From mwedel at sonic.net Sun Dec 1 00:33:13 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:08 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Invisibility bugs References: Message-ID: <3DE9AD29.5050602@sonic.net> Johnny Shelley wrote: > Invisibilty on general seems to be broken. When cast as a spell, doubly > so. Monsters without see_invisible 1 can see invisible players. When the > spell is cast, it lasts a VERY short time, perhaps a few seconds at high > levels. Previously, as a spell it was possible ot stay invisible for > several minutes at high levels by recasting until you reached max > duration. Finally got time to look into this. The max duration allowed by invisibility is 1000. You can recast multiple times to reach that duration. Looking at the code, it appears the duration should be 300 + 20*level. So if your level 35, that should roughly max out duration. level is the typical level adjustement for skill, so also adjusted based on attunement and other details. However, one issue I see is that one tick of invisibility is used up each time the player gets to go. Thus, a fast players invisibility (say speed 1.0) will last about 2 minutes, while it looks like a slower players invisibliy (say 0.1) would last 10 times longer. I ran some tests, ans best I can tell, monsters were not seeing me - they didn't move anyplace while I was invisible, and when I became invisible, started charging after me. So I'd need more details on what monsters are improperly detecting the character. But from what I see, it is all working properly. From joel at mamia.prninfo.com Sun Dec 1 17:10:22 2002 From: joel at mamia.prninfo.com (Joel South) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:08 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] a bug in the arena (again!) Message-ID: <200212012310.SAA11797@mamia.prninfo.com> There seems to be a bug in the arena. After you die in the arena, your character is frozen in the first aid room. This bug existed once before. My character, Orodruin, is frozen on metalforge. I don't know how to contact the admin there, so if he reads this, perhaps he could help me out. Another player, D, was frozen aswell. From mwedel at sonic.net Mon Dec 2 00:18:24 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:08 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] a bug in the arena (again!) References: <200212012310.SAA11797@mamia.prninfo.com> Message-ID: <3DEAFB30.4050000@sonic.net> Joel South wrote: > There seems to be a bug in the arena. After you die in the arena, your character is frozen in the first aid > room. This bug existed once before. My character, Orodruin, is frozen on metalforge. I don't know how to contact > the admin there, so if he reads this, perhaps he could help me out. Another player, D, was frozen aswell. I've fixed those two characters on metalforge. Looking at the possible cause in the source. The construct here is the same used in another map that caused similar problems. I'll commit a change shortly on it. From yann.chachkoff at mailandnews.com Mon Dec 2 03:44:58 2002 From: yann.chachkoff at mailandnews.com (Yann Chachkoff) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:08 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New Skill System Message-ID: <3DEB3D0F@mailandnews.com> (This is my own proposal for a renewed experience system. I don't pretend it is the way to go - it is just a proposal. I announced this two weeks ago on IRC, but since luckily my whole life isn't Crossfire-aimed, I was only able to post it today) Crossfire Alternate Skill rules proposal ======================================== I. Summary ---------- The aim of this proposal is to provide a better skill/experience points system. The system should stay simple enough to be understandable without reading the manual, and should promote selective character progression in a relatively natural way, without preventing generalist characters to exist. II. Basic principles -------------------- Here are some very basical rules, 'axioms' over which the new proposal is built. 1. Any earned experience points falls into a given Skill Group (the one containing the skill used to get the points). 2. A player can distribute the Skill Group experience points to Skills related to that Group whenever (s)he wants, in the way (s)he wants. 3. Attempting to learn a skill consumes experience points in the related Skill Group. 4. Once experience points are allocated to a given Skill, you cannot put them back in the Skill Group 'reserve'. 5. There's a maximum amount of experience points you can globally earn. III. Deep dive -------------- Now, let's explain in more details what those axioms mean and why I suggested them. - Skill Groups are quite equivalent of today's experience categories. They're simply several skills grouped together. A Skill Group has an associated experience score (again, just like it is now). - Skills are a little different. In my system, each skill has a level and an amount of experience points. Each skill is included in one and only one Skill Group. Skill Group experience influences all dependent skills; to compute the level in a given skill, a formula like this one could be used: LVL = Skill Group Exp * F1 + Skill Exp * F2 With (F2 >> F1); it means that, although Skill Group experience is more 'general' (it has an influence on several skills at once), it isn't as 'efficient' as exp. put in a specific skill. The player thus gets the opportunity to be a powerful specialist, or just a less powerful 'generalist'. The question of 'How much should be F1 and F2' can only be determined by playtesting; that's why I'll not suggest any value for them here. What rule Nr. 1 means is that by default, all experience points are assigned to a Skill Group, and not to the specific Skill used. This is roughly what the current system does. Rule Nr. 2 simply tells that the player can allocate Skill Group points to related skills without constraints. The Skill Group experience can be seen as a 'reserve' of points to distribute in the various skills. Note that you're not forced to distribute them. There's no supplementary cost for that distribution. Rule Nr. 4 says that once you distributed points to skills, you cannot put them back as Skill Group points. Experience distribution is thus an one-way process: you can