From temitchell at sympatico.ca Sun Mar 3 01:27:25 2002 From: temitchell at sympatico.ca (Todd Mitchell) Date: Thu Jan 13 17:53:03 2005 Subject: [cf-admin] maps Message-ID: <000c01c1c284$ddde75a0$0a02a8c0@kameria> Hi, I have set up Crossfire on a Redhat 7.1 and thought everything was working. I use the crossloop script to keep things going and run it as a user I created for this purpose (and for Roger Wilco). I have had a few friends connecting so we could try it out. Everything was/is working in Scorn, but whenever we try to go out the eastern gate I get the message - Map closed. I thought I had installed the maps correctly, but perhaps not. Also I was wondering how often new map sets or updated maps are published and what is the procedure for upgrading them on my installation (just clean out the old map folder and add the new stuff?). Also: If there is a guide (or the beginnings of a guide) for maintining a crossfire server I would be grateful for a peek at it (for things like: is there a way to mute a shouty player? or, I am running with ~128kb up and 600kb down (ADSL) and have 512MB ram on a P2 400 running redhat 7.1 - any ideas on how many people I could have playing at one time?) Thanks- Todd Mitchell -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20020303/e907f9de/attachment.htm From jbontje at suespammers.org Sun Mar 3 12:16:27 2002 From: jbontje at suespammers.org (Joris Bontje) Date: Thu Jan 13 17:53:03 2005 Subject: [cf-admin] maps In-Reply-To: <000c01c1c284$ddde75a0$0a02a8c0@kameria> References: <000c01c1c284$ddde75a0$0a02a8c0@kameria> Message-ID: <20020303181627.GB22908@mids.student.utwente.nl> On Sun, Mar 03, 2002 at 02:27:25AM -0500, Todd Mitchell wrote: > Hi, I have set up Crossfire on a Redhat 7.1 and thought everything was working. > I use the crossloop script to keep things going and run it as a user I created > for this purpose (and for Roger Wilco). I have had a few friends connecting so > we could try it out. Everything was/is working in Scorn, but whenever we try > to go out the eastern gate I get the message - Map closed. I thought I had > installed the maps correctly, but perhaps not. If you can visit scorn, you should be able to visit the other maps too, check the logfiles and look if there are any error messages. > Also I was wondering how often new map sets or updated maps are published and > what is the procedure for upgrading them on my installation (just clean out the > old map folder and add the new stuff?). Sometimes people create new maps. Often they are mailed to the crossfire-devel mailinglist, or they just run on 1 server. After the maps are tested for game balance impact, they will almost always be placed into CVS. Just CVS update and you will get the latest. > Also: If there is a guide (or the > beginnings of a guide) for maintining a crossfire server I would be grateful > for a peek at it (for things like: is there a way to mute a shouty player? or, > I am running with ~128kb up and 600kb down (ADSL) and have 512MB ram on a P2 > 400 running redhat 7.1 - any ideas on how many people I could have playing at > one time?) There are some hints on the official site, but a good document doesnt exist. A lot of admins have their own solutions for common admin practices... that should really be standarized. Any creation is such a document will be appreciated, would you like to start with it? Main crossfire realtime discussion does happen on IRC, ircserver: irc.openprojects.net channel: #crossfire Regards, Joris Bontje / mids -- Gpg Key: Id=0xF19326A9 / http://mids.student.utwente.nl/~mids/jbontje.pub Key fingerprint = 730D 9B3A F406 F28A 957D 6397 31E8 6D4C F193 26A9 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 240 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20020303/13031341/attachment.pgp From temitchell at sympatico.ca Sun Mar 3 15:16:10 2002 From: temitchell at sympatico.ca (Todd Mitchell) Date: Thu Jan 13 17:53:03 2005 Subject: [cf-admin] re:maps Message-ID: <004d01c1c2f8$a4983140$0a02a8c0@kameria> On Sun, Mar 03, 2002 at 02:27:25AM -0500, Todd Mitchell wrote: >> Hi, I have set up Crossfire on a Redhat 7.1 and thought everything was working. >> I use the crossloop script to keep things going and run it as a user I created >> for this purpose (and for Roger Wilco). I have had a few friends connecting so >> we could try it out. Everything was/is working in Scorn, but whenever we try >> to go out the eastern gate I get the message - Map closed. I thought I had >> installed the maps correctly, but perhaps not. >If you can visit scorn, you should be able to visit the other maps too, >check the logfiles and look if there are any error messages. Hi, I went into the logs and saw that there was a problem loading the World maps (although they were there). There is a Perl script (connect.pl) in the world folder so I chown the map files to my crossfire account and the connect.pl and ran it. Now I can go out the east gate. Great. I have no idea if it was running the script or chown, but it works. Does this sound like a reasonable thing to do, or have I gone too far over the edge? >> Also I was wondering how often new map sets or updated maps are published and >> what is the procedure for upgrading them on my installation (just clean out the >> old map folder and add the new stuff?). >Sometimes people create new maps. Often they are mailed to the >crossfire-devel mailinglist, or they just run on 1 server. After the >maps are tested for game balance impact, they will almost always be >placed into CVS. Just CVS update and you will get the latest. >> Also: If there is a guide (or the >> beginnings of a guide) for maintining a crossfire server I would be grateful >> for a peek at it (for things like: is there a way to mute a shouty player? or, >> I am running with ~128kb up and 600kb down (ADSL) and have 512MB ram on a P2 >> 400 running redhat 7.1 - any ideas on how many people I could have playing at >> one time?) >There are some hints on the official site, but a good document doesnt >exist. A lot of admins have their own solutions for common admin >practices... that should really be standarized. Any creation is such a >document will be appreciated, would you like to start with it? I will think about it - not going to weasel out of that question but no promises yet. I spent quite a while picking Crossfire out of the roguelike pile and really think it is quite great. With a week of experience under my belt it will not be comprehensive. Or rapid. I know Perl as well as C which is to say, not at all. I will see what I can snag from the readme files. Any one want to send me procedures, tips, tricks or snippets and I will put them in a pile and perhaps add an index. -Thanks Todd >Main crossfire realtime discussion does happen on IRC, >ircserver: irc.openprojects.net channel: #crossfire >Regards, >Joris Bontje / mids From jbontje at suespammers.org Sun Mar 3 15:35:51 2002 From: jbontje at suespammers.org (Joris Bontje) Date: Thu Jan 13 17:53:04 2005 Subject: [cf-admin] re:maps In-Reply-To: <004d01c1c2f8$a4983140$0a02a8c0@kameria> References: <004d01c1c2f8$a4983140$0a02a8c0@kameria> Message-ID: <20020303213551.GA28529@mids.student.utwente.nl> On Sun, Mar 03, 2002 at 04:16:10PM -0500, Todd Mitchell wrote: > Hi, I went into the logs and saw that there was a problem loading the World > maps (although they were there). There is a Perl script (connect.pl) in the > world folder so I chown the map files to my crossfire account and the > connect.pl and ran it. Now I can go out the east gate. Great. I have no > idea if it was running the script or chown, but it works. Does this sound > like a reasonable thing to do, or have I gone too far over the edge? I think you have the bigworld-maps... that is a mapset upder development, probably you dont want it, just get the normal 'maps' > I will think about it - not going to weasel out of that question but no > promises yet. I spent > quite a while picking Crossfire out of the roguelike pile and really think > it is quite great. With a week of experience under my belt it will not be > comprehensive. Or rapid. I know Perl as well as C which is to say, not at > all. I will see what I can snag from the readme files. Any one want to > send me procedures, tips, tricks or snippets and I will put them in a pile > and perhaps add an index. Some random stuff: Crossfire works fine on a Pentium 233MMX with 256 MB Ram Required diskspace, atleast 250MB Average ram usage, 30-40MB Never run the server as root, create a special user for it. change the message of the day in the MOTD file (share/crossfire/motd) change the dungeon masters in share/crossfire/dm_file change the announcement settings for the metaserver in share/crossfire/settings if you install it to a different location, use the --prefix option with configure, example: ./configure --prefix=/home/crossfire help with dm commands: become a dm, and type: help commands run crossfire with crossloop, so it will restart after crashing make daily backups of the var/crossfire directory, things might break Regards, Joris Bontje / mids -- Gpg Key: Id=0xF19326A9 / http://mids.student.utwente.nl/~mids/jbontje.pub Key fingerprint = 730D 9B3A F406 F28A 957D 6397 31E8 6D4C F193 26A9 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 240 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20020303/0fd83cd1/attachment.pgp From temitchell at sympatico.ca Sat Mar 23 16:09:44 2002 From: temitchell at sympatico.ca (Todd Mitchell) Date: Thu Jan 13 17:53:04 2005 Subject: [cf-admin] crossfire1.1.0 Message-ID: <001301c1d2b7$703bcd20$0a02a8c0@kameria> I just reinstalled using the new 1.1.0 package. I had only one problem - the first time I started crossfire it failed saying it couldn't find the faces file (Joris Bontje replied to this - and I pulled a faces file from the CVS). This is an improvement over last version since I could not get crossfire to install in my /usr/local using the -prefix setting in 1.0.0 (it did but, kept looking for stuff in the /usr/games default.), but this time it worked, so i'm happy. I like the new interaction commands - one of my friends jumped out of their mail when I licked them. I think this is important fluff that really enhances the game. I did notice that some of the skills function differently (was told pray was not working - now you need to fire it off with a direction (?). Also I had to rebind some of the commands in the DX client (use_skill woodsman, literacy..) did the syntax change? - One thing; so far all my players use the DXclient and have reported that it takes longer to load up the images now - I told them to clear out their image cache - but this did not solve the problem- it almost seems like the client will retrieve the images every time you connect. Is this because of the new multiple image set support? I also have a suggestion for a new thing- how about a message board object that could be placed in towns and allow people to put up messages or maybe even an apartment mailbox type of thing (message delivery not free of course - even put in a post kiosk with a jaded employee)? This comes since I noticed that marking rune (all spells actually) don't work the streets of scorn anymore. Thanks to the people working on this game, Crossfire is great. -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20020323/9a9f3d65/attachment.html From mwedel at sonic.net Sat Mar 23 16:06:22 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 17:53:04 2005 Subject: [cf-admin] crossfire1.1.0 References: <001301c1d2b7$703bcd20$0a02a8c0@kameria> Message-ID: <3C9CFC5E.15179DEB@sonic.net> > Todd Mitchell wrote: > > I just reinstalled using the new 1.1.0 package. I had only one problem - the > first time I started crossfire it failed saying it couldn't find the faces > file (Joris Bontje replied to this - and I pulled a faces file from the CVS). > This is an improvement over last version since I could not get crossfire to > install in my /usr/local using the -prefix setting in 1.0.0 (it did but, kept > looking for stuff in the /usr/games default.), but this time it worked, so i'm > happy. Yep - known bug. > > I like the new interaction commands - one of my friends jumped out of their > mail when I licked them. I think this is important fluff that really enhances > the game. I did notice that some of the skills function differently (was told > pray was not working - now you need to fire it off with a direction (?). I don't believe the syntax has changed at all. You can still use just 'use_skill praying'. > Also > I had to rebind some of the commands in the DX client (use_skill woodsman, > literacy..) did the syntax change? - One thing; so far all my players use the > DXclient and have reported that it takes longer to load up the images now - I > told them to clear out their image cache - but this did not solve the problem- > it almost seems like the client will retrieve the images every time you > connect. Is this because of the new multiple image set support? It shouldn't be. But there was a bug in the checksumming code the server used which resulted in improper checksums being generated. This wasn't much an issue if both sides calculated the checksum the same way - however the unix client was calculating them the 'proper' way, resulting in it always thinking the server was wrong. My guess is that the DX client is calculating the same way the server did so before the fix, so it is always downloading new ones even if it has a valid copy. The fix on the server was a no win situation - if it remains as is, many clients (unix ones) are broken and need to get fixed. If it gets changed, then the dx client is broken. The change makes the checksumming compatible with the standard way the checksum should be done, so other external programs, like perl, generate a compatible checksum. > > I also have a suggestion for a new thing- how about a message board object > that could be placed in towns and allow people to put up messages or maybe > even an apartment mailbox type of thing (message delivery not free of course - > even put in a post kiosk with a jaded employee)? This comes since I noticed > that marking rune (all spells actually) don't work the streets of scorn > anymore. I think Joris did some mailbox type thingy with the scripting code, but I'm not sure if it is a standard part. A message board should be similarly easy to do, but some aging factor is needed (otherwise, you would have thousands of messages after some amount of time). The script could actually make things interesting - as it ages, some words or letters randomly disappear, and after some age, the entire message vanishes. From jbontje at suespammers.org Sat Mar 23 19:07:09 2002 From: jbontje at suespammers.org (Joris Bontje) Date: Thu Jan 13 17:53:04 2005 Subject: [cf-admin] crossfire1.1.0 In-Reply-To: <3C9CFC5E.15179DEB@sonic.net> References: <001301c1d2b7$703bcd20$0a02a8c0@kameria> <3C9CFC5E.15179DEB@sonic.net> Message-ID: <20020324010709.GA18005@mids.student.utwente.nl> On Sat, Mar 23, 2002 at 02:06:22PM -0800, Mark Wedel wrote: > > Todd Mitchell wrote: > > I just reinstalled using the new 1.1.0 package. I had only one problem - the > > first time I started crossfire it failed saying it couldn't find the faces > > file (Joris Bontje replied to this - and I pulled a faces file from the CVS). > > This is an improvement over last version since I could not get crossfire to > > install in my /usr/local using the -prefix setting in 1.0.0 (it did but, kept > > looking for stuff in the /usr/games default.), but this time it worked, so i'm > > happy. > > Yep - known bug. We are really thankfull for installation bugs. I am running my server for a long time now, and I never do a fresh install so I wont encounter those. But they really prevent new people from enjoying the game. > > I like the new interaction commands - one of my friends jumped out of their > > mail when I licked them. I think this is important fluff that really enhances > > the game. I did notice that some of the skills function differently (was told > > pray was not working - now you need to fire it off with a direction (?). > > I don't believe the syntax has changed at all. You can still use just > 'use_skill praying'. I, and most people, have bound use_skill praying to some key. I have bound it to 'p' and invoke it 3 times: bind use_skill praying; use_skill praying; use_skill praying press 'p' to bind it to p. > > [cut] > > > I also have a suggestion for a new thing- how about a message board object > > that could be placed in towns and