Re: CF: Experiments

[Mark Wedel <mwedel@scruznet.com>]

David Andrew Michael Noelle wrote:
> 
>     I've been experimenting with some random changes and new ideas.  Some of
> them appear to work well.  If there's a (positive) consensus, I'll patch
> them into the CVS tree.
>     Feel free to agree with some parts and argue with others.  Just let me
> know what you think.

 Note that the CVS tree is not a place for experimentation.  If you are going to
check something in, you should be pretty sure it works properly (this applies to
all cvs checkins)

> 
> - overgeneration
> 
>     If your hit points or spell points are high enough, and you have enough
> +regeneration or +magic items, you can max out your hp/sp regeneration at
> one point per tick.  This probably also happens with grace, but I haven't
> seen it yet.  For high level characters, this can be pretty annoying.  For
> example, a wizard with 500 maxsp regenerates mana just as fast with magic +4
> as with magic +14.

 I personally don't see a problem with a max regen rate.  that magic +14 is
still likely to help if you are wearing heavy armor.

 I don't really see it as a big issue either way, but having some max regen rate
may be good just to keep some reasonable play balance.


>     I made Glowing Crystals mergable such that a group of _n_ crystals, each
> with _maxsp_ maximum capacity, has an effective maximum of _n_ * _maxsp_.
> So a set of eight Glowing Crystals can hold 8000 sp.  Splitting them leaves
> as much stored energy as possible in one group and the remainder in the
> other group.  In this way, a mage in the middle of a battle only needs to
> hit one key, bound to "apply Glowing Crystal" to tap the whole bunch of them
> instead of scrolling through the inventory window to click on the one that's
> still glowing.

 Seems like excess code for a specific item for player convenience.  If we
follow this, I could see the same thing happening for rods, wands, and so on
(you have 5 rods merged together, so you can fire them 5 times faster, and so
on.)  

 I'm not really sure where to go on that.  On the one hand, the difficulty of
scrolling through the inventory list and finding the right crystal to apply in
combat can be annoying and more time consuming than it really should be.  OTOH,
crossfire at current time does not make any limitation in the number of items
the player can hold (save for weight).  In reality, if you had 20 crystals, it
may actually take a little time to figure out which one is drained/full and
apply it.

 I personally dislike the games which limit you to some fixed number of objects
in your inventory, so I don't want to go that route.  And I don't know if
enforcing the realism through program interaction is the right way.

 I think a better solution to this problem would be a client side approach. 
Perhaps have a third window (split the current inventory window) which has your
'important' or 'at hand' items in this seperate list so you can always find them
quickly.  The client has the necessary information (unique item tags) to do the
right thing when you click on them, and could perhaps even be extended to
keypresses (ie, quick use slot 1 is shift 1, slot 2 is shift 2, etc).

 I personally think that is a better approach, as there is often other stuff
which you want to do in the heat of battle but don't want to have to search your
inventory for (healing potion, different weapon, etc).  An interface for this
could be easy (control left button or something adds/removes it from the quick
inventory window, and also have something to shift the order of the quick item
stuff.)

 The only tricky part on that is keeping track of the information accross runs
of the client.  My one thought on that is that the client (which should know the
players name) could make a save file something like 'playername.quickitems', and
in it it lists the item (by name) and the slot they are in.  This does fail if
an item has the same name but significantly different properties (although, this
should be less a problem in 0.96.x, where players can overlay names)

> 
> - nrof 1
> 
>     I used a recursive find/grep "nrof" on the archetype tree to find all
> the objects that were not mergable, and set "nrof 1" on the ones that should
> be.  Artifact weapons, for example.  Unique is a seperate flag, and there
> doesn't seem to be anything unique about artifact weapons yet anyway.  Other
> examples include corpses, clocks, and books.  No reason to keep individual
> copies of identical objects seperate.  Books will only merge if they contain
> the same message (or lack thereof).  ...I just realized I'll have to change
> the inscription skill code to only write in one book at a time, but that
> should be pretty easy.

 unique is a completely different meaning than nrof 1 (or nrof 0).
I would test/double check the code for items of a type which were not mergable
before (like flint and steel) to make sure the right thing still happen when
they are applied (split apart, only one consumed, etc).  I would also double
check and make sure the merge item function doesn't merge some stuff that is
actually different.


> - new attacktype: psionic
> 
>     Used by new spells (listed below) and new artifact weapon, "Mindblade".
> Will probably add new creatures with psionic attacks and/or spell
> abilities.  Mind Flayer is a good place to start.
> 
>     Psionic attacks do direct damage, like weaponmagic, but not very much of
> it (damage is halved).

 Why halve the damage?  Why not just make the damage value lower for things that
use psionic?  Things like that (code enforcing/changing aspects of items) makes
things really confusing.


>     Psionics (medium sp cost, low damage, medium increase)
> psionic bolt  (similar to firebolt)
> psionic blast (similar to burning hands)
> small/medium/large mindstorm  (similar to fireball)

 I have a little problem being able to create an area of psionic (mental energy)
in an area far away from you.

> 
>     Magic - raw magic attacks - (high sp cost, medium damage, fast increase)
> manabolt   (similar to firebolt)
> banablast  (similar to burning hands)
> small/medium/large manaball  (similar to fireball)

 I personally don't see any demand for these spells.  Not to say they may not be
useful, but it seems to me that crossfire already has a lot of spells, too many
of which do basically the same thing 

> 
>     Grenades - create a bomb and throw it - like a fireball, but psysical
> grenade - wizard spell

 There is already a create bomb spell that basically does this.  I wonder if
throwing bombs works?

