CF: Random maps - comments

["Jacek Konieczny" <jajcus@zeus.polsl.gliwice.pl>]

Hi,

I like the random maps generator being added to last Crossfire release
very much. However there are still some problems with it.

First, the bugs:

- once the random map is swaped out, but the main map not, you cannot
enter the random map again. You get "/random/_xxxxxx is closed".
Probably the map should be read from temporary dir, and  if it is not
found there generator should be run again ( /random/ should work as /! )

- random maps + disease code = problems. When you enter the random map,
the do_symptom() function crashes in most cases. It is because, it is
called with disease argument which "race" is set to NULL. I don't know
the reason, but checking for "race" not being NULL seems to help.

And now my comments.

The first problem I see are monsterstyles and difficulty. When I set
difficulty to 2, which (I think) should generate random map playable for
2nd level player - it will be easy for such player only when "humanoid"
style would be chosen (I assume no monsterstyle was defined).
In fact it would be too easy then - it would probably contain one or
more goblins.
But when generator choose "dragon" style, it woould be much to difficult
for 2nd level, because of fairy dragons.

I thing monster styles should be redone, so dragons and such would start
at level 7 or something.
And when no monsterstyle is given the generator should check which
dragonstyles are available for given difficulty.

And probably generators should be added to monsterstyles - because now
generated maps are very empty.
I also don't like those "body-parts" decorstyle or furniture being
placed on desert/grass. 

Other thing I would like to see is connect all "closed" buildings to
random maps.
All those small wooden houses should have exits to maps described by:
wallstyle wooden
floorstyle wooden
..
And other buildings could have wallstyle "dungeon".
Towers should have defined depth and orientation (up).

The easiest way to do it would be to change archetypes. But this will
probably add messages to most buildings in Crossfire maps (those which
has exit defined, but no message).

Other way would be to change maps. But then the maps files would grow
very large.

So I think archetypes should be changed, and maps - so all buildings
with exit defined would have empty message. Is it possible?

The maps could be changed just with small perl script.

This would make Crossfire world much bigger and practically unlimited.
But we should ensure, that randomly generated maps are well balanced -
so entering a random map would not meen big treasures all the time, or
just worthless map.

Greets,
       Jacek
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