always do Group->Skill transfers, but never Skill->Group transfers. This forces the player to think about what they want to do with their characters before distributing points. Rule Nr. 3 is related to learning new skills. The way you can learn skills is not relevant here - it could be the standard Skill Scrolls, a teacher, or whatever you may think about. The point is: there's always a price to pay to learn new skills. To try to learn a new skill, you have to pay Skill Group experience points (from the related group). If you don't have enough points, you cannot learn the skill. If you've enough points, then you can *attempt* to learn it. Note that you cannot be sure you'll succeed - learning could cost you more than what you expected. Probably the difficulty factor and experience cost should be related to the way you attempt to learn the skill - a teacher could cost you less exp. points than a Skill Scroll and could also be less risky to fail. You could also imagine spells increasing your chances of success, but a cost of more experience points. All of this is mostly a playbalance problem and isn't directly related to the rule itself. Again, only playtesting would be able to properly set amounts of experience required and failure % for each skill and each teaching method. Rule Nr. 5 is there to make it harder (if not impossible) for players to be "perfect in everything". The rule says that the total amount of earned exp. cannot go above a definite limit. Note that the word 'earn' is important here. The total amount not only takes into account the current amount of experience in each Skill and Skill Group, but also the experience points used to learn new skills. Only the 'depleted' experience (remember the Grim Reapers ?) points are not counting in the total. It means that a player will have to choose in which fields (s)he wants to put experience in, and how much in each of them. It also imposes a tradeoff between the number of skills and the mastering level in them. IV. Optional rule ----------------- An optional rule could maybe be interesting: 6. Skills may require other skills (not) to be known to be learned. Rule Nr. 6 puts dependencies between some skills. For example, you cannot learn Death Magic if you already have Life Magic. Or you would need Missile Weapons before learning Bowyer (Those are just examples). Probably interesting, but could also be harder to implement for limited results - that's why I put it under 'optional'. V. Notes -------- 1. As I underlined above, there are no quantification in my proposal for the various parameters. I have my own idea about those, but IMHO, they should be discussed with players and tested; playbalance is always difficult to achieve, and I see no better way than the good old 'try and ask' method to preserve it. Besides that, they're just parameters - whatever they're, the base rules are always the same. 2. I haven't told anything about how the skills themselves should be redone. This was not the main topic of this document. Basically, I'd use the current groups as a workbasis, just splitting the wizardry skill into the various magical paths. Skill reorganization is independent of the rules themselves, that's why I said nothing about it here. 3. I don't pretend this system is perfect. This is just a proposal, nothing else. If you don't like it, rip it apart, shred it into small pieces, and give them to feed your favourite Demon Lord. The purpose wasn't to start another flame war, but just to provide another viewpoint to the actual discussion. Y. Chachkoff ------------------------------------------------ Help supporting JXFire ! (http://jxfire.sf.net) ------------------------------------------------ From mwedel at sonic.net Mon Dec 2 22:51:32 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:08 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New Skill System References: <3DEB3D0F@mailandnews.com> Message-ID: <3DEC3854.5090909@sonic.net> Yann Chachkoff wrote: > (This is my own proposal for a renewed experience system. I don't pretend it > is the way to go - it is just a proposal. I announced this two weeks ago on > IRC, but since luckily my whole life isn't Crossfire-aimed, I was only able to > post it today) Interesting ideas. Moving exp from generalized categories to specialized skills fixes the problems of some skills not having ways to advance yet still having abilities that should increase in level (say like mountaineering). The ration of cost between generalized and specialized is really key. If ratio is too low, or that category has enough subskills, it won't be worth it for people to move the exp into speicialized areas. One issue is how to deal with exp rewards. IF for example action X is currently worth 1000 exp, under the new system, is that 1000 exp for the general category (and thus 2000 exp in a specialized for example), or is that 500 exp general, which gets converted to 1000 specialized? Such a question is relevant, because it otherwise can become much easier to gain levels and what. I'm not sure I like the idea of using exp to learn new skills. First, I would think you would need to allow the general exp to go negative for such purposes (otherwise, if you have no skill in that exp category that gives you exp, you could never learn one that does). But this just adds more issues to balance - if cost is too low, cost then becomes pretty pointless. If cost is significant, you'll probably find that some skills are just not worth learning (why would I burn exp to learn something like sense curse/magic when I can use spells/scrolls/wands/minor amounts of god for the same effect). I'm also not sure how keen I'm on the idea of a maximum earned exp cap. The idea you can only learn so much is somewhat disturbing on principal. But the bigger issue is you might get players who have gotten say their wizardry to the point they want it and want to improve physical. However, to play to the point you don't want to cast any offensive spells because you don't want to limit what you may get in physical would be a bit bizarre. However, this perhaps bring up another question. If we're going to change all this skill stuff, should we perhaps look at other changes? For example, currently there is a max level of 110. However, spells for example max out in terms of needing about level 30 to