> holy handgrenade - priest spell (I couldn't pass up that one)

 Might be a cute name, but not sure if it works well in play balance.  If
priests now have an attack spell that can kill anything, it makes them vastly
easier to gain exp.


> - AT_MAGIC weapons
> 
>     There are two artifact weapons with attacktype _magic_.  That indicates
> that the attack is a magical spell, not that it's a magical attack.  There
> are many creatures that are immune to magic, and are thus immune to these
> weapons, even if they have additional attacktypes other than magic.  Such
> weapons simply don't make sense to me, so I changed them:

 Not everything in the world makes sense, and not all objects have to be useful
against all other creatures.

 The way magic is enforced is a little strange.

> 
>     Mournblade
> Had (attack: magic,drain)
> Changed to (attack: drain) which reverts to weaponmagic if target is immune

 Is that just a side effect, or done through coding?  If the later, I don't
really like that solution much.  I don't see any problem with the attacktype
being drain only (or drain and physical).  If a creature is immune to drain,
grab another weapon.

> 
>     Stormbringer
> Had (attack: magic, drain) and (prot: magic)
> Changed to (attack: electricity, drain) and (prot: magic, electricity)

 That looks OK.

> 
> - Mage artifacts with +2 Int and +0 Pow???
> 
>     My high-level wizard finally got through the snake pit and the wizard's
> tower to get a Wizard Hat, Staff of the Magi and Midnight Robe, only to find
> them less useful than the equipment he already had, a helm of Brilliance,
> cloak of displacement, and a simple dagger he'd enchanted himself.  Until
> then, I'd never noticed that _none_ of those three major artifacts, designed
> for mages, had _any_ Power bonus.  This doesn't make any sense to me, so I
> changed it.

 Note that not all objects have to be better than something else.  There is a
major problem in crossfire/designers in that when a new map is designed and the
designer of the map sees it as tougher than some other map, he figures the items
in it should be better than in the other map.

 This creates a problem in that after a few such designs, you have incredibly
powerful items.  Map toughness can be a relative thing, depending on the player
and class.

 Now, the objects below were probably in the maps before the switch of mages
from int to pow.  I don't see a problem replace the Int with Pow.  But I don't
really see a need to otherwise make them more powerful.

 I would much rather have the artifacts be unique but not necessarily better. 
So armor you find in one dungeon may not really be better than armor in a
different dungeon, but it is different - different properties so there may be
oppurtunities where it is better to use it. 


>     high magic requirement + low chance = extreme rarity for no good reason
> weapons of Gwormi, Kragi, Crolmi changed from chance: 2 to chance: 20
> weapons of Rhyz, Glamdri changed from chance 1 to chance 10
> weapon of Berserkergang changed from chance 1 to chance 5

 I would argue that the the artifact file probably needs a good look over and
possible cleanout.  This has been discussed before, but the general problem is
you get too many of these random artifacts that just are not very interesting
and sort of end up polluting the name space.

 If nothing else, probably all artifacts should need to be on at least magical
items since they do have somewhat magical effects.  That might make them at
least a bit more interesting to use.  As it is now, how often does someone use
the non magical artifact weapons (ie, club of lythander?)  PRobably not often at
all, because chances are if you found that, you also found a +1 item, which is
as good/better in almost all respects.


> 
>     club of Slay Dragon???
> weapon of Slay Dragon changed to sword of dragon slaying
> (not to be confused with Dragonslayer artifact weapon)

 I don't see a problem with a club.  Maybe like above, not very useful, but
could be there for some color.


>     renamed
> weapon of Slay Ogre              ==>  weapon of ogre slaying
> weapon of Slay Troll             ==>  weapon of troll slaying
> weapon of Slay Undead            ==>  weapon of re-slaying
> dagger of Poisoning              ==>  dagger of venom
> sword of Poisoning               ==>  sword of venom
> missile of paralyze              ==>  missile of Paralysis
> bolt of silver head              ==>  bolt of silver
> cloak of protection from fire    ==>  cloak of cooling
> missile of Assassinating Trolls  ==>  missile of Troll Slaying
> missile of Assassinating Dragons ==>  missile of Dragon Slaying
> missile of Slay Dragon           ==>  missile of dragon slaying
> potion of resist confusion       ==>  potion of clear thought
> potion of resist magic           ==>  potion of magic dissipation
> potion of resist draining        ==>  potion of drain resistance
> potion of resist paralysis       ==>  potion of free action
> potion of resist poison          ==>  potion of poison resistance
> potion of resist slow            ==>  potion of steady speed
> potion of quickness              ==>  potion of agility
> balm of invisible to undead      ==>  balm of invisibility to undead
> ethrealness / ethreality ==>  changed all spellings to aethereality

 I don't necessarily see a need for the rename, and in many cases, I actually
prefer the first name as it more immediately tells me what the item is

 I will note that the missile of dragon slaying is a good example - the second
case would be really confusing.  The assassinating items were given that for a
good name - they attack via death magic, so either the creature survives or it
dies.

> 
> -  new artifacts
> 
>     weapon of Banishment +3
> (dam: x2.5, wc: +3) (slay undead, demon, devil) (Attack: physical, holy
> word)

 You know of course that things that slay already do 2 (or is it 3) times damage
against those specific creatures.  So this artifact will do very serious
damage.  

> 
>     sword of Sharpness +3
> (dam: x2, wc: +2) (Attack: weaponmagic, death)
> Chance of slaying outright, perhaps that's what a Vorpal Blade should do?

 The chances are either good or bad, depending on hopefully the level of the
blade (hopefully meaning that the code picks up the weapons level and not the
players).  I personally think this could have severe play balance issues - if
useful on somewhat tough monsters, a player could gain a lot of exp very quickly
by slicing them at a very rapid rate.
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