allow people to put up messages or maybe > > even an apartment mailbox type of thing (message delivery not free of course - > > even put in a post kiosk with a jaded employee)? This comes since I noticed > > that marking rune (all spells actually) don't work the streets of scorn > > anymore. > > I think Joris did some mailbox type thingy with the scripting code, but I'm not > sure if it is a standard part. A message board should be similarly easy to do, > but some aging factor is needed (otherwise, you would have thousands of messages > after some amount of time). The script could actually make things interesting - > as it ages, some words or letters randomly disappear, and after some age, the > entire message vanishes. Yes, on my server, mids.student.utwente.nl, I have coded several extentions. There is a player to player mailing system, and there are multiple, in game, messageboards. I don't do aging... cause almost nobody uses it. This is probably because there aren't too many crossfire players :) The sourcecode is licensed under GPL and available on request. Joris Bontje / mids -- Gpg Key: Id=0xF19326A9 / http://mids.student.utwente.nl/~mids/jbontje.pub Key fingerprint = 730D 9B3A F406 F28A 957D 6397 31E8 6D4C F193 26A9 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 240 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20020324/6e84818b/attachment.pgp From mwedel at sonic.net Fri Mar 1 01:55:03 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:09 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] start equipment (RE: town portal) References: <000001c1c0b2$4aa84d20$c86ebb81@gizmo> Message-ID: <3C7F33D7.89C31254@sonic.net> Andreas Vogl wrote: > > - An "apple of life", being a potion of life in fact. > (Description message contains hint about potions of life > and what they do.) any reason to make it an apple vs just giving the normal potion? Not a big deal, but a normal potion may be more identifable as something they've used before. > > - A balm of travelling (WoR, balms never fail - that's > important for newbies). Yeap - not all race/class combinations even start with reading I believe. > > - A decent bunch of lightweight food. Removing the > infinit food auto-generation on HallOfSelection map > (it gets heavily abused for earning money). Give them a bunch of waybreads. > > All of these will have "startequip 1" set, hence vanish > when dropped. Yep. Probably all start equipment should be locked so a player can't acidentally drop and loose all this cool stuff either. > > I believe these items would not only help newbies directly, > they also help them understand how WoR and death-restoration > works. > And all this would be very simple to realize. Yep, and doesn't really shift things in terms of balance. That apple of life will spare the character the need of buying the potion at some point, but it seems in many cases, other players will gift those potions anyways. I would think that balms of travelling should perhaps become more standardized and show up - certainly most low level scrolls should perhaps be made into balms. IF the spell system is redone, then perhaps we should add more refinement for where spells show up (eg, potion/balm, scroll, wand, rod). Right now, all potions are actual archetypes - that probably isn't strictly necessary. Also, wand/rod is grouped into one, so something that shows up in a wand also shows up in a rod. I've long disliked the generation of those items, as level and value is calculated. For scrolls, this becomes annoying as you may have 6 different scrolls of identify that don't merge because they are of different levels - would be much more convenient if the levels were constant, or maybe just one or two (like level 10, 15, or 20, but not the complete range of 10-20). > > Andreas > > _______________________________________________ > crossfire-devel mailing list > crossfire-devel@lists.real-time.com > https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/crossfire-devel From mwedel at sonic.net Fri Mar 1 02:08:26 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:10 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] town portal (RE: CVS commit: maps/city/misc) References: Message-ID: <3C7F36FA.29CCD3A@sonic.net> Tim Rightnour wrote: > > On 28-Feb-02 Andreas Vogl wrote: > > Somehow I agree to what Mark (and others) said here. > > Adjusting spell damage and monster resistance is probably > > a better approach than backfires for attack spells. > > However, worth noting, I don't object to "cute" backfires on spell failure. > Like a 5% chance of a failure causing a cute side effect to occur might be fun. > When I say cute though, I mean silly things, like summoning a chicken, or > turning wine into water. Nothing that affects the player adversly. The idea > being not to deter using spells, but make them a little more colorful. It > should only happen on normal failure though, not increase the chances for > failure. My personal thought is that these cute effects can get pretty tiring pretty quickly. I think only a very small portion of failures should then result in a cute backfire, so when it happens, it actually is novel. > > If there are spells people feel are too powerful, we should get a list going, > identify what makes them so powerful, and tune them down. Yep. Some may be very easy to tune - reduce damage, increase spell point cost, etc. It strikes me the ones that tend to be listed often are because they don't attack with magic (eg, comet), which means it can affect a lot more monsters. > > As for WOR, there are potential abuses for it, but more importantly, it's a > very vital spell. When I start playing, and explore maps, I allways take a > scroll with me, so if I get myself in too deep, or end up trapped, I can bail > in a hurry. Any newbie who has played a mud/moria knows that a WOR can save > your hide. I would go as far to say, we should give one as starting equipment > to every new player. IMO, we really need to sort out in map saving better. Currently, you can basically kill the client and get saved wherever you are (in gtk client, there is close connection). We might as well make that a more formal feature in the client. Quit should probably save the player wherever and then exit, and if a person actually wants to end playing the character, have an option better named than quite (retire, suicide, harikari, whatever). One problem with the current scheme is that it puts you back on the map you quit on. This is both a plus and minus - plus in that it doesn't give you a free word of recall. Minus is that you can sort of due the treasure room cheat. An easy fix for this is that each time a map is loaded from the original file, it is given an id - this id persists when the map is swapped and and re-loaded, but goes away when the map is reset. This id can simply be done as a counter that is increased each time it is assigned. When the player quits via non savebed, this id is then saved in the player file. when the log back in, compare the id in the player file with that the map currently has assigned. IF they are equal, put them back in that same map. IF not equal, put them back to their savebed. This still gives a word of recall type functionality, but at the expense of waiting for the map to reset (typically a couple hours), so this is not likely to be something that would be abused very much. It also has the effect that if a player is playing and the connection is lost for some reason (client crashes for example), they can log back on and basically continue playing from where they left off. From root at garbled.net Fri Mar 1 02:21:31 2002 From: root at garbled.net (Tim Rightnour) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:10 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] start equipment (RE: town portal) In-Reply-To: <000001c1c0b2$4aa84d20$c86ebb81@gizmo> Message-ID: On 28-Feb-02 Andreas Vogl wrote: > My proposion for additional start equipment (for all races): > > - An "apple of life", being a potion of life in fact. > (Description message contains hint about potions of life > and what they do.) > > - A balm of travelling (WoR, balms never fail - that's > important for newbies). > > - A decent bunch of lightweight food. Removing the > infinit food auto-generation on HallOfSelection map > (it gets heavily abused for earning money). I'd take it one step farther, and give them one random artifact, and maybe something like an amulet of life saving. I don't know if we have one in the game, but I'm thinking along the lines of nethack, where it saves your life once, and vaporizes. In this way, they can explore a little, and get a hang of things before getting slaughtered and set back to zero exp. It gives them a free learning experience. Both of these, would obviously dissolve on drop. --- Tim Rightnour NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS http://www.netbsd.org/ NetBSD supported hardware database: http://mail-index.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/hw.cgi From mwedel at sonic.net Fri Mar 1 02:13:06 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:10 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] new quetzal (dragon) race References: <200202262338.g1QNcoD19653@tonks.EECS.Berkeley.EDU> <000001c1bf9f$7458b380$c86ebb81@gizmo> <20020227203835.GA19384@hawthorn.csse.monash.edu.au> Message-ID: <3C7F3812.4C2322@sonic.net> David Hurst wrote: > I am confused with naming, which is the new race? the fire hatchling.. > something which you would expect starts with 100 fire resistance etc > etc. Or the Q? Which IMHO is an even better plan for the Q than the old > one simply because a Q is a very strange creature, and AV's idea sorta > fits better =). My feelings. Maybe dragon hatchling would be a better name, as it doesn't necessarily comit the type of protections the creature may have. As for the Q, the definition that some may expect (from dictionary.com): Quet?zal?co?a?tl Pronunciation Key (kt-s?lk-?tl) n. Mythology A god of the Toltecs and Aztecs, one of the manifestations of the sun god Tezcatlipoca and represented as a plumed serpent. Which definately doesn't match the dragon idea very much. OTOH, the creature isn't really a god in crossfire, so the above definition may not be perfect. From root at garbled.net Fri Mar 1 02:31:51 2002 From: root at garbled.net (Tim Rightnour) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:10 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] town portal (RE: CVS commit: maps/city/misc) In-Reply-To: <20020301000217.GA16860@hawthorn.csse.monash.edu.au> Message-ID: On 01-Mar-02 David Hurst wrote: > Is it just me.. or does the name 'Protector of void' sound particularly > silly? I thought the Void was nothingness, why would you bother > protecting it, and if you did, it wouldn't be a void anymore would it? > come to think of it, if you got sent to the void.. well that's a > contradiction because when you get there, it isn't the void anymore ;) It was just a cool name for the room we sent people who got unlucky with the portal spell. Just to specify what this room was. It was a single room, no exits. In there, there was a single, unbelievably powerful monster, who would kill you pretty much instantly. It was a death sentance. It wasn't a quest you could work your way out of.. it was brutal, gory, death. The reason it worked so well, is that it was so brutal, people were mortified of it. When they portaled around, they seriously considered if it was worth the risk or not, and sometimes, they paid the piper. I think we had it set at around 4-5%. The monster was unnamed on our mud.. but it was a kind of etheral warp-being. The last thing the players ever saw was a flurry of combat followed by "Something killed you". (usually by decapitation too) If I were to design it for CF, I would make a 5x5 room, with nowhere to hide, put you in one corner, and a 2x2 evil thing in the other corner, and make it so you couldn't teleport out. There was an interesting side effect though of this. The "we've done it all" type players who were bored, would spend all day portalling around town trying to get sucked into the void so they could kill the beast. It could only be killed by decapitation, so they wore the head it dropped like a prize. (very few ever killed it, because it would usually get the first blow in with a 300HP backstab). It was considered to be one of the ultimate challenges on the mud. --- Tim Rightnour NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS http://www.netbsd.org/ NetBSD supported hardware database: http://mail-index.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/hw.cgi From root at garbled.net Fri Mar 1 02:44:26 2002 From: root at garbled.net (Tim Rightnour) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:10 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] town portal (RE: CVS commit: maps/city/misc) In-Reply-To: <3C7F36FA.29CCD3A@sonic.net> Message-ID: On 01-Mar-02 Mark Wedel wrote: > My personal thought is that these cute effects can get pretty tiring pretty > quickly. I think only a very small portion of failures should then result in > a > cute backfire, so when it happens, it actually is novel. I agree. there should be a low percentage chance.. and not a percentage of failure chance, a hard percentage, so newbies don't get bombarded with chickens. Like I said. Backfires can be cute, as game flavor. But I in no way think they should have any game effect. No damage, no effects, no status changes, just a pretty light show. Otherwise being a mage can suck. Since I'm on a tangent kick today.. After spending weeks writing really cool backfire code into the mud, and then having to rip it back out because the players wanted to revolt, I found another use for it. I made a wildmage class. :) The basic theory is a mage, who has immense natural power, but no control. He can unleash powerful magic, but can't allways make it do what he wants. It's like a wand of wonder, with a little bit of die weighting, and a much bigger kick. Basically, you would cast, and get a random die weighting based on your level and int, and depending on your target (yourself, enemy) it would weight the dice towards the good end of the scale for you. (The scale went from healing to death, so for self casting, you would weight towards healing).. Then, a random amount of mana went in, which determined the power of the spell. It made for an interesting class.. but definately one for the more pychotic player, as alot of times you would end up casting full heals on your enemies, or blowing your own head off. --- Tim Rightnour NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS http://www.netbsd.org/ NetBSD supported hardware database: http://mail-index.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/hw.cgi From jbontje at suespammers.org Fri Mar 1 04:03:08 2002 From: jbontje at suespammers.org (Joris Bontje) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:10 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] town portal (RE: CVS commit: maps/city/misc) In-Reply-To: References: <20020301000217.GA16860@hawthorn.csse.monash.edu.au> Message-ID: <20020301100308.GA19542@mids.student.utwente.nl> On Fri, Mar 01, 2002 at 01:31:51AM -0700, Tim Rightnour wrote: > > On 01-Mar-02 David Hurst wrote: > > Is it just me.. or does the name 'Protector of void' sound particularly > > silly? I thought the Void was nothingness, why would you bother > > protecting it, and if you did, it wouldn't be a void anymore would it? > > come to think of it, if you got sent to the void.. well that's a > > contradiction because when you get there, it isn't the void anymore ;) > > It was just a cool name for the room we sent people who got unlucky with the > portal spell > > [nice story] > > There was an interesting side effect though of this. The "we've done it all" > type players who were bored, would spend all day portalling around town trying > to get sucked into the void so they could kill the beast. It could only be > killed by decapitation, so they wore the head it dropped like a prize. (very > few ever killed it, because it would usually get the first blow in with a 300HP > backstab). It was considered to be one of the ultimate challenges on the mud. If the monster can be killed, but you cant leave the room, what happens? Won't you be locked there forever? Joris Bontje / mids -- Gpg Key: Id=0xF19326A9 / http://mids.student.utwente.nl/~mids/jbontje.pub Key fingerprint = 730D 9B3A F406 F28A 957D 6397 31E8 6D4C F193 26A9 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 240 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20020301/6a97e208/attachment.pgp From root at garbled.net Fri Mar 1 09:43:25 2002 From: root at garbled.net (Tim Rightnour) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:10 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] town portal (RE: CVS commit: maps/city/misc) In-Reply-To: <20020301100308.GA19542@mids.student.utwente.nl> Message-ID: On 01-Mar-02 Joris Bontje wrote: > If the monster can be killed, but you cant leave the room, what happens? > Won't you be locked there forever? Actually.. yeah.. that did happen. But the way we solved it is irrelevant, because it wouldn't work in CF. (we never expected anyone to load up on potions and hunt it) I'm sure some sort of trigger mechanisim could be devised. But the point isn't to make the monster killable. It should be designed in such a way that we think it is unkillable, until someone (if ever) proves us wrong. --- Tim Rightnour NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS http://www.netbsd.org/ NetBSD supported hardware database: http://mail-index.