Re: remarks on implementation of various skill proposals

[Peter Mardahl <peterm@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU>]

In message <9506230309.AA16426@griffle.astro.psu.edu>, "Brian Thomas" writes:
>
>	Well. How about exp for healing monsters? Missonary work :)

Also abusable, i assume this was a joke though.

>>   About the only viable means of awarding exp in the game is via kills of
>> monsters.  (A trap is just another kind of 'monster', really.)  Alternately,

>	I strongly disagree. With proper forthought using each of the skills 
>could be a source for experience. For example.. lockpicking, *any* of the 
>idenification skills, etc. would be hard to abuse. Let's face it though, 

These are in the category I mentioned.  I generalized 'monster' and 'kill'
to include one-time things like disarming traps, picking locks, doing first
identifications, etc.  I just didn't mention them all by name.

>some one can *already* abuse the current system by bracing their character

That's true.  But you won't gain exp indefinitely.  After you reach a certain
level, you will get no exp. from killing easy monsters.  No exp at all.

>way. A little forthought with the skills would be what is needed. BTW, I
>see no reason not to allow spellcasters some reasonable amount of exp for 
>successfull casting. 

Neither do I have a problem with that.  I'd award it based on dungeon
level and spell level, and sp.  After all, if they cast a light spell successfully,
it counts as practice and should go to mage experience.  And if they're
lame enough to stand around doing light spells all the time, well, they'll
find lots of other ways to cheat too.

>	I am currently implementing the skills. Some skills (2-4) do increase
>in effect with level, but you are basically correct. I had decided to leave 
>the issue of experience effecting (and being gain though the use of) skills
>for the future. I guess the future is here now :)

At some point, will you please describe a bit to me about how skills are
implemented?  I'd rather not hack code to find out.  Save your mail as a document
for posterity.....

>>	1)  there CAN be so many skills that it becomes a mental burden for the
>>		player

>	Are you being serious here? I note that there are currently about
>130 spells in CF; do you think that this is a "mental burden"? If it were,

I think it would become a mental burden if you had a different skill level
in each spell.

>would you advocate removing some of these spells?!? I rather think lots of
>spells adds color to the game. There can never be too many. Ditto for 
>skills. Only poorly designed skills (or spells for that matter) should ever
>be 'removed' from the game.  

There are some spells in that category, but fortunately, I think most
of them are turned off already.

>>  Losing your inventory could destroy your skills
>
>	How often does a player's character loose their inventory??? I 
>have never had this happen. 

Oh.  Maybe not in the versions you've worked on, but certain earlier
versions really had trouble with this.  Happened all the time, in fact.

>	Yes, that is how it is done now. In monsters this is'nt a problem,
>and really isnt much problem for most players either. What could be 
>done is that the object structure could have a pointer to 'next_skill' and
>the player structure could point to the 'first_skill' ie 
>
>	first skill in list		op->contr->first_skill
>	second skill			op->contr->first_skill->next_skill
>	etc.

This becomes an O(n) search on the number of skills.  With many skills,
this could get really cumbersome a search to do if it's done a lot.

>>   GUI complexity of displaying what skills are around.
>
>	I don't follow you here. Skills as impletmented are either visible 'tools'
>(like lockpicks) which allow the use of skills or are invisible. The 'tools' 
>very naturally should be in the inventory window, whereas the inherent 'player'
>skills are not visible. A command 'skills' currently lists all available skills.
>Were we to have each skill having exp, the 'tools' implementation would have to 
>be rethought.  

You're not contemplating turning all spells into skills?
This would saturate any list far beyond acceptable levels.
Imagine 200 skills or so....

Maybe a couple of types of skills?
Experience skills and
misc. skills and spell skills?

Or leave spells as they are and have their use controlled by
cleric_skill and magic_skill?

Also, what should be done in cases where the misc. skills should
give experience in a general skill by their use?  (Use of lock-pick-skill
to thief-skill exp)

In any case I have no problem with implementing experience-skills
as objects.  I think experience-skills should be very limited in
number however, and the greater number of misc. skills should funnel
exp into the experience-skills (as appropriate) when used.


I'm not willing to assume leadership of the experience-skills-as-objects.
Are you (Brian Thomas) willing?  I can give some help, but most of the
work is going to have to be by you.

How about this as a direction?

Initally, 4 basic experience skills.  More can be added later, I guess,
as the game evolves.  Hopefully the list will always be very short.
These would have a level and a #experience.

Some misc. skills which, when used, give exp. to one of the exp. skills.

Other misc. skills which are so weird that they don't need to be associated
with anything else, and don't need a #experience.


PeterM