Re: CF: object structure layout.

[Kjetil Torgrim Homme <kjetilho@ifi.uio.no>]

[Mark Wedel]

>    Correct.  As of now, I believe monsters don't use most rings (or
>   at least not the stat rings).  But the meaning of fields is
>   currently confusing (int has some meanings in some areas, but I
>   think it also has a general awareness of the monster

Well, removing ambiguity from the fields is one of the goals of
redoing the structures, isn't it?  Overlapping uses should be given
separate fields.  Things have changed since the original Crossfire
design, we can afford 16 bytes extra in each object today.

>    In theory having the player and monster structure exactly the
>   same may make sense.

Agreed.  Like David says(?), monsters and players with the same stats
should have the same powers (except the player's intelligence vs. the
AI, that is :-)

>   But right now, the player has lots of extra stuff the monster does
>   not have (skills, known spells instead of spell abilities, hit
>   points gained per level, same for sp and grace, information on
>   range, etc.  You can look at the player structure and see quite a
>   bit of stuff in the playe structure in which there is no analogous
>   value in the monster structure.

Agreed.  The monsters have special features (like the match string),
the players have special values (like password).  But they also have a
lot in common.

>    Now monsters perhaps should have skills.  But there probably is
>   not a need to keep track of how many hp they gained per level.
>   For players, instead of keeping an array of the known spells,
>   insert spell like objects (similar to abilities) in the playre
>   structure probably makes more sense.  So there will always be some
>   differences.

Using objects in the inventory scales better with new features, I
think.  For efficiency reasons, perhaps a separate list should be used
for non-physical objects.

>    So I guess the question I am really asking is how similar should
>   monster and player be.  Should monsters have a carry limitation
>   impsed by strength?  Should monsters also have a weapon speed?

I think so.  This will require work with the maps and archetypes
files, of course...

>    Now for compatibility/ease, we can say if a monster has a 0 stat
>   (0 strength for example), it means not to use that rule (so a 0
>   strength monster could carry an infinite amount of garbage).  OR a
>   0 con doesn't mean the monster loses hp - it just means it is not
>   a set value.  This eliminates the need to update all the
>   archetypes.

I think it sounds like a good idea in its own right to have that
mechanism, so yes.  The actual meaning of having each stat set to 0
should be discussed, though.  Does wisdom 0 mean reading spells never
fail?


Kjetil T.
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