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/hw.cgi From andi.vogl at gmx.net Fri Mar 1 11:37:12 2002 From: andi.vogl at gmx.net (Andreas Vogl) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:10 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] town portal (RE: CVS commit: maps/city/misc) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <000801c1c147$bc33e180$c86ebb81@gizmo> in reply to garbled: > > If the monster can be killed, but you cant leave the room, > > what happens Won't you be locked there forever? > > Actually.. yeah.. that did happen. But the way we solved it > is irrelevant, because it wouldn't work in CF. [...] > I'm sure some sort of trigger mechanisim could be devised. Technically this is no problem. I already placed such mechanisms in several of my maps. For example, look at "pup_land/ancient/ruin/path" and "pup_land/castle_eureca/chest". We could do it pretty much like in garble's mud. Call it "something" and make it invisible. (Of course it can be turned visible by spell). Not sure though, if invisibility works on multisquares. Andreas From tanner at real-time.com Fri Mar 1 16:37:04 2002 From: tanner at real-time.com (Bob Tanner) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:10 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Re: [Crossfire-cvs] CVS commit: crossfire In-Reply-To: ; from crossfire-cvs-admin@lists.sourceforge.net on Fri, Mar 01, 2002 at 02:17:10PM -0800 References: Message-ID: <20020301163704.T4289@real-time.com> Quoting crossfire-cvs-admin@lists.sourceforge.net (crossfire-cvs-admin@lists.sourceforge.net): > > Module Name: crossfire > Committed By: avogl > Date: Fri Mar 1 22:17:10 UTC 2002 > > + Added new dragon race to crossfire. > + Players of this dragon race can gain resistances > + by eating the flesh of their defeated foes. I think this should have been a branch off the main trunk. Since the code is beta, it "forces" all other servers implement this code even if all you want is some bug fix on the main trunk. -- Bob Tanner | Phone : (952)943-8700 http://www.mn-linux.org, Minnesota, Linux | Fax : (952)943-8500 Key fingerprint = 6C E9 51 4F D5 3E 4C 66 62 A9 10 E5 35 85 39 D9 From andi.vogl at gmx.net Fri Mar 1 20:15:58 2002 From: andi.vogl at gmx.net (Andreas Vogl) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:10 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Re: [Crossfire-cvs] CVS commit: crossfire In-Reply-To: <20020301163704.T4289@real-time.com> Message-ID: <000001c1c190$349efa90$c86ebb81@gizmo> in reply to Bob Tanner: > > + Added new dragon race to crossfire. > > + Players of this dragon race can gain resistances > > + by eating the flesh of their defeated foes. > > I think this should have been a branch off the main trunk. > Since the code is beta, it "forces" all other servers > implement this code even if all you want is some bug fix > on the main trunk. That's ridiculous. You shouldn't complain when you obviously don't read the cf-devel list. I've sent about a hundred mails announcing and explaining my patch. Everybody agreed to it. So go make your own branch if you need one. Andreas From tanner at real-time.com Fri Mar 1 20:43:13 2002 From: tanner at real-time.com (Bob Tanner) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:10 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Attitudes, egos, branches and stability of a server In-Reply-To: <000001c1c190$349efa90$c86ebb81@gizmo>; from andi.vogl@gmx.net on Sat, Mar 02, 2002 at 03:15:58AM +0100 References: <20020301163704.T4289@real-time.com> <000001c1c190$349efa90$c86ebb81@gizmo> Message-ID: <20020301204313.Q4289@real-time.com> Quoting Andreas Vogl (andi.vogl@gmx.net): > in reply to Bob Tanner: > > > > + Added new dragon race to crossfire. > > > + Players of this dragon race can gain resistances > > > + by eating the flesh of their defeated foes. > > > > I think this should have been a branch off the main trunk. > > Since the code is beta, it "forces" all other servers > > implement this code even if all you want is some bug fix > > on the main trunk. > > That's ridiculous. You shouldn't complain when you obviously > don't read the cf-devel list. I've sent about a hundred mails > announcing and explaining my patch. Everybody agreed to it. > So go make your own branch if you need one. Dude, you blow things way out of proportion. It's 6 posts. And I did read the posts -all- 6 of them. And everyone did NOT agree, PM seems to have some concerns. http://mailman.real-time.com/pipermail/crossfire-devel/2002-February/002995.html http://mailman.real-time.com/pipermail/crossfire-devel/2002-February/002999.html And a -WHOLE- 3 days Feb 26 - Mar 1 to think about the idea and agree to it. Just is not enough time for -everybody- to agree to it. My point is you added untested/unproven code to the main trunk. Now when Mark or gros make a patch/bug fix (which both have done by looking at backtrackes and logs for metalforge) and commit them to the main trunk. I, and every other server admin out there will have to incorporate your unproven code into our servers, just to get the bug fix/patch. As an aside, I do not know why you are so hostile. Don't know If it's residue anger for the CFJavaEditor thing, or what. I apologized for my transgresses and tried to work with you on a compromise. The compromise was you blew away my work and call is "useless". So, I just stepped back and have decided not to work on that project because of your inability to work with other developers (or just me) and compromise on ideas. Your attitude makes me want to leave the crossfire community. -- Bob Tanner | Phone : (952)943-8700 http://www.mn-linux.org, Minnesota, Linux | Fax : (952)943-8500 Key fingerprint = 6C E9 51 4F D5 3E 4C 66 62 A9 10 E5 35 85 39 D9 From mwedel at sonic.net Fri Mar 1 22:29:24 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:10 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Re: [Crossfire-cvs] CVS commit: crossfire References: <000001c1c190$349efa90$c86ebb81@gizmo> Message-ID: <3C805524.5FD62836@sonic.net> Andreas Vogl wrote: > > in reply to Bob Tanner: > > > > + Added new dragon race to crossfire. > > > + Players of this dragon race can gain resistances > > > + by eating the flesh of their defeated foes. > > > > I think this should have been a branch off the main trunk. > > Since the code is beta, it "forces" all other servers > > implement this code even if all you want is some bug fix > > on the main trunk. > > That's ridiculous. You shouldn't complain when you obviously > don't read the cf-devel list. I've sent about a hundred mails > announcing and explaining my patch. Everybody agreed to it. > So go make your own branch if you need one. Perhaps Andreas can confirm, but I would guess that this code is only ever executed if someone chooses to play the dragon race. If thats the case, then servers that don't want to use it can just remove that from the archetypes, and then players won't be able to select it. From pjka at jyu.fi Fri Mar 1 23:33:57 2002 From: pjka at jyu.fi (Pertti Karppinen (OH6KTR)) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:10 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] scorelist Message-ID: I did this ugly perl script to win an argument opinion. It actuallly works ok, sample the output at: htttp://crossfire.jyu.fi/scores.html Source will get available , after I make the DM flagging realtime (hardcoded now) Real time login script will get out of this one in a very short while ... so I can have my webpage show who is playing now, and what she's playing. BSc. Pertti Karppinen | Online Solutions Ltd |'Bridge Players | | http://www.solutions.fi | Do | http://www.iki.fi/~pjka/ | Office : +358 14 445 5100 | It | HAM: OH6KTR QTH: KP22UF | Cellular: +358 40 564 0786 | on the Table' | From mwedel at sonic.net Sat Mar 2 02:32:45 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:10 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Attitudes, egos, branches and stability of a server References: <20020301163704.T4289@real-time.com> <000001c1c190$349efa90$c86ebb81@gizmo> <20020301204313.Q4289@real-time.com> Message-ID: <3C808E2D.DA82B2E5@sonic.net> More than once, the debate/question of branching CVS has come up, and whether the CVS repository should be a 'stable' release or not. I think we had this discussion just a couple months ago. The general consensus seems to be that it is not worth the effort/hassle of doing branches. My personal thought is that if we do start doing branches, it probably makes more sense to make a 'stable' branch, instead of branching for each feature. The main reasons for this are: 1) Most bugfixes tend to make small changes to the code, so tend to be easier to backport from the main branch. 2) Because the changes are small, much less likely to have conflicts. 3) the main CVS branch really is the latest and bugiest, which is probably what it should be. I don't know the issues behind the java editor. but IMO, AV pretty much followed proper protocol on this checkin: He discussed it ahead of time, made changes to fix some peoples issue with the code, and then checked it in. Maybe the discussion time wasn't really long, but at the same time, the amount of code isn't tremendous. Since it has been agreed that CVS is for latest and greatest, people running CVS know their is risk of new bugs. That is nothing new - in any case, AV would have had to put this code into CVS at some point - realistically, that is the only way to really work out the bugs and potential balance issues. From yann.chachkoff at MailAndNews.com Sat Mar 2 04:38:48 2002 From: yann.chachkoff at MailAndNews.com (Yann Chachkoff) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:10 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] About CVS server stability. Message-ID: <3CB38072@MailAndNews.com> > My personal thought is that if we do start doing branches, it probably makes >more sense to make a 'stable' branch, instead of branching for each feature. >The main reasons for this are: > >1) Most bugfixes tend to make small changes to the code, so tend to be easier to >backport from the main branch. >2) Because the changes are small, much less likely to have conflicts. >3) the main CVS branch really is the latest and bugiest, which is probably what >it should be. > I agree with that. When a new feature pops out, we put it on the devel CVS. Then, if after some tests it looks stable enough, we make a release (either as a new package or a commit in the "stable" CVS repository). The best thing would be of course to test only one addition at a time, but I do understand it could be quite difficult to achieve. Maybe the sourceforge features (those under the "tracker" subsection) should be more intensively used ? > I don't know the issues behind the java editor. but IMO, AV pretty much >followed proper protocol on this checkin: He discussed it ahead of time, made >changes to fix some peoples issue with the code, and then checked it in. Maybe >the discussion time wasn't really long, but at the same time, the amount of code >isn't tremendous. > That's right. On the other hand, it seems that a general consensus wasn't achieved. > Since it has been agreed that CVS is for latest and greatest, people running >CVS know their is risk of new bugs. That is nothing new - in any case, AV would >have had to put this code into CVS at some point - realistically, that is the >only way to really work out the bugs and potential balance issues. Since there are not a lot of "stable" releases, the CVS is the only realistic source for up-to-date stuff. Most people will use it simply because the stable packages are 6 months old and thus quite outdated. I agree that when you use the CVS, you also understand the risks. But if there are no serious alternative to CVS, then we need to ensure that the code in it is stable enough under normal circumstances. Now I also disagree when you say that it is the "only way to really work out the bugs" - patches do exist and are commonly used in other projects when submitting new stuff (that also explains why sourceforge has a "patches" service). Why are we unable to use them more widely ? I repeat again what I've said a lot: if we do not agree on a clear submission/test/update protocol, the problems will get worse and will *not* solve by themselves. Of course, this is just my opinion - maybe I'm as wrong as usual :) Y. Chachkoff ------------------------------------------------ Visit http://www.chachkoff.pronym.org for a journey into a fantastic world ! (But don't expect too much...) GPG: http://www.chachkoff.pronym.org/gros.pub ------------------------------------------------ From root at garbled.net Sat Mar 2 10:07:52 2002 From: root at garbled.net (Tim Rightnour) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:11 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] About CVS server stability. In-Reply-To: <3CB38072@MailAndNews.com> Message-ID: On 02-Mar-02 Yann Chachkoff wrote: > Now I also disagree when you say that it is the "only way to really work out > the bugs" - patches do exist and are commonly used in other projects when > submitting new stuff (that also explains why sourceforge has a "patches" > service). Why are we unable to use them more widely ? > > I repeat again what I've said a lot: if we do not agree on a clear > submission/test/update protocol, the problems will get worse and will *not* > solve by themselves. IMHO, alot of this is semi-rediculous. 1) Branching. I wholeheartedly agree with Mark. If we are going to have branches, they need to be stable branches. I don't want to write code, and then backport it to the "stable" CVS trunk. If someone wants there to be a stable branch, somebody needs to step up, and claim responsibility for it, and do the work needed to maintain it. And then they need to be prepared for the fact that some of us aren't going to backport our code to it. 2) It's CVS. It's a live development copy. I don't understand why people seem to have it in thier heads that CVS is allways going to be stable, and happy. If you aren't willing to put up with the fact that from time to time, CVS may have code in it that makes things worse than they were before, then don't run a non-release version. If you want your server to be on the bleeding edge, you need to be prepared to bleed. 3) Patches are only useful for shaking out bugs if you have a critical mass of users. We don't have that many servers out there. If none of them run the patch, it doesn't get tested. Don't get me wrong.. I don't think we should just throw code willy nilly into the server, nor do I think we should be stuffing wholly untested code into it, or nasty hacks. But lets have some scope here. This is a game. We aren't being paid to work on it. It's not *fun* to have to backport all your work N times. It's not fun to have to write a test suite for everything you do. If I screw up CVS, the electric arm doesn't fly through the wall and kill someone. However.. just about every time anyone has committed anything larger than a bugfix in the past few months, someone turns around and threatens to quit. I'm truly terrfied that eventually, we will reach this stage where everything has to be proposed in a formal proposal, given 9 months of discussion, and has to be unanimously agreed upon before hitting the tree with a host of crazy regression suites. Thats NOT FUN. I want to have fun, and write code. I don't want to be embroiled in political process for every line of code I write. Maybe we do need a formal procedure, but I implore whoever writes it, to consider that we aren't writing space shuttle navigation code, it's a video game. --- Tim Rightnour NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS http://www.netbsd.org/ NetBSD supported hardware database: http://mail-index.