learn them all. Many other skills and other bits may have upper limits of usefulness roughlyu in that same range. So the question might be - instead of level 110 being 2 billion exp, should we make the max level 50 at 2 billion exp? Increase the exp table accordingly, so it gets a lot harder to gain levels after 20 or something. This in itself may forcce people to focus more, especially if we stretch out the spells so that ther are level 35, 40, and so forth spells. Max level has crept up over time to keep players happy who want to be able to keep advancing their character. Cutting the max level lower would make things tougher for higher levels - if your max level is 50, that cuts down on your hp/sp/items you can use and whatnot. From mwedel at sonic.net Tue Dec 3 01:51:00 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:08 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Minor bugs References: <200211030327.gA33RKAJ024699@lol1120.lss.emc.com> Message-ID: <3DEC6264.7010905@sonic.net> Preston Crow wrote: > Several minor issues: > > > Giants don't throw boulders. They have them; they just don't throw them. This is now fixed. This got broken when the code was removed that caused monsters to through misc junk (eg, coins, clubs, etc). apparantly, it was that same code that was responsible for them for throwing boulders. > > > > >>write_socket_buffer called when there is no data, fd=5 >>Socket on fd 5 has overrun internal buffer - marking as dead >>Write_To_Socket called with dead socket > > > That happened when stepping on a very large pile of objects. The > client received a stream of "That item is too heavy for you to pick > up." messages before disconecting. Perhaps the server should watch > for sending the same message more than some number of times (like 50), > and not send more than that many in a row. I've changed the 'That item is too heavy..' to not be a unique message - thus, the server should group those together like it does with other messages. > > > > In the shop inventories, shoes and gloves list the (armour +10) and > such, making for an ugly display. Other items don't list their attributes. > > > > It would be nice if shop inventories would list "17 daggers" instead > of "dagger" 17 times. This would make shops easier to browse. I sort of combined those two points together - I've changed it so that it does combine all the items of the same type together. I also changed it so that it uses the same query_base_name for all items, so it doesn't add the armor and other details. I'm not sure if I like that list bit - for some items, you sort of want that extra information. From temitchell at sympatico.ca Tue Dec 3 12:07:08 2002 From: temitchell at sympatico.ca (Todd Mitchell) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:09 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New Skill System References: <3DEB3D0F@mailandnews.com> <3DEC3854.5090909@sonic.net> Message-ID: <000401c29af6$ccb76ac0$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> Ok, here's my idea -. it is based on the premise that people would rather select skills in order to play a certain way rather than play a certain way to get skilled. 1. you start with either a 'class' with a couple skills or get a equal amount of 'skill gems' and there is a skill altar in the hall of selection. 2. you get general experience only 3. every level or so you get a skill gem 4. you can learn some special skills (unlisted) at 'level 1' by scrolls still. 5. you have to buy/find spell books to learn spells and learn them similar way as now (int or wis and general level), but they are cast based on your skill in that magic area (can't cast or less effect). 6. there are skill altars dotted around the world (and a little mini one in the random maps) where you can use your gems to increase your skills (x number of gems gives you a skill level depending on the skill -altar gets input from player 'say list skills, say increase fire magic', checks for the skill force and the skills table for cost or available levels - removes gems...) 7. skills are put on a table and redone to work on a level system (e.g. level 4 in two handed weapon gives you x to hit..., level 12 in meditation gives you x hp and sp back, level 9 praying gets you x grace back...) ok fire away... From mwedel at sonic.net Tue Dec 3 23:34:03 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:09 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New Skill System References: <3DEB3D0F@mailandnews.com> <3DEC3854.5090909@sonic.net> <000401c29af6$ccb76ac0$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> Message-ID: <3DED93CB.2070007@sonic.net> Todd Mitchell wrote: > Ok, here's my idea -. > it is based on the premise that people would rather select skills in order > to play a certain way rather than play a certain way to get skilled. Fair enough point, of which I agree. > > > 1. you start with either a 'class' with a couple skills or get a equal > amount of 'skill gems' and there is a skill altar in the hall of selection. Idea of 'skill gems' or any object you spend to get skills bugs me - I'll go into more detail on that below. But having some race/class combinations as quick templates is fine, and player could choose advanced creation method where he has much more choice on he to make his character. The hall of selection map as it is now was a very convenient way to let class selection happen. But IMO, all this should be built into the game as code selection for a few reasons: 1) The moving about on maps to create your character seems a bit hokey to me. 2) If done more in code, smart clients could present a much nicer selection mechanism (making selection quicker and probably easier as information would be presented in a better fashion) 3) Less likely for things to go wrong (eg, players picking up multiple classes, or forgetting to pick up a class, etc) - being in the code can basically mean there is no way to shortcut the process. > 2. you get general experience only Seems good to me. > 3. every level or so you get a skill gem See note above. > 4. you can learn some special skills (unlisted) at 'level 1' by scrolls > still. This (IMO) is almost a different discussion. How to get new skills and how you advance existing skills does not really need to be related. My personal thought is that there