Re: Scale

[woodruff@cadence.com (Ken Woodruff)]

> From crossfire-request@ifi.uio.no Thu Mar 30 02:18:26 1995
> From: Mark Wedel <master@rahul.net>
> Date: Wed, 29 Mar 1995 22:35:57 -0800
> To: thomas@chaupher.gsfc.nasa.gov, woodruff
> Subject: Re:  CF0.91.8??/lighting code ideas

Mark writes: 
>  Scale:  This is true.  The problem is what is a decent solution?
> Obviously, it should take much longer to walk between towns than shops.
> But being multiplayer, you can hardly expect the player to spend 2 hours
> to wander between the towns, with him moving once a minute.

I agree that it would be annoying for it to take a lot of real time to travel between
towns, and I don't reccommend changing "screen" movement speeds (i.e. squares
per second) on the different maps.  I do think that over time we could
significantly enhance the atmosphere of the game by tying other pieces of
game-play to the map scale, the two examples I can think of off the top of
my head are the area spells effect, and lighting, although I think for the
immediate future it would be best to assume all outdoor maps are always fully lit.
If we want some small reflection of the differences from traveling from city to
city versus room to room we could base food consumption on the map scale--you'll
need to stock up if you're planning to travel across the continent on foot.  
 
> Scale in crossfire certainly isn't realistic.  I just have not yet seen
> a good way to handle it.

I think adding a scale attribute to maps is a good start--once it's there
code can start to make use of it.  I can envision eventually adding modes
of transportation to the game that affect a players speed at different
scales, for example if a player owns a horse she could use it to move
more quickly on the world map than someone on foot but would have no
benefit inside a building (because she'd have to leave the horse outside.)
Magic carpets, stagecoaches, boats (for going up rivers) could all be included
for variety.

--Ken

+------------------------+-------------------------------------+
| Ken Woodruff           | "In every jumbled pile of person    |
| woodruff@cadence.com   |  there's a thinking part that       |
+------------------------+  wonders what the part that isn't   |
| Disclaimer: What tote  |  thinking isn't thinking of."       |
| bag full of $20 bills? |          --They Might Be Giants     |
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