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/hw.cgi From yann.chachkoff at softhome.net Sat Mar 2 13:46:42 2002 From: yann.chachkoff at softhome.net (yann.chachkoff@softhome.net) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:11 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] About CVS server stability. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <20020302194642.14228.qmail@softhome.net> > > I repeat again what I've said a lot: if we do not agree on a clear > > submission/test/update protocol, the problems will get worse and will *not* > > solve by themselves. > > IMHO, alot of this is semi-rediculous. > > 1) Branching. I wholeheartedly agree with Mark. If we are going to have > branches, they need to be stable branches. Did I ever said the contrary ? > 2) It's CVS. It's a live development copy. I don't understand why people seem > to have it in thier heads that CVS is allways going to be stable, and happy. Correct me if I'm wrong, but where did I say CVS should be the "stable" repository ? What I simply say is: we need to provide stable releases on a regular basis. It can be from the CVS, although I think there are much better solutions available. > 3) Patches are only useful for shaking out bugs if you have a critical mass of > users. We don't have that many servers out there. If none of them run the > patch, it doesn't get tested. I agree that if no one uses the patches, they are useless. But what do you call "the critical mass" ? Do you think we need 20 servers to test a piece of new code ? > Don't get me wrong.. I don't think we should just throw code willy nilly into > the server, nor do I think we should be stuffing wholly untested code into it, > or nasty hacks. But lets have some scope here. This is a game. I never said you shouldn't have fun with CF coding. Where did I say such a thing ? And if you don't agree with the idea of testing the code before making it available for the users, what solution do you suggest ? Besides this, don't you think there any developer has some kind of responsability over all those users who just play crossfire and do not know anything about its internals ? Coding for your pleasure is indeed a good motivation, but what about all the users behind ? Should we ignore them and their possible complaints just because 'it is not fun to test code' ? > > However.. just about every time anyone has committed anything larger than a > bugfix in the past few months, someone turns around and threatens to quit. I'm > truly terrfied that eventually, we will reach this stage where everything has > to be proposed in a formal proposal, given 9 months of discussion, and has to > be unanimously agreed upon before hitting the tree with a host of crazy > regression suites. Thats NOT FUN. I want to have fun, and write code. I > don't want to be embroiled in political process for every line of code I write. Who spoke about political discussions about a piece of code ? Do you think documenting code and letting other coders say what they think about it is 'political' ? Who spoke about 'crazy regression suites' ? I just suggested a test period (maybe one or two weeks) ! Of course, testing and debugging is *not* the funniest thing to do - but it is a necessary think do do. > Maybe we do need a formal procedure, but I implore whoever writes it, to > consider that we aren't writing space shuttle navigation code, it's a video > game. Who spoke about writing a space shuttle navigation code ??? Is it too difficult to understand that we need to *test* code at least a little before putting it into the main source of updates ? To make my suggestion clearer, since it looks like I was misunderstood: - Make stable releases available much more often than now; - Don't put untested code in the stable releases; - Every developer should take some time testing others' stuff. If you think it is 'no fun' and 'political procedure' then maybe I'm too concerned about users and what they want to get. Maybe I should think less about them and more about my own satisfaction. (And to make things clearer: I do not blame AV's new submission in that case - there was enough discussions about the new class IMO, and testing it was indeed not a bad idea) Y. Chachkoff From mwedel at sonic.net Sun Mar 3 01:10:09 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:11 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] About CVS server stability. References: <20020302194642.14228.qmail@softhome.net> Message-ID: <3C81CC51.5DB072C5@sonic.net> I've enclosed the CVS checking doc at the end of this message. but it seems to me the issue of the discussion has gotten a bit off track from the start. From the guide at the end, the developer is supposed to do testing before checkin. This of course does not mean bug free (ideally yes, but realistically no). As I've said previously, you can do cvs checkouts at an arbitrary date. So if someone wants to checkout CVS as it was before AV's patch, they just need to do a cvs checkout -d 02/27/2002 (or whatever). As a note, I think the main CVS branch should be the one with the new features. The guidelines for CVS checkins should be followed. The main issue in this case seems to be the desire to be able to be able to apply possible future patches without this piece of the code. Of course, there may be no new patches done until after this becomes stable - who knows. but I think if that is the case, then perhaps the easiest thing is to just keep a patch archive of all bugfixes done past this release, and the people that need the stable release can apply that patch archive. When its fairly clear that this modification is 'safe', then people jsut re-base to the CVS at that point. Of course, the patches would also go in CVS. The problem with this approach is keeping this extra patch file. The bigger question is how many people will actually use this - if only one or two servers care about this, then probably those server admins should be the ones that take responsiblity for this. CVS checkin process: 1) All checkins should include a log message. Included in the log message should be what changed (files), why it changed (what new feature or bug was fixed), as well as the date and time (while CVS does stamp these automatically, it can be easier to read the log for that information than looking at the CVS header). It is not necessary to go into a long exposition, and pasting the actual changes is not generally useful. But this log message should be useful for someone looking over the logs at a future point to see what did change. Having a log like 'various skill stuff' isn't very useful. A log message like 'prevent abuse with the literacy skill, and increase chance of singing' is much more useful, and not a lot more words. One of the main uses of the log entries is when bugs are reported where behaviour changed between version X and Y to be able to look at the log entries and get an idea of what specific revision may have caused that change. If doing a commit of several different files at each time, and the commits are different in nature, do try to at least mention what is changing in each file. Do not refer to other files or other log messages. Saying 'see changes file' is not useful, nor is a message like 'continuing with last set of commits'. Such messages are not useful when trying to look back through the logs at a future point. There is no excuse for not having a good log entry. Worst case, cut and past from the CHANGES file or those prior commits. My typical method of doing commits is filling out the CHANGES file, and then copying/pasting from that when I do the commit. Please also update the CHANGES file for the appropriate distribution - this is very useful to look through to get an idea of everything that has changed since some release. Very minor things (eg, fixing typos, or other things that don't actually effect how the program runs) do not need to be in the CHANGES file. 2) All checkins should go through at least minimum testing: For source code, this means it compiles and at least a basic test has been done (for example, if it is a new spell, have you tried casting the spell?) This basic testing implies the code at least compiles also. I realize it is very difficult to do 100% testing of code, but at least a basic test should be done. All source code should also be ANSI & POSIX compliant. Don't use // for comments. Be careful of new library calls that are not being used elsewhere in the source - there may be a reason they are not being used. "it compiles on my system" is not justification for writing code that does not work elsewhere. It is understandable that you may not know that the code written is non portable, but once this is learned, it should be corrected. For archetypes, this testing should involve rebuilding the arch file and running with the new file. There should be no errors in the loading of the archetype files. For maps, this means that the map should load, and the exits should lead back and forth. Note that maps in the unlinked directory are more work in progress so can be checked in a more experimental state. 3) Style & Balance: Your changes may work, but do they fit in with the rest of the game. This basically means following the files guides that already existing, eg doc/programming_guide, doc/mapguide There really is no arch guide, but take common sense. Does the object fit in with the game (ie, a blaster rifle would not), is this arch very unbalancing, etc. 4) Before starting a big project, send a note to the mailing list asking for opinions. While it is not possible to prevent someone working on whatever they may want, if the general consensus is that it is a bad idea, you may want to find that out before spending a lot of work on it only to find out that your idea will not get added to the game. 5) Take responsibility for your code. If you check in something and a bug is reported in it, go an fix it. 6) Look at the testplans, and if your code may benefit from them, use them. Likewise, if you develope a testplan for your code, record it in the testplan directory. Mark Wedel May 12, 2001 From smurf at CSUA.Berkeley.EDU Mon Mar 4 03:31:09 2002 From: smurf at CSUA.Berkeley.EDU (Scott MacFiggen) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:11 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] About CVS server stability. In-Reply-To: ; from root@garbled.net on Sat, Mar 02, 2002 at 09:07:52AM -0700 References: <3CB38072@MailAndNews.com> Message-ID: <20020304013109.A21829@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU> > 2) It's CVS. It's a live development copy. I don't understand why people seem > to have it in thier heads that CVS is allways going to be stable, and happy. > If you aren't willing to put up with the fact that from time to time, CVS may > have code in it that makes things worse than they were before, then don't run a > non-release version. If you want your server to be on the bleeding edge, you > need to be prepared to bleed. This is an invalid argument with respect to Crossfire because crossfire hardly ever does stable releases. The open source mantra is release early and release often but the last crossfire stable release was client 1.1.. That was what? 6 months ago? And before that it was like a year or something since 1.0 was released? Crossfire should absolutley have a stable branch and a development branch. I'm clueless about CVS but I know with perforce it is pretty easy to merge changes into another branch. -Scott From jbontje at suespammers.org Mon Mar 4 11:26:21 2002 From: jbontje at suespammers.org (Joris Bontje) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:11 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] CVS binary flags Message-ID: <20020304172621.GA10190@mids.student.utwente.nl> Somebody had problems retrieving binaries (images) from the CVS with wincvs, the newlines in those were altered. I have set the binary flags to all png files in arch and the 2 big png collections (crossfire.0 and .1) in the server module. If you add new files and want to set the binary flag: cvs admin -kb file.png Regards, Joris Bontje / mids -- Gpg Key: Id=0xF19326A9 / http://mids.student.utwente.nl/~mids/jbontje.pub Key fingerprint = 730D 9B3A F406 F28A 957D 6397 31E8 6D4C F193 26A9 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 240 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20020304/ec3072db/attachment.pgp From peterm at tonks.EECS.Berkeley.EDU Tue Mar 5 12:26:07 2002 From: peterm at tonks.EECS.Berkeley.EDU (Peter Mardahl) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:11 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Attitudes, egos, branches and stability of a server In-Reply-To: Message from Bob Tanner of "Fri, 01 Mar 2002 20:43:13 CST." <20020301204313.Q4289@real-time.com> Message-ID: <200203051826.g25IQ7x03479@tonks.EECS.Berkeley.EDU> > Quoting Andreas Vogl (andi.vogl@gmx.net): > > in reply to Bob Tanner: > > > > That's ridiculous. You shouldn't complain when you obviously > > don't read the cf-devel list. I've sent about a hundred mails > > announcing and explaining my patch. Everybody agreed to it. > > So go make your own branch if you need one. > > Dude, you blow things way out of proportion. It's 6 posts. And I did read the > posts -all- 6 of them. > > And everyone did NOT agree, PM seems to have some concerns. For the record, I did indeed have some concerns, but AV *did* compromise enough to satisfy me. AV agreed to use a new name and modify the images, so that reverse compatibility with the old Quetzalcoatl race is preserved. AV and I still disagree about how the coding ought to have been done, but my position is, and always has been, that the guy actually doing the work ought to have his way about how to implement things, unless there is some horrible mistake being made. Bob's right about the discussion spanning 6, instead of 100, posts. I don't know anything about the CFJavaEditor flap, it sounds like some mistakes may have been made. I can only hope everyone will treat each other, and each other's work, with respect. PeterM From mwedel at sonic.net Tue Mar 5 23:09:38 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:11 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] client image handling changes. Message-ID: <3C85A492.EF63F931@sonic.net> I'm doing work on making the client deal with the multiple image set in an intelligent manner, as well as moving a bit of the code into the more common area (can't do that with the image creation, but certainly the handling of the cache and finding images and so forth). But what thing I plan to do unless there is a very vocal outcry is make cache_images behaviour the only supported option. This is done to simplify the code, and the cases where you would not want to use that cache behaviour are very limited (the only case readily available is if you are playing on a server with very close (eg, LAN) connectivity and don't ever plan to play on other servers). Let me describe a bit more the changes I am doing: First, in addition to looking for images in your ~/.crossfire directory, I have added support for a common system wide location ($PREFIX/crossfire-images/...). As part of this, an crossfire-image archive will be distributed, so that generally images don't need to get downloaded from the server. The client now has a hash table used for caching. This hash table contains the image name, the local pathname to the image, and the checksum. IT also knows whether that image is in the public cache, or in the per user cache (~/.crossfire/images/...) The caching mechanism is basically the same - when the server runs across an image it hasn't told the client about, it tells the client that image X is known by name Z, has checksum S, and belongs to set Q. The client then looks through its hash table to see if it has anything that matches, and if so, it loads it up, or re-uses it if it had created it from previously play (so on another server or just from re-connecting to the same server). As it is now, the client actually doesn't care about the set. If the client doesn't have the image, it requests it from the server. It then writes it to disk, and updates is cache tables. Note that it never overwrites/deletes previous entries - thus, if server A is using one image for its main set, and server B is using a different image for it main set, your cache still remains useful - it will just contain the images from server A and B. In the long term, this could of course pose a problem as your cache fills up with obsolete images, but there is no easy way to know if an image is obsolete (maybe a server you infrequently plays on still uses it) I should detail a bit more what I mean when it re-uses it. Lets say you are playing on metalforge - its created a bunch of images (sdl or x-server or whatever). You then save that character, and switch to another server (don't quit the client, just changing where you play). For all the images it created (rendered) while on metalforge, it will re-use those on the new server (presuming checksum and other details match). Thus, it saves cpu time by not having to re-render the images each time you connect to a new server as long as your client continues to run. Note the downside to this is that it uses more memory. One other reason these rendered images are done is that it then makes relatively quick to switch between sets - it just basically has to update pointers to what things look at. Note that the gfx directory to override images still exist, so if you always want to use some particular image for something, you can by putting it in there. While I haven't done it yet, I also plan to add support for the client to download (as needed) and render all images the server is using before play starts. This increases startup time some, but then reduces potential lag during play. To do this is any reasonable fashion also has to use the caching mechanism. So in summary, here are the reasons to only allowing caching: 1) less bandwidth needed, as images will be local. 