will be no great agreement on the best way to learn new skills, so keeping it flexible is probably best (skill scrolls might appear, or the server admin may remove them from random treasure, or make them exceedingly rare, or you have special quest maps, whatever). > 5. you have to buy/find spell books to learn spells and learn them similar > way as now (int or wis and general level), but they are cast based on your > skill in that magic area (can't cast or less effect). This would basically seem to be the way things are, except there may be more magic skills. > 6. there are skill altars dotted around the world (and a little mini one in > the random maps) where you can use your gems to increase your skills (x > number of gems gives you a skill level depending on the skill -altar gets > input from player 'say list skills, say increase fire magic', checks for the > skill force and the skills table for cost or available levels - removes > gems...) Not sure the point of this. I see several real things that may happen: 1) these altars are so random that using them to advance is nothing more than a minor inconvenience as you go to the building in town to use them, or 2) These altars are exceedingly rare, so players know where the 'fire magic' altar is and best way to get there, and so on. I'm not sure which point you were envisioning. > 7. skills are put on a table and redone to work on a level system (e.g. > level 4 in two handed weapon gives you x to hit..., level 12 in meditation > gives you x hp and sp back, level 9 praying gets you x grace back...) Fair enough. All this doesn't necessarily need to be in a table, but the idea of skills of different levels giving different abilities makes lots of sense. Eg, if you decide to be level 20 bowyer, you can make magical arrows or whatever. I don't generally like the idea of skill gems or other 'spending' mechanisms for the character unless they are not done as objects. The problem I see as doing objects the character spends are many fold: 1) They could give them to other characters. 2) They might lose them, drop them, sell them, whatever else. 3) The idea of gems just magically showing up in your inventory just seems a bit odd to me - it just smacks as too much a way to shortcut writing some actual code to do the same thing. Point #1 can't be easily solved by making them startequip if you want the players to spend them on altars (as the startequip would have them go away before the altar would get a chance to process them). But I have a slightly different idea: 1) A large portion of all exp earned goes to general exp category, and the rest to whatever skill you earned it in. Large portion >50%. So if you get 1000 exp for killing something with a fireball, 500 goes to general, 500 to appropriate wizardry. Exp in the general category realy doesn't count for anything. This ratio is a tunable (so some servers could set it 90%, which means players have a lot of flexibility, and others might set it 10%, which is sort of how it is now - exp goes to the skill you get it in) 2) You move exp from this general category into whatever skills you want. This is just done by simple commands (eg, move_exp wizardry 500). Ideally, the client provides a nicer front end to it. 3) Each skill has its own exp total, and hence its own level. All things related to the skill are based on the level you have in the skill (eg, attack bonus, being able to cast spells). Some skills probably need to get cleaned up/redone. EG, perhaps make sense magic and sense curse abilities of thaumertergy at certain levels, eg, level 5 you can sense magic, level 10, you can curse. Some re-arrangement would need to get redone. Some skills perhaps get broken apart, maybe 3 for weapon use, and others combined. Deciding what skills remain, what new skills get added, what benefits are not really worth going into at this point, since this is just one point of a larger proposal. 4) Somewhat related to #3 above, perhaps add a bardic area of magic/skill. This would actually use the charisma stat. The bardic skill would also encompass the oratory and singing skills as certain level benefits. Have the bard 'sing' spells, but rather than using mana, each has a longer casting time, and imposes some length of time that the bard can't sing again (this would be base on level of the bard, as well as perhaps things like what the bards con and cha is). 5) There would be a total that tracks the amount of exp the character has earned for purposes of their overall level. This is basically the same as exp in skills + exp in general, but since there may be different ratios, might not be literally the same. 6) Reduce max level to 50 for everything. However, level 50 still requires that 1.5 billion exp or wahtever you current need for about level 110. Cutting the level range down a lot will make it much easier to balance/set up skills so they are interesting/useful as you keep gaining them (eg, have some level 45 spells for example). 7) No cap on total exp for skills - if a player wants, he can get level 50 in all skills - that is up to him if he finds that interesting. However, I certainly think you would see characters focusing on just a few skills and getting really good in them, and not bother working on the other skills until they maxed out those. Yes, I know people say it is bad the characters get perfect in all the skills, but if your going to complain about that, shouldn't we also complain that all high level characters tend to find the same 'best' set of artifacts to wear? The simple fact that since crossfire is an open ended game, players will max out various things. I personally wouldn't find it interesting to kill a bunch of things just so my alchemy skill is also level 50, but if players want to do that and find it fun/interesting, I see no reason not to let them do so. One other idea would be some form of retirement/final quest, but completing it means the character is gone (Ascended to heaven, whatever), but something notable is done (statue in town square? Other recognition?) That might inspire some players to go for that final quest. Alternative, move to 64 bit values for exp, and have exp needed for each level beyond 50 double from the previous. Thus, a character could become level 70 in some skill, but it would take them gobs and gobs of exp