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Response (Re: CF: Suggestions and bugs)
Hi Christian,
I dont usually have the time to read, much less respond to
any email outside of school right now, but I feel like avoiding
my responsibilities at the moment...
> From: Christian Stieber writes:
>
> 1a) Skills
>
> [snip discussion of why you cant apply holy symbols/talismans]
Yes I agree, this bug should be fixed. When I originally
coded this, it was possible to apply (and use) skill tools.
>
> 1b) Gods
>
> Obviously there is a problem with the gods in crossfire --- players
> kill monsters of their gods without being punished. Of course, we
> cannot add punishment for killing certain monsters as this doesn't fit
Why not? The coding could be fairly trival. Make a check in
add_exp() fctn to see if the race flag of the creature matches
the race_aligned flag of your god. If it does, DONT award the
full exp amount for most exp categories, certainly DONT award
ANY wisdom experience at all (in fact, perhaps subtract the
amount of award).
In fact, we could keep a "disposition" tally (I hate the D&D
alignment concept) in the character wisdom object.
This lets us know how faithfully the character has been at
following their religion. You should get a bonus/penalty to
various religous activities (like using prayers, regen grace?)
based on your god's disposition towards you.
>
> However, how about
> a) a "weapon of foo" refusing to hurt foo's monsters ("Your long sword
> of Lucifer refuses to hurt the skull!")
> b) a character possessed by foo being unable to hurt foo's monsters?
> Maybe exchange places like the avatar.
>
Both these suggestions sound good.
>
> 1g) Polymorphing
>
> I guess this was done to prevent abuse, but contrary to the nethack
> polymorph, polymorphing in crossfire is completely useless since the
> items can only get worse. It is even flawed --- items stay in their
> category (except for fog), but you can get items that are never
> genrated randomly. While this is fun (like a saw with slay tree, a bag
> of popcorn or sizzling weasels on a stick), there are some items that
> should not be generated: skill objects can turn into invisible
> (non-pickupable) skills ("You can't pickup a flame touch"); bolts can
> turn into acid spits; bows can turn into acid spitters or boulder
> throwers etc.
The acid spits and bolder throwers are no longer used by
the game (the throwing code replaced the need for these
items). They should be removed from the archetype archive.
>
> 1h) Daylight and Nightfall
>
> Hey, these spells are fun :-) But how about considering real time for
> the world map, the cities and inns? In the evening the maps get
yes, yes. Ive proposed this before...including weather and
seasons too. I can forward this proposal to you, if you are
interested in coding this.
>
> No shockwave spellbook either :-(
>
Ive used the shockwave spell before and it didnt seem to be
very unbalancing. You CAN get this spell from the Kundi maps
(or at least, you used to be able too). Adding this (rare)
spell book to a well designed map seems like a reasonable thing
to do.
>
> 1j) Long operations
>
> Some things take quite a while:
> - logins (esp. using xpm)
> - character logins for characters with quite a few items
> - entering or leaving apartment maps
> - dropping or picking up a lot of things
> - identifying a lot of things
> - alchemy a lot of things
Alchemy code is only implemented to work, not be play balanced
per se. I see expanding this code to allow use of "cooking" (wanna
make a cake, bake some bread?) and weapon/item manufacture
(gather a pile of wood, nails, varnish and apply woodcraft skill
to make a chest, cabinet, etc..) or trap components to make
traps (I see no reason why players/monsters cant set traps).
It will take a bit of more time to get it working right,
which, again, I dont have right now.
>
>
> 1k) Gaining exp
>
This has been heavily discussed already. All I can say about it
is that we need to make the game fun at all levels. I doubt we
need to have a bunch of "supra" monsters to satisfy the need
to reach 110th level, rather, the game difficulty and abuses that
allow players to reach such ridiculous levels so fast should
be fixed.
> Personality: currently there is no way to score there, except via
> parties. Perfect abuse fix.
Personality skills need to be revamped. Ive put in a proposal
to do this a while back. In fact, Ive proposed revamping
many of the current skills at one time or another. Unfortuneately,
if you wannt to perserve some play balance and allow any
(new) monster AI to use skills/spells intellegently, you have
to be carefull about how you do this. Monster AI/skills are
a priority for me to try to work on this summer.
>
> 1l) We need some funny messages in the game.
>
What about the egg laying disease? :)
> Some ideas:
> - randomize messages when a player is killed, like
> "You suddenly feel very dead" or
> "You have a weird feeling for a moment" or
> "You feel like a piece of crisp" (when killed by fire)
> etc.
> - the <foo> makes funny faces (when you miss a monster several
> times in a row)
> - "Fonz is now going to meet Lucifer" instead of just
> "You killed Fonz". Randomized, of course.
> - "Oppie looks very suprised." (for highlevel monsters)
>
These sound good, but how do you implement them? Use a file that
the server reads? How does it know when to tell the player a
message. Id be *against* hardcoding messages.
> Along the same lines: get confused for some time when drinking too
> many bottles of wine within a certain time :-)
>
yes, this would be similar to Nethack. There should also
be changed effects when you are confused an use skills/spells.
> 1m) This is probably too weird...
>
> Add cooking: put a dragon steak into a cauldron, add a pile of salt,
> cast fire onto it, and get some steak that tastes good :-)
>
No, I think its a great idea (see my note on cooking above). I
fail to see why players can get much nutrition from raw meat
(maybe one day we will have Troll player characters who could
eat raw stuff tho :)
> 2a) The library card
>
I didnt know this had been adjusted. I thought the original
price was around 50 platinum or so.
>
>
> 2g) High Dow
>
> He should give some experience.
>
This isnt the ONLY monster with skewed experience. There are many more.
In general, Ive noticed that many map designers dont often edit the
monster archetypes for more experience after they have made some
modified monster that is tougher, and should, therefore have more
exp.
>
> 2m) Reincarnation etc.
>
> Why do you get these spells (reincarnation and raise dead... might be
> a third one I don't remember right now)? It seems like an leftover
> from older days... can't even raise zombie corpses or anything like
> that, so I guess they are used to raise dead players...
>
Yes, we should find a way to implement a useful use for these
spells in the NON_PERMDEATH mode of the game.
>
> 2p) Speedballs and singing
>
> "You calm down the speedball". This actually happens every now and
> then, but I didn't see any speedball afterwards (does it dissolve or
> what?) Too bad there aren't enough speedballs in the game --- I want
> to try if I can calm one down and orate it :-)
>
Heh, didnt know about this. One more thing to consider in revamping
personality skills.
> 3) The fun section
>
> Want some fun? Summon fog and polymorph it...
Hmm. This problem has also been discussed a bit on the Japanese
CF list. I wonder what solutions they have gotten...
-b.t.
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