2) related to above, less stress on the server. 3) simpler code for the client. 4) Allows the client to do more complex things - if we don't cache, we never get the image name, so can't re-use the image data when we go to the next server. Why not: 1) more local disk space needed (few megabytes) for the images. 2) Until the cache is built up, some rendering slowdown (as the client has send the request to the server and await the actual image data to return, having nothing to display in the man time - this will be alleviated by having the images rendered before start) 3) larger memory footprint for the client, as it is storing more of this data in memory (its unclear if this will be significant - if most the servers are using the same images, which is typical, memory size will be roughly the same - only bigger if you are switching between image sets or the servers are using different image sets). In any case, thats where I am now - while having lots of options is nice, it sometimes makes life more complicated and ends up not really being worth it. Note that I have no plans to remove the non cache image support from the server - so older clients could still use the non cache approach. This is basically just the unix client as it moves forward. From smurf at CSUA.Berkeley.EDU Wed Mar 6 15:55:25 2002 From: smurf at CSUA.Berkeley.EDU (Scott MacFiggen) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:11 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] client image handling changes. In-Reply-To: <3C85A492.EF63F931@sonic.net>; from mwedel@sonic.net on Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 09:09:38PM -0800 References: <3C85A492.EF63F931@sonic.net> Message-ID: <20020306135525.A85097@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU> On Tue, Mar 05, 2002 at 09:09:38PM -0800, Mark Wedel wrote: > But what thing I plan to do unless there is a very vocal outcry is make > cache_images behaviour the only supported option. This is done to simplify the > code, and the cases where you would not want to use that cache behaviour are > very limited (the only case readily available is if you are playing on a server > with very close (eg, LAN) connectivity and don't ever plan to play on other > servers). The only complaint I have about this has to do with how the client currently caches images. At the moment when I play on a LAN server using image caching is actually slower because the client stores each image in a seperate file in the cache directory. So everytime I get an image it has to open a file, write the data, and close the file which results in a disk sync. Using a single memory mapped based file would probably be better, and much faster. -Scott From mwedel at sonic.net Wed Mar 6 22:23:49 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:11 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] client image handling changes. References: <3C85A492.EF63F931@sonic.net> <20020306135525.A85097@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU> Message-ID: <3C86EB55.17E33E38@sonic.net> Scott MacFiggen wrote: > The only complaint I have about this has to do with how the client currently > caches images. At the moment when I play on a LAN server using image > caching is actually slower because the client stores each image in a > seperate file in the cache directory. So everytime I get an image it > has to open a file, write the data, and close the file which results in a > disk sync. Using a single memory mapped based file would probably be > better, and much faster. Hm. Interesting thought - since the new caching code does use a file to track what images it has and what the checksum is (so that at least it doesn't need to open the file, calculate checksum, and say, yes/no on using that file), it would be fairly easy to change that to use a single file and also store offsets and lengths in that file. This would mean it is harder to remove or view specific image files. But it would be faster. Note this could result in a very large file in the home directory - I suppose this could get broken into smaller pieces, eg, only store 500 images in each one or something. I really don't want to have to support both method (large conglomerate files as well as individual files). Do people have a strong issue of not having the individual files available in the cache, and only use a few big files? From dnh at hawthorn.csse.monash.edu.au Thu Mar 7 20:48:19 2002 From: dnh at hawthorn.csse.monash.edu.au (David Hurst) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:11 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] client image handling changes. In-Reply-To: <3C86EB55.17E33E38@sonic.net> References: <3C85A492.EF63F931@sonic.net> <20020306135525.A85097@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU> <3C86EB55.17E33E38@sonic.net> Message-ID: <20020308024819.GA7731@hawthorn.csse.monash.edu.au> > I really don't want to have to support both method (large conglomerate files as > well as individual files). Do people have a strong issue of not having the > individual files available in the cache, and only use a few big files? well.. umm sorta, it was nice to throw an image in to see how it looked before actually using it, at the same time.. if I have a server handy I don't need to do that anyways. As a though perhaps an 'add image to cache' option might work? Bring up a dialogue and choose an image to use instead of another =\ What ever gells with you best I guess =). dnh From mwedel at sonic.net Fri Mar 8 00:16:47 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:12 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] client image handling changes. References: <3C85A492.EF63F931@sonic.net> <20020306135525.A85097@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU> <3C86EB55.17E33E38@sonic.net> <20020308024819.GA7731@hawthorn.csse.monash.edu.au> Message-ID: <3C88574F.AA723B04@sonic.net> David Hurst wrote: > > well.. umm sorta, it was nice to throw an image in to see how it looked > before actually using it, at the same time.. if I have a server handy I > don't need to do that anyways. the gfx directory will continue to exist, so it will still be possible to put in specific images that you want to see how they work out. From andi.vogl at gmx.net Wed Mar 13 17:45:14 2002 From: andi.vogl at gmx.net (Andreas Vogl) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:12 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] non-suicide spellcasters Message-ID: <000001c1cae9$22b9d7c0$c86ebb81@gizmo> I'd like to make a small change in the attack-code, to the effect that monsters will no longer damage themselves with their own spells. Multiple monsters will still be able to damage *each other*. The reason is that spellcasting monsters have a strong tendency to kill themselves with their own spells. The only way to prevent spellcasters from suiciding is to set their resistances way high. That's okay for one or two attacktypes, but not for more. My patch would work especially well for boss-type monsters who are usually alone in a room and have multiple spells with various attacktypes. It will not have much impact on maps with multiple monsters per room, and it will have no effect on monsters who already are immune to their spell's attacktypes. In spite of breaking with the player's experience of spellcasting (spell damages self), I think it would still be intuitive that monsters just don't kill themselves. Andreas From jbontje at suespammers.org Wed Mar 13 18:52:46 2002 From: jbontje at suespammers.org (Joris Bontje) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:12 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] non-suicide spellcasters In-Reply-To: <000001c1cae9$22b9d7c0$c86ebb81@gizmo> References: <000001c1cae9$22b9d7c0$c86ebb81@gizmo> Message-ID: <20020314005246.GA2780@mids.student.utwente.nl> On Thu, Mar 14, 2002 at 12:45:14AM +0100, Andreas Vogl wrote: > I'd like to make a small change in the attack-code, to the > effect that monsters will no longer damage themselves with their > own spells. Multiple monsters will still be able to damage *each other*. > > The reason is that spellcasting monsters have a strong tendency > to kill themselves with their own spells. The only way to prevent > spellcasters from suiciding is to set their resistances way high. > That's okay for one or two attacktypes, but not for more. > > My patch would work especially well for boss-type monsters > who are usually alone in a room and have multiple spells with > various attacktypes. > It will not have much impact on maps with multiple monsters > per room, and it will have no effect on monsters who already > are immune to their spell's attacktypes. > > In spite of breaking with the player's experience of spellcasting > (spell damages self), I think it would still be intuitive that > monsters just don't kill themselves. Hereby I, Joris Bontje, admin of the mids.student.utwente.nl Crossfire server, coder of small patches, fixer of minor bugs, declare that: 1) I agree with the implementation of your proposal. 2) I volunteer reviewing the patch before committing into the CVS. 3) I offer to test the patch on my server before committing into the CVS. 4) I will try to debug the code in case of potential bugs. Additionally the 1983 players on my server are available as living test subjects. Digitally signed in threefold, Joris Bontje / mids -- Gpg Key: Id=0xF19326A9 / http://mids.student.utwente.nl/~mids/jbontje.pub Key fingerprint = 730D 9B3A F406 F28A 957D 6397 31E8 6D4C F193 26A9 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 240 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20020314/2c3cb21c/attachment.pgp From andi.vogl at gmx.net Thu Mar 14 01:21:03 2002 From: andi.vogl at gmx.net (Andreas Vogl) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:13 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] non-suicide spellcasters Message-ID: <26760.1016090463@www44.gmx.net> in reply to mids: > > I'd like to make a small change in the attack-code, to the > > effect that monsters will no longer damage themselves with their > > own spells. Multiple monsters will still be able to damage *each other*. > > Hereby I, Joris Bontje, admin of the mids.student.utwente.nl Crossfire > server, coder of small patches, fixer of minor bugs, declare that: > 1) I agree with the implementation of your proposal. > 2) I volunteer reviewing the patch before committing into the CVS. > 3) I offer to test the patch on my server before committing into the > CVS. > 4) I will try to debug the code in case of potential bugs. > > Additionally the 1983 players on my server are available as living > test subjects. > > Digitally signed in threefold, > Joris Bontje / mids Thanks a lot. I can't wait to work with all this live testing-material. ;-) In fact, the implementation is only a few lines in hit_player_attacktype() - and pretty much fool-proof. It would still be interesting though, to see if there is a noticeable impact on gameplay and if/how players react. I'll send you the patch when I get home from work. Andreas -- GMX - Die Kommunikationsplattform im Internet. http://www.gmx.net -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 241 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20020314/680b1c9a/attachment.pgp From henric at lysator.liu.se Thu Mar 14 02:22:46 2002 From: henric at lysator.liu.se (Henric Karlsson) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:13 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] non-suicide spellcasters In-Reply-To: <000001c1cae9$22b9d7c0$c86ebb81@gizmo> Message-ID: On Thu, 14 Mar 2002, Andreas Vogl wrote: > I'd like to make a small change in the attack-code, to the > effect that monsters will no longer damage themselves with their > own spells. Multiple monsters will still be able to damage *each other*. > > The reason is that spellcasting monsters have a strong tendency > to kill themselves with their own spells. The only way to prevent > spellcasters from suiciding is to set their resistances way high. > That's okay for one or two attacktypes, but not for more. > So this is basicaly a fix for the, "I'm too big and too dumb to realize from what square and in what direction I should cast the spell" in combination with "I'm immune to attacktype X but if I put on this armour with resistance to X my total resistance to X drops below 100%" Ok it sure fixes the symptoms, but not the actuall cause. As a player I'd say it's good, not that sure if you look from the code designers view. /Henric (Gambold) From root at garbled.net Thu Mar 14 10:44:59 2002 From: root at garbled.net (Tim Rightnour) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:13 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] non-suicide spellcasters In-Reply-To: <000001c1cae9$22b9d7c0$c86ebb81@gizmo> Message-ID: On 13-Mar-02 Andreas Vogl wrote: > In spite of breaking with the player's experience of spellcasting > (spell damages self), I think it would still be intuitive that > monsters just don't kill themselves. I'm confused here. You mean to say that now monsters are immune to thier own spells, but players can still immolate themselves? I'm not sure I agree with that division. --- Tim Rightnour NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS http://www.netbsd.org/ NetBSD supported hardware database: http://mail-index.