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More Thoughts.




 A few thigns I have though of.

 Alchemy spell (Got it from Talisman game actually).  Basically, you cast
this spell, and anything in the area is turned to gold.  This means
that you don't have to haul 500 lbs of stuff back to town with you to
sell it.

 IT could either work by how much the item weights (100 kg thing turns
into more gold than 5 kg thing, for example), or by actual value of
the item.

 The later seems better, because otherwise, you alchemey all the light
(heavy) stuff, and carry the light stuff to town. 

 Obviously, the amount of gold you get should be a little less than you
could get for selling it in town (some sacrifice.)  Or perhaps each item
has a chance of not be turned into gold, but instead vanishing (Which
means alcheming a 3,000 gp item could be risk, because it might
just disappear.)

 Scale: Perhaps different scale for different maps.  For example, must
dungeons and towns would be scale 1 (no change.)  However, outdoors (outside
of towns), the scale might be something different.  Then, when you meet
something, the game loads an encounter map for that terrain, and
you are placed on it (like (at least) some of the Ultimas did.)  As such
one monster image on the outside map may actually be half a dozen.
Likewise, if the party wishes, they can be grouped into one image
to move with.

 Ooutside maps:  Having them be the same side (I know, boo hiss), and
have automatic overlapping would be need.  For example, outside
maps are 24x24 (lets say).  AS you get near the edge of one, it loads
the adjacant map, and you can travel onto it just by stepping
on over there (if you are at 5,0 and move north, you then are
at 5,23 on the other map.)  Only maps that want to be part of
the tiling need to be so constricted.  Also, some additional information
would need to be added to the map file (something like north_map: (map1)
east_map: (map2), west_map: none, ...)  Where these
represent what map it borders along that edge.

 Also, with invisible tiling, require sized maps are not quite so bad, as
you can just glue several small maps together to make your bigger map.
IF you don't need the space of the large map, you could just add forest
to the areas you don't need or whatever.

 Only disadvantge would be that generates on separate maps probably would
not be active (like the would be on 1 large map.)  Also, you are at
a map corner, that means that 3 more maps would need to be loaded, taking
some memory.

 Multiplayer & single player:  Unfortunately, there are some great
differences in this.  For example, if you have a 2 wide corrider, it
is much easier to advance and kill things so nothing gets behind you
compared to if you are a single person.  There is no solution
to this problem that I see of, save separate versions, which brings
me two:

 I've thought about forking off and starting a single player versions
(it would be more of an ultima clone.)  I would probably try and
implement many of the ideas above.)

 One of the things that first got me interested in crossfire was I was
interested in writing an ultima type clone.  I heard about crossfire,
got it, and saw taht it had a lot of the ideas I was thinking about
(users being add to add maps, plus graphical interface...)  I personally
think Crossfire is a great game, and will become greater.  However,
each person has various ideas of how things should be, and there are
enough major difference between what I envisioned for my game and
what crossfire is and where it is heading.  Here are some key 
differences between games:

 Mine would strictly be single user.
 Mine would have a party of adventureres controlled by 1 person.
 Monster workings would probably be different (have random, but probably
	no generators.)
 Some items would be different.

 I think there were some others, but its been a long day for me.

 I really don't know why I am saying this here.  Maybe to get some
thoughts?  Do people think that crossfire can work equally well as both
multiplayer and single user games?

 I think some of this also comes down to each person having differing
views of how things should work. (The group I play AD&D with has
been togethere for quite a while, and various people DM from time to
time.  Yet each person has their own set of unique rules on
various portions.)

 Also, jsut to be clear, this is in no way a complaint against
Crossfire or its developers.  I think it is a great game, and will continue
to do so probably no matter what happens.  I have, in fact, submitted
several improvements and bug fixes, and will continue to do so.  However,
at times, I wonder if there is not space in the world for 2 such games.

 I also think the developers of the game are doing a great job also.

   Mark Wedel
master@cats.ucsc.edu