to do so. 8) This proposal does nothing about how skills are learned. Maybe skill scrolls remain. Maybe you have to go to guild houses. Maybe a benefit of being really high in a skill is that you can teach it to someone else. Maybe you have to do quests. Maybe it costs some general exp to learn a skill. IMO, learning skills is just a very minor piece of redoing/cleaning up the skill system in general. Phew. So there is my proposal for people to tear apart. From mwedel at sonic.net Wed Dec 4 02:12:21 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:09 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Barrel Bug References: <200211061924.gA6JOceH016609@lol1120.lss.emc.com> Message-ID: <3DEDB8E5.6030807@sonic.net> Preston Crow wrote: > I was doing the Knight of Scorn quest on Metalforge last night, and I ran > into a bug regarding barrels. On the final level, there are a bunch of > barrels. These are the kind you can walk over or pick up. However, if a > monster is standing on the barrel, instead of attacking the monster, you > try to roll the barrel. This is now fixed in CVS. This has been a long standing bug which I often found on that map. on the bright side, you could still kill things with range attacks (spell or arrows). But IMO, it didn't work in an intuitive fashion, and I'd been meaning to fix it for a while. > If you stand on a chest that happens to contain a food and apply the chest, > you are then standing on a food. However, if you hit 'a' to apply the > food, it ignores the food. I suspect that this might be in the gtk client, > not the server, but I'm not certain. This should also be fixed in CVS now. From yann.chachkoff at mailandnews.com Wed Dec 4 02:55:30 2002 From: yann.chachkoff at mailandnews.com (Yann Chachkoff) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:09 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New Skill System Message-ID: <3DEDD0EC@mailandnews.com> > But I have a slightly different idea: > >1) A large portion of all exp earned goes to general exp category, and the rest >to whatever skill you earned it in. Large portion >50%. So if you get 1000 exp >for killing something with a fireball, 500 goes to general, 500 to appropriate >wizardry. Exp in the general category realy doesn't count for anything. This >ratio is a tunable (so some servers could set it 90%, which means players have a >lot of flexibility, and others might set it 10%, which is sort of how it is now >- exp goes to the skill you get it in) > >2) You move exp from this general category into whatever skills you want. This >is just done by simple commands (eg, move_exp wizardry 500). Ideally, the >client provides a nicer front end to it. > I find rather disturbing the idea of distributing general experience anywhere you want. It means that you'd be able to get a very high wizardry skill just by using a melee weapon for example. It does sound a little weird. On the other hand, I agree with the principle for skill fine-tuning - this is quite close to my own proposal. >3) Each skill has its own exp total, and hence its own level. All things >related to the skill are based on the level you have in the skill (eg, attack >bonus, being able to cast spells). Some skills probably need to get cleaned >up/redone. EG, perhaps make sense magic and sense curse abilities of >thaumertergy at certain levels, eg, level 5 you can sense magic, level 10, you >can curse. Some re-arrangement would need to get redone. Some skills perhaps >get broken apart, maybe 3 for weapon use, and others combined. Deciding what >skills remain, what new skills get added, what benefits are not really worth >going into at this point, since this is just one point of a larger proposal. > I completely agree about this. >4) Somewhat related to #3 above, perhaps add a bardic area of magic/skill. This >would actually use the charisma stat. The bardic skill would also encompass the >oratory and singing skills as certain level benefits. Have the bard 'sing' >spells, but rather than using mana, each has a longer casting time, and imposes >some length of time that the bard can't sing again (this would be base on level >of the bard, as well as perhaps things like what the bards con and cha is). > Bardic magic could be quite fun, although it isn't directly rules-related. >5) There would be a total that tracks the amount of exp the character has earned > for purposes of their overall level. This is basically the same as exp in >skills + exp in general, but since there may be different ratios, might not be >literally the same. > I again agree with this. >6) Reduce max level to 50 for everything. However, level 50 still requires that >1.5 billion exp or wahtever you current need for about level 110. Cutting the >level range down a lot will make it much easier to balance/set up skills so they >are interesting/useful as you keep gaining them (eg, have some level 45 spells >for example). > This is a difficult discussion. An experimental server ran about three months ago with a 'reduced' experience scale - Maximum level was around 30. Some players find the more challenging environment quite fun; on the other hand, others found the game too difficult and didn't like the increased risks. Probably the best way to deal with this and make everybody happy would be to define the experience scale in a configuration file instead of hard-coding it. This way, 'easy' and 'hard' servers could be both available at the same time, leaving the player choose whatever they prefer. >7) No cap on total exp for skills - if a player wants, he can get level 50 in >all skills - that is up to him if he finds that interesting. However, I >certainly think you would see characters focusing on just a few skills and >getting really good in them, and not bother working on the other skills until >they maxed out those. > > Yes, I know people say it is bad the characters get perfect in all the skills, Here I again agree with you. I don't like much the idea of such an artificial limit (I know there was one in my proposal, but who said I always agreed with what I said ?) > > One other idea would be some form of retirement/final quest, but completing it >means the character is gone (Ascended to heaven, whatever), but something >notable is done (statue in town square? Other recognition?) That might inspire >some players