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/hw.cgi From peterm at tonks.EECS.Berkeley.EDU Thu Mar 14 10:54:27 2002 From: peterm at tonks.EECS.Berkeley.EDU (Peter Mardahl) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:13 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] non-suicide spellcasters In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 14 Mar 2002 09:44:59 MST." Message-ID: <200203141654.g2EGsRG21908@tonks.EECS.Berkeley.EDU> To Andreas: I think this is a good idea in general, and if it works out should benefit the game. It's silly to have boss monsters self-destruct, as you've said. To Tim: monsters will still immolate each other, according to Andreas, and giving the poor monsters immunity to their own spells is pretty much what every mapmaker would have wanted. They put monsters in the maps for players to fight and destroy, not to conveniently remove themselves without any effort on the part of the player. Whether players should be defended from their own spells is a SEPARATE issue, that perhaps you might raise in another thread, but I regard player self-immolation as a beneficial part of the game. PM > On 13-Mar-02 Andreas Vogl wrote: > > In spite of breaking with the player's experience of spellcasting > > (spell damages self), I think it would still be intuitive that > > monsters just don't kill themselves. > > I'm confused here. You mean to say that now monsters are immune to thier own > spells, but players can still immolate themselves? I'm not sure I agree with > that division. > > --- > Tim Rightnour > NetBSD: Free multi-architecture OS http://www.netbsd.org/ > NetBSD supported hardware database: http://mail-index.netbsd.org/cgi-bin/hw.c >gi > _______________________________________________ > crossfire-devel mailing list > crossfire-devel@lists.real-time.com > https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/crossfire-devel From andi.vogl at gmx.net Thu Mar 14 15:04:51 2002 From: andi.vogl at gmx.net (Andreas Vogl) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:13 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] non-suicide spellcasters Message-ID: <24744.1016139891@www59.v300.gmx.net> > > > On Thu, 14 Mar 2002, Andreas Vogl wrote: > > > I'd like to make a small change in the attack-code, to the > > effect that monsters will no longer damage themselves with their > > own spells. Multiple monsters will still be able to damage *each other*. > > > > The reason is that spellcasting monsters have a strong tendency > > to kill themselves with their own spells. The only way to prevent > > spellcasters from suiciding is to set their resistances way high. > > That's okay for one or two attacktypes, but not for more. > > > So this is basicaly a fix for the, > "I'm too big and too dumb to realize from what square and in what > direction I should cast the spell" > in combination with > "I'm immune to attacktype X but if I put on this armour > with resistance to X my total resistance to X drops below 100%" > > Ok it sure fixes the symptoms, but not the actuall cause. > As a player I'd say it's good, not that sure if you look from the code > designers view. > > /Henric (Gambold) > > _______________________________________________ > crossfire-devel mailing list > crossfire-devel@lists.real-time.com > https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/crossfire-devel > -- GMX - Die Kommunikationsplattform im Internet. http://www.gmx.net From andi.vogl at gmx.net Thu Mar 14 15:40:47 2002 From: andi.vogl at gmx.net (Andreas Vogl) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:13 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] non-suicide spellcasters Message-ID: <7673.1016142047@www14.gmx.net> Sorry for the last mail. It was empty. XP I wanted to reply to Gambold: > > > > On Thu, 14 Mar 2002, Andreas Vogl wrote: > > > > > I'd like to make a small change in the attack-code, to the > > > effect that monsters will no longer damage themselves with their > > > own spells. Multiple monsters will still be able to damage > > > *each other*. > > > > > So this is basicaly a fix for the, > > "I'm too big and too dumb to realize from what square and in what > > direction I should cast the spell" IMO this is not true. Multisquare monsters cast well in the right direction. But spellcasters always get covered with their own spells - especially so for multisquares. > > in combination with > > "I'm immune to attacktype X but if I put on this armour > > with resistance to X my total resistance to X drops below 100%" What you describe above is true, but a seperate issue. Currently, mapmakers must ensure that special monsters don't get any equipment to apply. That works. (Set "randomitems none", "pick_up 0", etc) This could be fixed by storing "special" resistances in a force and applying that to the monster at loading-time. Unfortunately this is hard to realize, because it would need to be implemented into the Crossfire object-loader which is a great pile of sh... eh... *complicated stuff*. ;) > > Ok it sure fixes the symptoms, but not the actuall cause. > > As a player I'd say it's good, not that sure if you look from > > the code designers view. What I intend to fix is the problem that many boss-monsters suck because they either self-destruct due to low resistances, or they're too hard due to immunities. The patch is designed to help map-designers to create special monsters of a more balanced kind. Andreas -- GMX - Die Kommunikationsplattform im Internet. http://www.gmx.net From dnh at hawthorn.csse.monash.edu.au Thu Mar 14 17:06:52 2002 From: dnh at hawthorn.csse.monash.edu.au (David Hurst) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:13 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] non-suicide spellcasters In-Reply-To: <200203141654.g2EGsRG21908@tonks.EECS.Berkeley.EDU> References: <200203141654.g2EGsRG21908@tonks.EECS.Berkeley.EDU> Message-ID: <20020314230652.GA29844@hawthorn.csse.monash.edu.au> On Thu, Mar 14, 2002 at 08:54:27AM -0800, Peter Mardahl wrote: > > To Andreas: I think this is a good idea in general, and if it > works out should benefit the game. It's silly to have boss > monsters self-destruct, as you've said. I agree with the boss point, but might not someone want to create a map where the moster is meant to kill itself sort of thing. IE a problem like the Avatar of the Fire God, but where instead of solving it that way, you have to wait for it to kill itself? (soz no spoiler here ;). > To Tim: monsters will still immolate each other, according to Andreas, > and giving the poor monsters immunity to their own spells is pretty > much what every mapmaker would have wanted. They put monsters in > the maps for players to fight and destroy, not to conveniently remove > themselves without any effort on the part of the player. In general it isn't a bad thing, but I would have thought a flag which either turns on, or turns off monster immunity to itself, might be useful? dnh From peterm at tonks.EECS.Berkeley.EDU Thu Mar 14 17:57:09 2002 From: peterm at tonks.EECS.Berkeley.EDU (Peter Mardahl) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:13 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] non-suicide spellcasters In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 15 Mar 2002 10:06:52 +1100." <20020314230652.GA29844@hawthorn.csse.monash.edu.au> Message-ID: <200203142357.g2ENv9m22794@tonks.EECS.Berkeley.EDU> > I agree with the boss point, but might not someone want to create a map > where the moster is meant to kill itself sort of thing. IE a problem > like the Avatar of the Fire God, but where instead of solving it that > way, you have to wait for it to kill itself? (soz no spoiler here ;). The A o t F G kills itself? It shouldn't be able to.... Did someone mess with it? But anywya, I hadn't considered a case where the mapmaker WANTED the monster to kill itself. However, I'd prefer a map solution to this: a map maker could put somethng else in the map to kill a monster rather than requiring it to kill itself with its own spells. I do not think the complication of another flag is needed for this case.... PM From mwedel at sonic.net Thu Mar 14 23:37:12 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:13 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] non-suicide spellcasters References: <7673.1016142047@www14.gmx.net> Message-ID: <3C918888.69F99528@sonic.net> Andreas Vogl wrote: > > IMO this is not true. Multisquare monsters cast well in the right > direction. But spellcasters always get covered with their own > spells - especially so for multisquares. A harder approach is to make monsters in general cast more intelligently - monsters with spellbooks often cast those spells which end up being useless (eg, runs of marking). From michael.toennies at nord-com.net Fri Mar 15 06:58:39 2002 From: michael.toennies at nord-com.net (Michael Toennies) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:13 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] non-suicide spellcasters In-Reply-To: <200203142357.g2ENv9m22794@tonks.EECS.Berkeley.EDU> Message-ID: I just read this thread and because i had reworked in one of my last works for CF the attack stuff, i found some more problems. Because i don't know what of my work is not deleted, i don't know the status of the server code. But because my new push code is still in, i think the attack code is it too. At last, most monsters don't kill itself with own spells, even when it looks like. In the past monsters kill itself because - arrow/bullets are not syncronized (monster can step on them, etc - and then they get hit) - mutiple arch monsters have synchron problems - monsters aggro false objects - monsters can attack itself (physical) i had removed the last one - this was the killer number one. The bullet problem is, that a monster can drop a shot and then step on it - or get hit in any other way from it. In old code, in this case then the owner of the bullet object is new attacker - bad idea when its the own object. I had removed this, but the arrow/bullet object code is still not 100%. Iam sure i had not removed all the traps in the code - when you want look in it, insert some LOG() in the critical attack routines (there are only 3-4 of it which are triggered every attack/damage a object do). In my test, most times the monsters dies from side effects and not from her own spell damage. > > I agree with the boss point, but might not someone want to create a map > > where the moster is meant to kill itself sort of thing. IE a problem > > like the Avatar of the Fire God, but where instead of solving it that > > way, you have to wait for it to kill itself? (soz no spoiler here ;). > > The A o t F G kills itself? It shouldn't be able to.... Did someone > mess with it? > > But anywya, I hadn't considered a case where the mapmaker WANTED the > monster to kill itself. However, I'd prefer a map solution to this: > a map maker could put somethng else in the map to kill a monster > rather than requiring it to kill itself with its own spells. > > I do not think the complication of another flag is needed for > this case.... > > PM > _______________________________________________ > crossfire-devel mailing list > crossfire-devel@lists.real-time.com > https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/crossfire-devel From jshelley at suespammers.org Sun Mar 17 14:46:15 2002 From: jshelley at suespammers.org (johnny shelley) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:13 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] DoS backtraces Message-ID: <3C950097.1EF6571F@suespammers.org> Here's what it looks like when the (expletive gerund deleted) child decides to 'reset a server'. LOGIN: Player named Adolf-Hitler from ip 24.69.3.165 @match chain Chain CHAIN Well, you know the password, so you must be ok. Pass Friend. CS: connection from client of type < X11 C Client> Initializing gods...done. enter_map: supplied coordinates are not within the map! (/HallOfSelection: -1, -1) PYTHON - triggerEvent:: eventcode 20 Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault. update_all_los (map=0x0, x=0, y=0) at los.c:533 533 else if (pl->ob->map == map->tile_map[0]) { (gdb) Continuing. SIGSEGV received. Emergency saves disabled, no save attempted Cleaning up... Saving map /guild_island/guild3/guildhouse3 Player on map that is being saved Saving map /nameless_guild/basement Player on map that is being saved Saving map /HallOfSelection Player on map that is being saved Saving map /city/misc/gatehouse Player on map that is being saved Program received signal SIGABRT, Aborted. 0x400b29f1 in kill () from /lib/libc.so.6 (gdb) bt #0 0x400b29f1 in kill () from /lib/libc.so.6 #1 0x400b26d4 in raise () from /lib/libc.so.6 #2 0x400b3e51 in abort () from /lib/libc.so.6 #3 0x08063334 in fatal_signal (make_core=1, close_sockets=1) at init.c:687 #4 0x0806320d in rec_sigsegv (i=11) at init.c:629 #5 0x400b2928 in sigaction () from /lib/libc.so.6 #6 0x0808750a in move_gate (op=0x812d248) at time.c:328 #7 0x08088fc9 in process_object (op=0x812d248) at time.c:1282 #8 0x08066dd9 in process_events (map=0x0) at main.c:922 #9 0x0806736d in main (argc=2, argv=0xbffffdf4) at main.c:1147 #10 0x400a26cf in __libc_start_main () from /lib/libc.so.6 -- johnny PGP Public Key available from: http://www.keyserver.net:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x17BF1DD3 From mwedel at sonic.net Mon Mar 18 01:52:07 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:13 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] DoS backtraces References: <3C950097.1EF6571F@suespammers.org> Message-ID: <3C959CA7.40A7D2F7@sonic.net> johnny shelley wrote: > > Here's what it looks like when the (expletive gerund deleted) child > decides to > 'reset a server'. > Any information on how the user is actually getting the user to crash the server? Its easy enough to put a bunch of if !op->map type checks in, but thay may not be fixing the problem, which is either a gate object not getting removed properly when a map is saved out, or the gate object somehow getting in the inventory or something. From jshelley at suespammers.org Mon Mar 18 02:09:18 2002 From: jshelley at suespammers.org (johnny shelley) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:13 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] DoS backtraces References: <3C950097.1EF6571F@suespammers.org> <3C959CA7.40A7D2F7@sonic.net> Message-ID: <3C95A0AE.F3CAB30D@suespammers.org> Mark Wedel wrote: > Any information on how the user is actually getting the user to crash the > server? Hmm, I have witnessed him somehow removing tiles from maps (i have no idea..), but this seems to be a different way of crashing the server as it happened almost immediately. -- johnny PGP Public Key available from: http://www.keyserver.net:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x17BF1DD3 From mwedel at sonic.net Mon Mar 18 23:31:38 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:13 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] DoS backtraces References: <3C950097.1EF6571F@suespammers.org> <3C959CA7.40A7D2F7@sonic.net> <3C95A0AE.F3CAB30D@suespammers.org> Message-ID: <3C96CD3A.D38BE624@sonic.net> johnny shelley wrote: > > Mark Wedel wrote: > > > Any information on how the user is actually getting the user to crash the > > server? > > Hmm, I have witnessed him somehow removing tiles from maps (i have no > idea..), but this seems to be a different way of crashing the server as > it happened almost immediately. Yep - that would explain the crash you posted - the gates presume they are on a map. IF this player is somehow able to pick them up, it then crashes. any indication if the player has dm privs? Otherwise, it seems the real bug is his ability to pick up objects he shouldn't be able to pick up. From alfie at leaflock.homeip.net Wed Mar 20 06:40:05 2002 From: alfie at leaflock.homeip.net (alfie@leaflock.homeip.net) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:13 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] x11 client experience display patch Message-ID: <20020320124005.GA18779@cvg-65-29-193-61.cinci.rr.com> I wrote a quick kludge to display experience similar to the gtk client. I don't know if this should be in the official version, but some other players might find it useful. Enjoy. :) Index: x11.c =================================================================== RCS file: /cvsroot/crossfire/client/x11/x11.c,v retrieving revision 1.6 diff -c -r1.6 x11.c *** x11.c 15 Jan 2002 07:33:01 -0000 1.6 --- x11.c 20 Mar 2002 12:11:07 -0000 *************** *** 1076,1082 **** stathint.x=INV_WIDTH + WINDOW_SPACING; stathint.y=0; stathint.width=GAME_WIDTH; ! stathint.height=100; stathint.min_width=stathint.max_width=stathint.width; stathint.min_height=stathint.max_height=stathint.height; stathint.flags=PPosition | PSize; --- 1076,1082 ---- stathint.x=INV_WIDTH + WINDOW_SPACING; stathint.y=0; stathint.width=GAME_WIDTH; ! stathint.height=140; stathint.min_width=stathint.max_width=stathint.width; stathint.min_height=stathint.max_height=stathint.height; stathint.flags=PPosition | PSize; *************** *** 1107,1112 **** --- 1107,1114 ---- void draw_stats(int redraw) { char buff[MAX_BUF]; static char last_name[MAX_BUF]="", last_range[MAX_BUF]=""; + int i; + char *s; if (strcmp(cpl.title, last_name) || redraw) { strcpy(last_name,cpl.title); *************** *** 1236,1241 **** --- 1238,1270 ---- XDrawImageString(display,win_stats, gc_stats,10,94, buff,strlen(buff)); } + + if (redraw) { + i = 0; + } else { + for (i=0; i Crossfire 1.1.0 has been released. Files released for this version: sums (bsd) filename 29201 1320 crossfire-1.1.0-arch.tar.bz2 16596 1415 crossfire-1.1.0-arch.tar.gz 06084 3044 crossfire-1.1.0-maps.tar.bz2 61083 4408 crossfire-1.1.0-maps.tar.gz 52909 2654 crossfire-1.1.0.tar.bz2 48537 2986 crossfire-1.1.0.tar.gz 09418 363 crossfire-client-1.2.0.tar.gz Sums (md5) 3c7e9fcf0c881ddbc70949f453b9f91e crossfire-1.1.0-arch.tar.bz2 a5d24ab18c1342bf564f6e1b9f420732 crossfire-1.1.0-arch.tar.gz d05c1abad504ff25132269feb1aaa165 crossfire-1.1.0-maps.tar.bz2 70b4e4e60b530e7dc259be32493141fc crossfire-1.1.0-maps.tar.gz abb4f360f0f0a6f83db9bf3e00e1ddb7 crossfire-1.1.0.tar.bz2 824e6d9a91ee0321629a9e99ad4e264f crossfire-1.1.0.tar.gz d7ef48af6268f0ee15ae06aafa92e1c4 crossfire-client-1.2.0.tar.gz crossfire-client-1.2.0 is the client (X11) distribution - standard X11 and gtk interfaces are provided. crossfire-1.1.0.tar.