Re: CF: Dup'ing items

[Christian Stieber <stieber@informatik.tu-muenchen.de>]

Mark Wedel (mark@icp.siemens.com) wrote:

> True.  But really, you have 2 hours to try and reconnect.  But there
> is that risk.

1 hour here :-) And one can always send a mail to the game admin (or,
on pre-0.95.x servers, use the socket to ask for help). Or create a new
character to ask for help.

>  The way around it then is to do the incremental saves very infrequently.  But
> then you run into server stability issues (if we save once an hour, and the
> server crashed and you lost half an hour of work, you may not be very happy
> about that).

Indeed, especially if servers have the 'save command disabled (I _always_
'save after advancing a level, picking up an important item, killing
a reasonable monster or exiting a map).

> Or you can do some other save strategy (save when changing maps,
> but that can still run into not frequent enough saves.)

Not really --- most maps aren't that big, and most maps allow players
to go back to the previous map (so players can do intermediate saves).

> Also, that still has the problem in
> that some treasure rooms are near the end of the map, so saving in that case
> still has a pretty good benefit.

Sorry, I still don't see the benefit here. I only remember one map
where saving inside the treasure room does make sense to avoid having
to do all of the quest again to get the reward (since it only has a
1:<something big> chance...). For other treasure rooms it doesn't matter
where you have been saved, since there is reasonable experience to be
gained by going to the room --- so you just need to stand in the room,
crash the server, and redo the map from whereever you have been saved.

A character sitting in some treasure room, waiting for the map to
reset again and again will never be a reasonably good character.

Crashing the server works better, and hurts other players as well; so
that's the prime thing to work at instead of trying to make things
more annoying for players.

> > Periodic saves are also not used, instead `auto-save when in `safe'
> > positions would be used instead.
> 
>  But as said, you then run the risk of losing a lot of playtime in case of
> server crash (or even accidental disconnection.)  I would don't like the idea
> of forcing players to wander to the 'safe' map periodically just so they can
> make sure a recent save of their character is done.

Indeed. However, the autosave could be improved by one little detail
--- don't save if the player is standing on "unholy ground", try again
after he has moved (or in 10 seconds, or whatever).

Another improvement would be to somehow enable players to "peek" into
the map they will arrive in --- so they know whether the map has reset
at the crash and whether the location is safe. Sometimes I'm asked to
clean out a map because somebody might arrive inside there, but the
character then arrives in a safe place. Or people log in, find that
they are in big trouble, disconnect and ask for help. Or die :-(

Maybe do it like this: if the current location is at a bed to reality,
log in. If it isn't, and the save file was created because of a disconnect
(-> add a flag to the savefile) log in. If the savefile is an autosave
file it means the server has crashed: show the map as if the player was
logged in (i.e. not the dm visibility we have right now), mark the
spot, and ask whether he wants to log in. If he doesn't then return
him to the city.

Sure, that's quite different from the weird ideas discussed here, but
that's one of the improvements I have been missing for quite some time.

> > |  Oldcity is vaguely a quest - there is no great reward at the end, but

You don't have to do it. We never do it --- no exp, no useful stuff.
Why waste playing time? It's still good --- crossfire needs such maps
so newbies can run around and _explore_ the world; finding out which
maps are worth the time and which aren't is an important part of the
game.

Christian


-- 
Christian Stieber        http://www.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/~stieber
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