the list, or is it something not everyone > agrees on? I tend to disagree. Someone pointed out that reducing speed tends to turn the game from a "real-time" one to a turn based one, which I dislike. Another way of achieving the same result is to reduce the *damage* dealt by . That way, monsters and players could still move "real-time"ish, but you could still escape. By the way, I have rarely encountered a situation I was not able to flee from. Almost all places can even be solved by simply jumping back and forth from the map (using normal exits, no spells) to gradually wear down the opponent(s). Some exceptions come to mind, but only when entering the map for the first time ever (i.e. when I do not know how to escape). The sole exception to this is Wist's Tower (or is it Twis?) in Lake Country, where, after walking all the way to the top and killing the two Balrogs, you can choose to meet a few big_wizards... That's a place I am not able to escape (by a not-high-enough character) from even if I know the map - you need a key from one of the wizards to exit the map (being entered through a trap door you cannot use that way to escape). Word of recall works there, but the delay is too much for almost any character - the wizards kill you before you are recalled. -Juha -- --- | Juha Jäykkä, [EMAIL PROTECTED]| | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | --- signature.asc Description: PGP signature ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
Re: [crossfire] Priority feature list
tive to simply karate chop or weapon slash everything you bump into. This ought to change. At the moment, if I had to advise someone in creating a new character, I'd probably suggest troll figther or such. Easiest to stay alive at low levels and at high levels it makes no difference - everyone just runs into monsters anyway. There probably are other things not mentioned on the wiki as well, but I don't recall any at the moment. [1] It's easy to increase mana regen bonus with good weapons, arnour etc and while there are rings and amulets for fireborns to increase theirs, it very quickly occurs that those who can use good armour and weapons, surpass fireborns' mana regeneration ability. While the bonus is still there, it is more than balanced by the no weapons and no armour hindrance. Same goes to most stat scores with respect to anyone who cannot use weapons or armour. -Juha -- --- | Juha Jäykkä, [EMAIL PROTECTED]| | home: http://www.utu.fi/~juolja/ | --- signature.asc Description: PGP signature ___ crossfire mailing list crossfire@metalforge.org http://mailman.metalforge.org/mailman/listinfo/crossfire