{gz/bz2} contains the server code with prebuilt archetype and image files. crossfire-1.1.0.arch.tar.{gz/bz2} contains the unpacked archetype changes. This is not needed if you only want to compile the server and play the game. crossfire-1.1.0-maps.tar.{gz/bz2} contains the maps. This is needed with the server distribution. FOR FIRST TIME USERS: You will only need the appropriate server, map and client file. You do not need the arch file. If you are a first time user, you may want the doc file unless you are using a web based player referance. If you just want to play the game at some remote server, you need the client and perhaps some version of the doc file. Crossfire is avaible on the following ftp sites Primary: ftp://ftp.sourceforge.net/pub/sourceforge/crossfire (64.28.67.101) ftp://ftp.ifi.uio.no/pub/crossfire (129.240.64.44) Secondary: ftp://ftp.real-time.com/pub/games/crossfire ftp://ftp.cs.city.ac.uk/pub/games/crossfire/ ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/unix/games/crossfire (130.238.127.3) ftp://ftp.cs.titech.ac.jp/pub/games/crossfire ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/games/roguelike/crossfire/ ftp://crossfire.futt.org//pub/crossfire I uploaded this version to just ftp.scruz.net and sourceforge- it should be on the other ftp sites in a short time Mark Wedel mwedel@sonic.net From yann.chachkoff at mailandnews.com Wed Mar 27 11:26:24 2002 From: yann.chachkoff at mailandnews.com (Yann Chachkoff) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:14 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Latest Client release Message-ID: <3CA22252@mailandnews.com> Hi, It seems that in its current CVS form, the standard crossfire client became completely unusable, due to some severe errors in both code and supplied data. Detected errors include - but may not be limited to: No question.sdl file (gx11.c, around line 680); last_start and last_end defined in the middle of a block in client.c; Such errors could easily be avoided by rereading of the code before putting it into the CVS. I understand CVS is the right place for unstable/unfinished code, but don't you think it is a bit *too* unfinished ? Can't you at least try your code once before committing ? I understand of course quite well that writing a bug-free code is not often possible. But those are not bugs anymore - they are quite huge mistakes that should never happen. It makes the others' work difficult just because the code writer was too lazy to read what he wrote. Hard words ? Yes. But 'Te is Te veel' ! Y. Chachkoff From jbontje at suespammers.org Wed Mar 27 12:14:33 2002 From: jbontje at suespammers.org (Joris Bontje) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:14 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New client caching Message-ID: <20020327181433.GA4800@mids.student.utwente.nl> With the new client (after fixing the question.sql and wrong declaration) errors, I get this kind of errors when running: Can not open /home/mids/.crossfire/crossfire-images/be//home/mids/.crossfire/crossfire-images/be.0 for writing By looking at the source of client/common/image.c the usage of basename is totally wrong... I can't find a way to fix this yet, because I have no idea yet what it should be. Regards, Joris Bontje -- Gpg Key: Id=0xF19326A9 / http://mids.student.utwente.nl/~mids/jbontje.pub Key fingerprint = 730D 9B3A F406 F28A 957D 6397 31E8 6D4C F193 26A9 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 240 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20020327/daf066a4/attachment.pgp From andi.vogl at gmx.net Wed Mar 27 12:20:38 2002 From: andi.vogl at gmx.net (Andreas Vogl) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:14 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Latest Client release Message-ID: <000901c1d5bc$1c185850$c86ebb81@gizmo> in reply to gros: > I understand CVS is the right place for unstable/unfinished > code, but don't you think it is a bit *too* unfinished ? Can't > you at least try your code once before committing ? I agree of course that code has to be tested, but I also think that the amount of work someone does should be taken into consideration. What Mark did here was a real big thing, implemented both into client and server. If something goes amiss in the process, it's still a great piece of work on the whole. Andreas From yann.chachkoff at softhome.net Thu Mar 28 02:07:03 2002 From: yann.chachkoff at softhome.net (yann.chachkoff@softhome.net) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:14 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Latest Client release In-Reply-To: <000901c1d5bc$1c185850$c86ebb81@gizmo> References: <000901c1d5bc$1c185850$c86ebb81@gizmo> Message-ID: <20020328080703.17105.qmail@softhome.net> Andreas Vogl writes: > in reply to gros: > > > I understand CVS is the right place for unstable/unfinished > > code, but don't you think it is a bit *too* unfinished ? Can't > > you at least try your code once before committing ? > > I agree of course that code has to be tested, but I also > think that the amount of work someone does should be taken > into consideration. > Does a bigger work excuse not testing it ? > What Mark did here was a real big thing, implemented both into > client and server. If something goes amiss in the process, it's > still a great piece of work on the whole. For me, a great piece of code is a code that works. Now I agree it can become quite difficult to find bugs (especially the pointer ones) when your code gets bigger. But those are not bugs that required intensive hunting/testing. Those are syntax errors, and a simple compilation try would have immediatly revealed them. So I stand on my point: reread and test your code at least once, to prevent such silly errors to happen in the future. Y. Chachkoff From bhines at alumni.ucsd.edu Thu Mar 28 02:51:02 2002 From: bhines at alumni.ucsd.edu (Ben Hines) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:14 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] MacOSX Build In-Reply-To: <20020328080703.17105.qmail@softhome.net> References: <000901c1d5bc$1c185850$c86ebb81@gizmo> <20020328080703.17105.qmail@softhome.net> Message-ID: I have submitted a Mac OS X package for crossfire-client to the Fink package manager. http://fink.sf.net/ It works fine, except that i had to patch out sound because none of the supported sound systems work on OSX. (i don't believe) There is a --disable-sound flag to configure for crossfire, but it does not seem to be taken into account, so i filed a feature req on the sourceforge tracker. It would be nice if --disable-sound made it so none of the sound files got compiled at all. -B -- http://homepage.mac.com/bhines/ From mwedel at sonic.net Fri Mar 29 00:04:05 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:14 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Latest Client release References: <000901c1d5bc$1c185850$c86ebb81@gizmo> <20020328080703.17105.qmail@softhome.net> Message-ID: <3CA403D5.2783BB08@sonic.net> Yann Chachkoff wrote: > > Hi, > > It seems that in its current CVS form, the standard crossfire client became > completely unusable, due to some severe errors in both code and supplied data. > > Detected errors include - but may not be limited to: > > No question.sdl file (gx11.c, around line 680); The missing file is annoying, but unless standard procedure becomes to checkout out the CVS in another directory, is something hard to find. I did try to look over all the files listed as being unknown by the CVS repository when doing the checkin, but apparantly missed that. > last_start and last_end defined in the middle of a block in client.c; Thats pretty bad - I'll admit it. Even worse the gcc compiles it without even a warning when using the -Wall flag. I had moved the declarations but didn't look closely enough where I moved it. > > Such errors could easily be avoided by rereading of the code before putting it > into the CVS. > I understand CVS is the right place for unstable/unfinished code, but don't > you think it is a bit *too* unfinished ? Can't you at least try your code once > before committing ? I know saying that 'it compiled on my system' isn't a real great answer. This missing file one is a tough one to test out - its hard to know its really missing until a checkout is done from the server (or carefully look over all the files that CVS doesn't know about, but being there is about a dozen, not too hard to miss one. > I understand of course quite well that writing a bug-free code is not often > possible. But those are not bugs anymore - they are quite huge mistakes that > should never happen. It makes the others' work difficult just because the code > writer was too lazy to read what he wrote. I normally do a 'cvs diff' before committing the code, just to know all of what I changed. But in some cases, that won't catch anything. IT took my several seconds of looking to see what improper declaration of variables. I'm not sure that re-reading it would have caught it in any case. The biggest problem for this one was that I've been working on various parts of it for a pretty long time, and forgot about various parts, like the making of the question.sdl file. From mwedel at sonic.net Fri Mar 29 00:46:58 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:14 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New client caching References: <20020327181433.GA4800@mids.student.utwente.nl> Message-ID: <3CA40DE2.3E3E1036@sonic.net> Joris Bontje wrote: > > With the new client (after fixing the question.sql and wrong > declaration) errors, I get this kind of errors when running: > Can not open > /home/mids/.crossfire/crossfire-images/be//home/mids/.crossfire/crossfire-images/be.0 > for writing > > By looking at the source of client/common/image.c the usage of basename > is totally wrong... I can't find a way to fix this yet, because I have > no idea yet what it should be. Fixed in CVS. From jbontje at suespammers.org Sun Mar 31 16:23:04 2002 From: jbontje at suespammers.org (Joris Bontje) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:14 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] guilds maps Message-ID: <20020331222304.GA5043@mids.student.utwente.nl> Like you all know, 'johnny shelly' aka cryo has made guild maps on my server. Brief description: 3 players / characters are needed to start a guild. They can buy 3 keys for a big price (20,000 diamonds). This gives you a big empty guild. You have to collect the furniture (altars, shop, extention, alchemy room etc) yourself by solving little miniquests. Once you are a member of the guild, you can create more keys for other new members. The whole map is unique so everything is stored. Right now there are 4 guilds for sale on the special 'guild island' but this can be manually extended by duplicating maps and adding more keys. There have been requests by players and other admins for these maps. So cryo asked me if it was okay to put it in CVS There are 2 options: 1) put it in as a linked mapset (so every new server will have it) 2) just put the maps in, but dont link to it. 3) dont put it in CVS, which isnt an option :) I would go for #1... enhances the multiplayer feeling etc.. Any objections, comments etc? In threefold, Regards, Joris Bontje / mids -- Gpg Key: Id=0xF19326A9 / http://mids.student.utwente.nl/~mids/jbontje.pub Key fingerprint = 730D 9B3A F406 F28A 957D 6397 31E8 6D4C F193 26A9 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 240 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20020401/ec2da527/attachment.pgp From mwedel at sonic.net Sun Mar 31 22:58:49 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:14 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] guilds maps References: <20020331222304.GA5043@mids.student.utwente.nl> Message-ID: <3CA7E909.2FD29FA3@sonic.net> Joris Bontje wrote: > > Like you all know, 'johnny shelly' aka cryo has made guild maps on my > server. > > Brief description: > 3 players / characters are needed to start a guild. They can buy 3 keys > for a big price (20,000 diamonds). This gives you a big empty guild. > You have to collect the furniture (altars, shop, extention, alchemy room > etc) yourself by solving little miniquests. > Once you are a member of the guild, you can create more keys for other > new members. The whole map is unique so everything is stored. > > Right now there are 4 guilds for sale on the special 'guild island' but > this can be manually extended by duplicating maps and adding more keys. > > There have been requests by players and other admins for these maps. > So cryo asked me if it was okay to put it in CVS > There are 2 options: > 1) put it in as a linked mapset (so every new server will have it) > 2) just put the maps in, but dont link to it. > 3) dont put it in CVS, which isnt an option :) > > I would go for #1... enhances the multiplayer feeling etc.. > Any objections, comments etc? I would vote for #1 also. My personal opinion is that most everything in the basic mapset should be linked - if it isn't good enough (or whatever) to be linked, it should either be fixed up so it can be linked or it should be removed. From Kimmo.Hoikka at Digia.com Sun Mar 3 16:25:49 2002 From: Kimmo.Hoikka at Digia.com (Kimmo Hoikka) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:09 2005 Subject: [CF List] wraight Message-ID: <3C82A2ED.2030005@Digia.com> Hi, according to the handbook wraiths should be immune to disease and also not need any food, however in practice player chars of race wraith do get sick and do consume food.... since when has this been changed and not documented in the handbook? -- -Kimmo Hoikka +358407380747 -wwwhoikkacom -kimmo@hoikka From mwedel at sonic.net Sun Mar 3 22:41:53 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:09 2005 Subject: [CF List] wraight References: <3C82A2ED.2030005@Digia.com> Message-ID: <3C82FB11.406A4C53@sonic.net> Kimmo Hoikka wrote: > > Hi, > > according to the handbook wraiths should be immune to disease and also > not need any food, however in practice player chars of race wraith do > get sick and do consume food.... since when has this been changed and > not documented in the handbook? Dunno about diseases, but I recall wraiths consume food more slowly than other races. there is in fact no way at present time to make a race that requires no food at all - you can just give them a very high sustenance value so that their food consumption is much lower. The idea of wraiths (and fireborns for that matter) eating food is a bit odd - certainly if it is food of the same type as the other races. You could certainly see wraith's food to effectively be the lifeforce of creatures they kill - doing that would require a bit of code modification. Hard to say what a fireborns source of food should be - in theory something like fire, or maybe flamable liquids (booze) at least? Having it fire would be a bit odd - it just means that the fireborn casts fireball on itself to eat. OTOH, that may give them a use for wands of fireball and the like if they don't want to burn up their spellpoints to do it. From lembark at wrkhors.com Mon Mar 4 01:13:10 2002 From: lembark at wrkhors.com (Steven Lembark) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:09 2005 Subject: [CF List] wraight In-Reply-To: <3C82FB11.406A4C53@sonic.net> References: <3C82A2ED.2030005@Digia.com> <3C82FB11.406A4C53@sonic.net> Message-ID: <92980000.1015225990@dizzy.wrkhors.com> >> according to the handbook wraiths should be immune to disease and also >> not need any food, however in practice player chars of race wraith do >> get sick and do consume food.... since when has this been changed and >> not documented in the handbook? > > Dunno about diseases, but I recall wraiths consume food more slowly than > other races. there is in fact no way at present time to make a race that > requires no food at