to go for that final quest. > Turning them half-gods with temples ? The idea of a 'final quest' seems quite interesting. You could even imagine (on a longer perspective of course) "chapters" of quests - Finishing the Last Quest would give you access to another world with new quests, items, and so on. > Alternative, move to 64 bit values for exp, and have exp needed for each level >beyond 50 double from the previous. Thus, a character could become level 70 in >some skill, but it would take them gobs and gobs of exp to do so. > Probably moving the exp to 64-bit is a good idea, even if the 50-levels-based system doesn't require it. I'm not sure keeping levels above 50 with doubled costs would be very interesting - I tend to think that those levels will only be more boring to play. >8) This proposal does nothing about how skills are learned. Maybe skill scrolls >remain. Maybe you have to go to guild houses. Maybe a benefit of being really >high in a skill is that you can teach it to someone else. Maybe you have to do >quests. Maybe it costs some general exp to learn a skill. IMO, learning skills >is just a very minor piece of redoing/cleaning up the skill system in general. > True indeed. IMO, learning processes are not directly related to the experience/skills system. >Phew. So there is my proposal for people to tear apart. > As this is pretty close to what I suggested, I'll probably not tear this apart. My only concern would be about the 'general experience', which sounds a little too 'general' for my taste. Apart from that, you definitely got a supporter :) Y. Chachkoff ------------------------------------------------ Help supporting JXFire ! (http://jxfire.sf.net) ------------------------------------------------ From andi.vogl at gmx.net Wed Dec 4 05:04:09 2002 From: andi.vogl at gmx.net (Andreas Vogl) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:09 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New Skill System References: <3DED93CB.2070007@sonic.net> Message-ID: <10986.1038999849@www50.gmx.net> In recent mails about skill system, a new idea came up: Having "general experience pots" where skill points can be distributed from. There's something I dislike about it: Having experience distribution pots encourages players to use only easy-to-advance skills and nothing else. Why should someone train an exotic skill like alchemy, thievery or literacy when the earned points end up (mainly) in the same experience pots as melee, wizardy or praying? What I'd personally love to have is a system where players have to train exactly those skills that they want to improve. I'd still propose to implement a very basic skill model to start with: o Every skill has it own level o Exp cathegories are removed, but overall level is kept. Overall experience is used for calculating stuff like health points. It cannot be distributed to other skills. o Every skill has a percentage value which defines how much it adds to the overall experience. (Other issues like class system, ways to gain new skills, those can be treated seperately.) In the above scheme, all skills are completely independent from each other. Only some of them will share the ability to add to the overall level of the character, but there is no way to share or distribute points between skills. As I recall, the main counter argument for this model is that some skills are hard to advance. But isn't that in fact an advantage? When skills are independent, their balance is independent too. A system where all skills have to be balanced against each other (like with distributed points), would be tremendously hard to get right. It is almost certain that some skills are going to be "undervalued" or "overpowered". When skills are independent, that means killer skills like melee/wisdom/praying can peacefully coexist with hard-to-advance exotic skills. Some maps can reward players for having high levels in those exotic skills, but players are free to choose wether that is worth their time or not. Some skills like mountaineer might even have no way to advance at all - That's fine too. As long as players don't loose anything by training exotic skills, they will most likely enjoy doing so. That means the game can be richer and more diversive. Of course, players can end up as "masters of the universe" then, but with seperated skill levels it might take a lifetime to get there. If there were restrictions or dependencies for skills, players would feel pushed into the "optimal development path" and the game would be much more streamlined. Sure, the replay-value could be higher then, but it takes less time to reach a "dead end", which can be frustrating. But even then, I'm not sure if players would ever train an axotic skill if it meant trading away power. Well, this is just my opinion about it. It's also nothing more than a proposal. Andreas -- +++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more http://www.gmx.net +++ NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen! From yann.chachkoff at mailandnews.com Wed Dec 4 11:28:00 2002 From: yann.chachkoff at mailandnews.com (Yann Chachkoff) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:09 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New Skill System Message-ID: <3DEE4EF8@mailandnews.com> >As I recall, the main counter argument for this model is that >some skills are hard to advance. > True indeed. This is an old discussion. 