Re: crossfire

[Kjetil Torgrim Homme <kjetilho>]

Robert Forsman <thoth@reef.cis.ufl.edu> raises some topics I think you
others on the crossfire list are interested in. I quote his message in
its entirety, I hope you don't mind :) (Robert Forsman is now on the
list)

Below, I mostly answer in my own capacity as a player of crossfire,
but in some places I try and describe what I think Frank thinks about
that subject in his absence.

> I recently grabbed crossfire and tried it out.  I mostly died.  I
> got help from another player and I still mostly died.  Stick me on the
> list.
> 
> It's kinda hard to judge crossfire because I don't know what sort of
> game it's trying to be.
> 
> In my opinion, the generators (as implemented) are a bad idea.  In
> gauntlet, you could stand off firing missiles forever and the passages
> were often tight enough that three people could cover the whole thing.
> In crossfire, you do NOT have an infinite supply of bullets.  You
> therefore usually have to wade in suffering major damage (especially
> as a new character) and destroy the generator, getting surrounded and
> mangled in the process.

The arrows are more comparable to Gauntlet's bullets, but you still
haven't an infinite supply. It takes time to balance a game, it's very
easy to make it too easy or too difficult. I think our main problem
right now is that there are too few newbie levels, but that should be
easily remedied by you lot :)

> A specific instance of generators gone out of hand is the mice in
> the old house.  I found at least two generators and can often manage
> to destroy one, but while I was, the rest of the place filled up with
> mice and I couldn't get out.
> 
> This is not dissimilar to a flea infestation in moria, but in moria,
> you can abandon the level and never have to deal with them again.  In
> crossfire I could not enter the old house the rest of the game without
> getting instantly destroyed.

The mice in the old house are quite possible to get rid of if you have
say 14 hp, a sword, ac 5 and speed 1.0. I'm not saying it's easy, you
need to be thorough and watch your hp :)

> Generators could have an "optimum" number of monsters they can
> support and when the number exceeds this amount, some of them die
> randomly (slowly).  This way dungeons grown out of hand will
> eventually die down to a reasonable level.  It might necessitate a
> parent pointer in most objects, or a child list in generators.

We've discussed a very similar idea - a generator will not generate
more than <n> monsters. I don't think Frank is unwilling to put that
in.

> In nethack, you don't usually get swamped in evil monsters that
> often.  Generators were designed in to Gauntlet.  They don't play well
> unless you have infinite stand-off capability Until this problem is
> fixed, the game is unplayable.

In Crossfire you have infinite run-away capability instead, unless you
do a mistake :)

> Firechests are a real pain to destroy.  We once worked on one for
> about 3 or 4 minutes.

Due to a bug, firechests aren't that hard - the fireballs thrown in
your direction will not explode, so just keep hacking away at it until
it is dead. Of course, this is one area where some tuning may have to
be done. If they are too difficult, either raise the points awarded or
lower its hit points.

> There could also be a key that means attack a square, but don't move
> in (useful for holding a key position).

This would be useful (especially for opening doors :). On which keys
do suggest to put it?

> Also, the window seemed a bit small.  You may have a small display,
> but I usually operate on 1280x1024 or 1152x900 displays.  The bitmaps
> could be a little larger.

It's currently 988x482. I think that's rather large already! :) I
think I once heard Frank say that it won't get wider than 1024 pixels.
(Many of our terminals are 1024x768, so there 8) Height could be
changed if you have a better reason than that it "seems a bit small".

There are two reasons for not changing the size of the bitmaps:
 - we would have to draw new bitmaps
 - the larger the bitmap, the more difficult/the more effort it is to
   make it look good.

If you were talking about how much you can see of your surroundings, I
don't think that will increase, simply because you aren't supposed to
look so far. However, Frank has started talking about adding light,
but he hasn't found any good algorithms for the spreading of it.
Please feel free to help out with this! Anyway, with light sources,
perhaps the size of that window could be bigger, but that's my
opinion.

> And, why settle for bitmaps.  Use pixmaps!  There is a pixmap editor
> for R5 in the contrib directory.  I've also written a paint program
> (xscribble), but it wouldn't be as well-tailored to icon generation as
> the pixmap editor.

Crossfire is currently using a font, and a font must be monochrome.
Monochrome support is definetely going to stay, so we would have to
draw and keep one monochrome image used for the font, and one pixmap.
Every pixmap would need to be in a separate file, too, leading to lots
of small files chewing up disc space. The way it is now, you can
delete all the bitmaps after you've assembled the font.  This is good
for those not taking part in the development of the game.

Using a font is fast: You can draw a whole line at once in monochrome,
ie. minimum protocol overhead. When you draw one character, you send
one byte, when you send a monochrome pixmap, you send 72 bytes, when
you send a 16 colour pixmap, you send 288 bytes (plus overheads). Do
we want to make resource hogs?

> Also, there are several easily accessible dungeons that would waste
> a new character (for example, the old house).  I don't know if you
> guys have ever played the adventure games on the nintendo, but there's
> usually a clear message about places you can and can not handle or
> travel in.  A player that wanders in to these regions gets ALMOST
> dead, and quickly retreats.  Relatively tough monsters appear
> infrequently in the lower levels so that the player can realize when
> he's ready to graduate to a different section.  Tough dungeons are
> nestled in tough areas.

This is not inherent in Crossfire, it's the level designer's
responsibility to playtest their levels carefully. I do however object
to classify the old house as one of those levels: When you go in, you
have all the time you need to get out again. I've seen levels where
you are surrounded by ghosts when you enter - now that's not a good
thing even in a tough area.

> Equipment is hard to come by (especially after you've been cleaning
> out a few dungeons and die).  The static object thing just isn't good
> enough.
> 
> There needs to be a way to have random monster encounters.  I can
> agree with certain things being static, but that should only be major
> encounters or artifacts.  Most mundane monsters should be appearing
> fairly frequently and randomly.  Imagine an orc camp that has a number
> of orcs running around in it and these orcs have random objects (like
> swords, clubs, food).  Then there's an orc chieftan with his
> bodyguards who are static and some static treasure.

A quick hack to fix this is indestructable generators. It is possible
to put out single monsters with the editor (with the exception of the
giant and the dragon, because they're kind of special :)

> Note that the terms artifact and mundane are relative.  A +1 sword
> is an artifact at a low level, but mundane inside the Creepy Castle of
> Gruesome Death.  An Ogre is an artifact in an orc camp, but mundane in
> the City of Dragons.

We need a better level editor. See the next mail about this.

> Also, the timing is a hateful problem.  I'm not sure there's a
> decent solution to the multi-player realtime problem.  Games like
> nettrek work because combat is fairly slow and there aren't many
> opponents.  Nethack works by not being realtime, so that the player
> can handle several opponents at once by thinking things out.  Ditto
> with Moria.

It sounds like you think there is a problem with Crossfire's handling
of this. Crossfire assumes that everyone is active when they are in.
You can never turn away for long for fear of dying of hunger. A pause
button could be added, but such a feature is easily misused. But then
again, so are savefiles in Moria and Nethack, or even DM mode in
Crossfire.


Kjetil T.