'Exotic skills' are exotic because they're not often used in the game. There are various reasons to this, but they could probably be summarized as : - Not useful enough: Results are too limited to make a noticeable difference on the game experience; - Too difficult to upgrade: There is not enough experience points to gain by using them; The last point usually leads a character to learn 'standard' skills (Melee weapons, Wizardry, Wisdom) first; skills like 'oratory' only starts to be improved when the maximum level in all standard skills has been reached - but then oratory isn't as useful as it could be, because you've other, better skills you can use (plus you already did a lot of quests, so there are not a lot of new 'goals' to reach). The first point is that some 'exotic' skills, even at higher levels, are not effective enough - bows have a bad reputation about that. I don't think this problem is related at all with the skill rules; a separate thinking on 'how to attract players in using such skills' would certainly be a good idea. Whatever the rule system, exotic skills will stay 'ghetto-ized' as long as they're not as fun and powerful as others. Y. Chachkoff ------------------------------------------------ Help supporting JXFire ! (http://jxfire.sf.net) ------------------------------------------------ From pc-crossfire at crowcastle.net Wed Dec 4 13:29:15 2002 From: pc-crossfire at crowcastle.net (Preston Crow) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:09 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] bugs Message-ID: <200212041929.gB4JTFRC007873@lol1120.lss.emc.com> I wrote: >> When you save the window positions and then restart, all the windows shift >> down by the height of the titlebar, at least if you're using twm as your >> window manager (I haven't tried anything else). In my case, I just edited >> the file by hand to subtract 19 from each y coordinate. That's not >> something we should expect people to need to do. Mark Wedel replied: > Works properly with fvwm (that is, windows re-appear where specified). I >remember seeing something someplace that twm did something not quite right in >that regard. As of now, I'll just attribute this to a bug in twm. I found this report of a similar problem in another program: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=75419 It looks like this may not just be a twm issue. The solution is to change how get_window_coord() in gx11.c works. We might want to replace gdk_window_get_origin() with gdk_window_get_root_origin() or gdk_window_get_deskrelative_origin(). I haven't played with that, and I couldn't find documentation on these functions, so I'm not sure what the difference would be. What I did find was that the following works: /* Gets a specified windows coordinates. This function is pretty much * an exact copy out of the server. */ void get_window_coord(GtkWidget *win, int *x,int *y, int *wx,int *wy, int *w,int *h) { int tmp; gdk_window_get_geometry (win->window, x, y, w, h, &tmp); /* gdk_window_get_root_origin (win->window, wx, wy); */ /* gdk_window_get_deskrelative_origin (win->window, wx, wy); */ gdk_window_get_origin (win->window, wx, wy); wx -= x; wy -= y; } With twm as I have it configured, x is 0 and y is 19; the exact amount of the error. If you can confirm that for window managers where the current system is working x and y are both zero, then it looks like we have a solution. I seem to recall the same problem with the x11 client. Looking at the code, I'm guessing that the same fix may work there. --PC From temitchell at sympatico.ca Wed Dec 4 13:21:49 2002 From: temitchell at sympatico.ca (Todd Mitchell) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:09 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New Skill System References: <3DEB3D0F@mailandnews.com> <3DEC3854.5090909@sonic.net> <000401c29af6$ccb76ac0$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> <3DED93CB.2070007@sonic.net> Message-ID: <001701c29bca$6655e700$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> Here are the clarifications to my previous post. > > 1. you start with either a 'class' with a couple skills or get a equal > > amount of 'skill gems' and there is a skill altar in the hall of selection. > > Idea of 'skill gems' or any object you spend to get skills bugs me - I'll go > into more detail on that below. This unfortunate term comes from other discussions, but what is meant here is a visible, non-dropable, inventory only object. It could also be invisible if there were facility in the client to show the number of them in inventory to the player somehow. This is a convienent description for a method of tracking enhancement entitlements directly in opposition to using xp. Skippin ahead to item six for a minute: > > 6. there are skill altars dotted around the world (and a little mini one in > > the random maps) where you can use your gems to increase your skills (x > > number of gems gives you a skill level depending on the skill -altar gets > > input from player 'say list skills, say increase fire magic', checks for the > > skill force and the skills table for cost or available levels - removes > > gems...) [...] > I'm not sure which point you were envisioning. This requires more explanantion on my part. What the skill altar does is provide a place to spend your skill enhancements. Every skill altar is the same (perhaps better to call them training altars). You stand on the altar, you can get a list of all the skills ('say list skills') and you can spend your enhancements to buy or raise your skills ('say raise missile-combat', or 'say learn 'meditation'). This can be done through a client interface or as I originally though just through the regular message window. There should be some flexability in this so that some skills you will have to find/learn (via scroll) before you can use the altar to advance them (for example some special cool magic paths or fighting styles) The altar would have to perform basic player interaction(give and get messages), item checking (looking for required number of 'gems' and existing skill levels) and move gems directly in and out of inventory(update gems and skill levels). This could be done in python plugin pretty easily as a prototype, but imagine it should be done in C. The player information could be stored as a single player information force or as individual forces sort of like it is now. > > 3. every level or so you get a skill gem > > I don't generally like the idea of skill gems or other 'spending' mechanisms > for the character unless they are not done as objects. The problem I see as > doing objects the character spends are many fold: 1) They could give them to > other characters. 2) They might lose them, drop them, sell them, whatever else. > 3) The idea of gems just magically showing up in your inventory just seems a > bit odd to me - it just smacks as too much a way to shortcut writing some actual > code to do the same thing. Point #1 can't be easily solved by making them > startequip if you want the players to spend them on altars (as the startequip > would have them go away before the altar would get a chance to process them). > The 'gems' are only here to keep track of how many enhancements you are entitled to. Basically during the course of your adventures you will stop and say 'gee I have three skill enhancements coming to me - better go use them' This is also the reason that the 'training' altars would be include in the random maps - giving you a possible opportunity to train on the road without having to get back to town. The point of this is to do away with xp for skills altogether while allowing for some method of increasing skills (asymetrically -depending on the skills even) I am not set on a skill gem system, but it does allow for quick notification of enhancement purchasing power and provides a good granular system to do it with (better to see - 'I need 2 skill gems to up my level in prayer or 3 to up my level in melee combat' than to see - 'I need to move 65472 xp into prayer, 32223 into meditation'...) I don't like the idea of pouring xp around different buckets since the only thing that matters is when the bucket is filled. I think that if skills are 'levelized' then there is no need for using messy xp transfer. Oh ya - skill gems would be non-transferrable, non dropable and not stealable (or all hell would break loose I am sure). > > > 4. you can learn some special skills (unlisted) at 'level 1' by scrolls > > still. > > This (IMO) is almost a different discussion. How to get new skills and how > you advance existing skills does not really need to be related. This requires some explanantion on my part. I was not explaining the altar part enough and therefore this made no sense. What this was indended to address were: a: skills that were very basic (no levels - just a single ability) b; skills that were unique (a special skill that is not available through the training altar by default - kind of like special spells not available through shops) > > My personal thought is that there will be no great agreement on the best way > to learn new skills, so keeping it flexible is probably best (skill scrolls > might appear, or the server admin may remove them from random treasure, or make > them exceedingly rare, or you have special quest maps, whatever). Now it would be possible to have the training altar only advance skills and have getting skills done by some other means but since it would be pretty easy to make a standard set of skills available at the altars, I would tend to build this in anyway and then extend the system to check for skills in inventory in addition to the standard set. > > > > 5. you have to buy/find spell books to learn spells and learn them similar > > way as now (int or wis and general level), but they are cast based on your > > skill in that magic area (can't cast or less effect). > > This would basically seem to be the way things are, except there may be more > magic skills. Yes I really like the spell book thing, it is fun and is something worth keeping. > > > 7. skills are put on a table and redone to work on a level system (e.g. > > level 4 in two handed weapon gives you x to hit..., level 12 in meditation > > gives you x hp and sp back, level 9 praying gets you x grace back...) > > Fair enough. All this doesn't necessarily need to be in a table, but the idea > of skills of different levels giving different abilities makes lots of sense. > Eg, if you decide to be level 20 bowyer, you can make magical arrows or whatever. > I think there is support for this idea in of itself. I think you can get a lot of mileage out of this and it does solve the problem of having many single shot skills to advance- for example combining literacy, inscribe and a general identify skill into a single skill (maybe lore or someting) would be cool. You could then get a handle on the lieracy level of items (instead of having so many of different readable item literacy settings you could have say 4 or 5 different literacy levels for items, (like basic, general, medium, advanced, and sagely.) and pad out the skill with inscribing magic levels, identifying some rare items and what not as the skill level is increased. This in addition to using the skill level itself in a calculation for learning a spell or something. From root at garbled.net Wed Dec 4 14:44:00 2002 From: root at garbled.net (Tim Rightnour) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:09 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New Skill System In-Reply-To: <3DED93CB.2070007@sonic.net> Message-ID: On 04-Dec-02 Mark Wedel wrote: > I don't generally like the idea of skill gems or other 'spending' > mechanisms > for the character unless they are not done as objects. The problem I see as > doing objects the character spends are many fold: 1) They could give them to > other characters. 2) They might lose them, drop them, sell them, whatever > else. > 3) The idea of gems just magically showing up in your inventory just seems > a > bit odd to me - it just smacks as too much a way to shortcut writing some > actual I really like the idea of skill gems, or whatever you want to call them for a number of reasons: 1) You can tie lots of things to them. For example, in my mud, players would get skillpoints for going up a level. The could then walk into the guild, and the guildmaster would teach them spells and skills. It was a fun process. When you got your level.. you would sit there in the guild and debate.. "do I want to learn this spell, or that spell? which would help me out more now?" 2) It slows down the aquisition of everything. You can't just start out with the whole pile of books and know everything there is to know. You have to level to get the skillpoints to learn the skills. 3) It's a physical indicator to the player. They look in thier inventory and see "3 skill gems". They know exactly what that means. They can't drop them, they can't pick them up. It's just a visual representation, which makes perfect sense in this game.. as everything is an object. They expect it. 4) I'm loathe to start radically changing the client. I know we shouldn't not progress.. and this reason isn't justification for not doing one system over another.. but really.. if we break the DX client completely.. 60% of our players will only play on older servers. --- Tim Rightnour NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS http://www.netbsd.org/ NetBSD supported hardware database: http://mail-index.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/hw.cgi