all - you can just give them a very high sustenance > value so that their food consumption is much lower. > > The idea of wraiths (and fireborns for that matter) eating food is a bit > odd - certainly if it is food of the same type as the other races. You > could certainly see wraith's food to effectively be the lifeforce of > creatures they kill - doing that would require a bit of code > modification. Old idea: Wraiths (or Devourer followers) reduce the HP of anything around them, way w/in a 3x3 square area by issuing the create food prayer (or a modified version of it). If there is nothing animated nearby them then they are in deep trouble (perhaps the spell might trade mana for food). As a last, desparate ploy they can eat "normal" food but must consume 10x more of it per Kcal to get any benefit. They would be born w/ the skill of "suck life out of", with higher levels being able to get more hp from other high-level monsters. This would include whatever -- minimal -- level of life force animates undead creatures nearby. The skill would do some damage, transferring the resulting HP to the wraith. Code for it is rather similar to Destruction, with an add'l counter that up's the user's hp/fp. This is similar to *Angband handling of Vampires: they get little benefit from eating food, only way to keep fed is drink blood. This has an advantage since they don't have to carry food and do damage when they do suck blood; tradeoff is that they have to get near enough to get hit in order to suck the blood. If the only thing nearby is a Dragon and you're hungry, oh well... > Hard to say what a fireborns source of food should be - in theory > something like fire, or maybe flamable liquids (booze) at least? Having > it fire would be a bit odd - it just means that the fireborn casts > fireball on itself to eat. OTOH, that may give them a use for wands of > fireball and the like if they don't want to burn up their spellpoints to > do it. They could live on fire. Similar to handling of Wraiths, above. They get X Fp/turn by being in a flame. If they stand in front of a dragon they might never need to eat :-) Problem is that if you get hungry in a roomfull of treasure it can be a nasty choice... This could be handled by reversing the sign for their damage-from-fire and leaving them "vulnerable" to fire. As their exp goes up they become more "vulnerable", which is to say they get more points added to their current stats by being exposed to fire. Given the FP remain at zero forever and the hunger rate is fairly low, sitting away from flame would slowly reduce their hp due to constant starvation; entering a flame would regen the hp due to negative damage. Survival at low levels could be handled by giving them low hunger rates, that go up with exp. Worshipping Ruggilli would cost something there, but added protections and easy access to fire in most dungeons would tend to leave this sustainable. Another alternative is to say that fb and w's don't need "food" but "lifeforce". They basically live at zero fp forever and consume mana to survive. This means that if their SP goes to zero they begin to "starve". Their "food" would be existing restore mana potions and magic crystals (basically they'd store "food" by charging the thing before going into battle). This would effect their mana regen, with the "food" use offsetting any normal regen rate (i.e., just recompute the regen rate at a fraction of what it otherwise would have been). A damaged character uses more fp to heal, which would effectively reduce their sp regen rate; casting healing spells would basically be tradeoff of prayer points for spell points. This mehtod would probably be sustainable since both fb & w's have fairly high pow stat limits and end up being magic users, which up the pow stats to begin with. This would tend to give them fast enough mana regen to begin with that they could survive lower levels. -- Steven Lembark 2930 W. Palmer Workhorse Computing Chicago, IL 60647 +1 800 762 1582 From Kimmo.Hoikka at Digia.com Mon Mar 4 04:43:46 2002 From: Kimmo.Hoikka at Digia.com (Kimmo Hoikka) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:09 2005 Subject: [CF List] wraight References: <3C82A2ED.2030005@Digia.com> <3C82FB11.406A4C53@sonic.net> Message-ID: <3C834FE2.1060606@Digia.com> Hi! Mark Wedel wrote: >Kimmo Hoikka wrote: > >>Hi, >> >>according to the handbook wraiths should be immune to disease and also >>not need any food, however in practice player chars of race wraith do >>get sick and do consume food.... since when has this been changed and >>not documented in the handbook? >> >Dunno about diseases, but I recall wraiths consume food more slowly than other >races. there is in fact no way at present time to make a race that requires no >food at all - you can just give them a very high sustenance value so that their >food consumption is much lower. > I wrote about similar problem with devourers followers, who should have similar behavior, immune diseases and no food consumption than wraiths. with devourer the food thing works, they do not need food at all, but they also do get sick from traps as wraiths, I think that "bug" has been around for a while. Also noticed some other thing with wraith, they should also have protection to cold, but that has also disappeared at some point, I just created a wraith that is a gorokh follower and he seems to have only -5 in cold as a result of gorokh. have wraith "bonuses" disappeared all? btw, the idea of sucking lifeforce to feed itself sounds like a great idea, would make playing special races really interesting. the drained would then also have to be alive, no logic draining another undead? -- Kimmo Hoikka Technology Manager, Architecture Digia Inc. Laserkatu 6, FIN - 53840 Lappeenranta E-mail: Kimmo.Hoikka@Digia.com Tel. 0424 7777 505 GSM: +358 40 7380747 ------------------------------------------------------------------ PRIVACY AND CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE This message and any attachments are intended only for use by the named addressee and may contain privileged and/or confidential information. 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For more information, contact info@digia.com From reeve at ductape.net Mon Mar 4 11:19:21 2002 From: reeve at ductape.net (Scott Barnes) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:09 2005 Subject: [CF List] wraight In-Reply-To: <92980000.1015225990@dizzy.wrkhors.com> References: <3C82A2ED.2030005@Digia.com> <3C82FB11.406A4C53@sonic.net> <92980000.1015225990@dizzy.wrkhors.com> Message-ID: <1015262398.28516.2.camel@terra.localnet> On Mon, 2002-03-04 at 02:13, Steven Lembark wrote: > > > >> according to the handbook wraiths should be immune to disease and also > >> not need any food, however in practice player chars of race wraith do > >> get sick and do consume food.... since when has this been changed and > >> not documented in the handbook? > > > > Dunno about diseases, but I recall wraiths consume food more slowly than > > other races. there is in fact no way at present time to make a race that > > requires no food at all - you can just give them a very high sustenance > > value so that their food consumption is much lower. > > > > The idea of wraiths (and fireborns for that matter) eating food is a bit > > odd - certainly if it is food of the same type as the other races. You > > could certainly see wraith's food to effectively be the lifeforce of > > creatures they kill - doing that would require a bit of code > > modification. > > Old idea: Wraiths (or Devourer followers) reduce the HP of > anything around them, way w/in a 3x3 square area by issuing > the create food prayer (or a modified version of it). If there > is nothing animated nearby them then they are in deep trouble > (perhaps the spell might trade mana for food). As a last, > desparate ploy they can eat "normal" food but must consume > 10x more of it per Kcal to get any benefit. > > They would be born w/ the skill of "suck life out of", > with higher levels being able to get more hp from other > high-level monsters. This would include whatever -- minimal -- > level of life force animates undead creatures nearby. > The skill would do some damage, transferring the resulting > HP to the wraith. Code for it is rather similar to Destruction, > with an add'l counter that up's the user's hp/fp. > > This is similar to *Angband handling of Vampires: they get > little benefit from eating food, only way to keep fed is > drink blood. This has an advantage since they don't have to > carry food and do damage when they do suck blood; tradeoff > is that they have to get near enough to get hit in order > to suck the blood. If the only thing nearby is a Dragon and > you're hungry, oh well... > > > Hard to say what a fireborns source of food should be - in theory > > something like fire, or maybe flamable liquids (booze) at least? Having > > it fire would be a bit odd - it just means that the fireborn casts > > fireball on itself to eat. OTOH, that may give them a use for wands of > > fireball and the like if they don't want to burn up their spellpoints to > > do it. > > They could live on fire. Similar to handling of Wraiths, > above. They get X Fp/turn by being in a flame. If they > stand in front of a dragon they might never need to eat :-) > Problem is that if you get hungry in a roomfull of treasure > it can be a nasty choice... > > This could be handled by reversing the sign for their > damage-from-fire and leaving them "vulnerable" to fire. > As their exp goes up they become more "vulnerable", > which is to say they get more points added to their > current stats by being exposed to fire. Given the FP > remain at zero forever and the hunger rate is fairly > low, sitting away from flame would slowly reduce their > hp due to constant starvation; entering a flame would > regen the hp due to negative damage. > > Survival at low levels could be handled by giving them > low hunger rates, that go up with exp. Worshipping > Ruggilli would cost something there, but added protections > and easy access to fire in most dungeons would tend to > leave this sustainable. > > > Another alternative is to say that fb and w's don't need > "food" but "lifeforce". They basically live at zero fp > forever and consume mana to survive. This means that if > their SP goes to zero they begin to "starve". Their > "food" would be existing restore mana potions and magic > crystals (basically they'd store "food" by charging the > thing before going into battle). > > This would effect their mana regen, with the "food" use > offsetting any normal regen rate (i.e., just recompute > the regen rate at a fraction of what it otherwise would > have been). A damaged character uses more fp to heal, > which would effectively reduce their sp regen rate; > casting healing spells would basically be tradeoff of > prayer points for spell points. > > This mehtod would probably be sustainable since both > fb & w's have fairly high pow stat limits and end up > being magic users, which up the pow stats to begin with. > This would tend to give them fast enough mana regen to > begin with that they could survive lower levels. I really like this idea. (Yes, this is a "me too" post :)) > > > -- > Steven Lembark 2930 W. Palmer > Workhorse Computing Chicago, IL 60647 > +1 800 762 1582 > _______________________________________________ > crossfire-list mailing list > crossfire-list@lists.real-time.com > https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/crossfire-list -- -- -- Reeve the cat ----BEGIN FORTUNE---- You had mail. Paul read it, so ask him what it said. ----END FORTUNE---- -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GCS d? s: a? C++++ UL++++ P+ L++++ E- W++ N o K- w--- O M-- V-- PS+++ PE Y PGP t+++ 5 X+ R+++ tv+ b+++ DI++ D+ G e* h-- r+++ y** ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------ From quinet at gamers.org Tue Mar 5 07:01:08 2002 From: quinet at gamers.org (Raphaël Quinet) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:10 2005 Subject: [CF List] wraight In-Reply-To: <92980000.1015225990@dizzy.wrkhors.com> References: <3C82A2ED.2030005@Digia.com> <3C82FB11.406A4C53@sonic.net> <92980000.1015225990@dizzy.wrkhors.com> Message-ID: <20020305140108.076430e5.quinet@gamers.org> On Mon, 04 Mar 2002 01:13:10 -0600, "Steven Lembark" wrote: > > The idea of wraiths (and fireborns for that matter) eating food is a bit > > odd - certainly if it is food of the same type as the other races. You > > could certainly see wraith's food to effectively be the lifeforce of > > creatures they kill - doing that would require a bit of code > > modification. > > Old idea: Wraiths (or Devourer followers) reduce the HP of > anything around them, way w/in a 3x3 square area by issuing > the create food prayer (or a modified version of it). If there > is nothing animated nearby them then they are in deep trouble > (perhaps the spell might trade mana for food). As a last, > desparate ploy they can eat "normal" food but must consume > 10x more of it per Kcal to get any benefit. They could use some mana (or a wand or a potion) to summon some pet/cult monsters and then drain their life force. If the pets die in the process, summon some more and repeat until the wraith is not hungry anymore. That could be an interesting idea and it would balance the fact that wraiths could not store food. It would be fun to watch all these suicidal pets following the player and entering the 3x3 square in which they are slowly consumed by the wraith. > > Hard to say what a fireborns source of food should be - in theory > > something like fire, or maybe flamable liquids (booze) at least? Having > > it fire would be a bit odd - it just means that the fireborn casts > > fireball on itself to eat. OTOH, that may give them a use for wands of > > fireball and the like if they don't want to burn up their spellpoints to > > do it. > > They could live on fire. Similar to handling of Wraiths, > above. They get X Fp/turn by being in a flame. If they > stand in front of a dragon they might never need to eat :-) > Problem is that if you get hungry in a roomfull of treasure > it can be a nasty choice... I like this idea. If you do not pay attention to your food supply and you get hungry while you are far away from any source of fire, then you will have to sacrifice some mana (and possibly some objects) in other to get some fire. [...] > Another alternative is to say that fb and w's don't need > "food" but "lifeforce". They basically live at zero fp > forever and consume mana to survive. This means that if > their SP goes to zero they begin to "starve". Their > "food" would be existing restore mana potions and magic > crystals (basically they'd store "food" by charging the > thing before going into battle). At first, I thought that it would be a very good solution, but now I think that it would be hard to make that work. The regen rate for "lifeforce" would be (mana rate - food rate), but if the result is negative then the player would have a hard time to get enough mana to prepare for a battle. -Raphael From lembark at wrkhors.com Tue Mar 5 09:01:50 2002 From: lembark at wrkhors.com (Steven Lembark) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:10 2005 Subject: [CF List] wraight In-Reply-To: <20020305140108.076430e5.quinet@gamers.org> References: <3C82A2ED.2030005@Digia.com><3C82FB11.406A4C53@sonic.net> <92980000.1015225990@dizzy.wrkhors.com> <20020305140108.076430e5.quinet@gamers.org> Message-ID: <49430000.1015340510@dizzy.wrkhors.com> -- Rapha?l Quinet >> Another alternative is to say that fb and w's don't need >> "food" but "lifeforce". They basically live at zero fp >> forever and consume mana to survive. This means that if >> their SP goes to zero they begin to "starve". Their >> "food" would be existing restore mana potions and magic >> crystals (basically they'd store "food" by charging the >> thing before going into battle). > > At first, I thought that it would be a very good solution, but now I > think that it would be hard to make that work. The regen rate for > "lifeforce" would be (mana rate - food rate), but if the result is > negative then the player would have a hard time to get enough mana to > prepare for a battle. Except at very low levels, mana regen is higher than food use. Adjusting the initial rates for fb's and w's would allow for reasonable rates. A char w/ 25+ POW (wait for an 18 stat on the char regen and put it on POW) would normally regen at a fairly high rate. Note also that praying accelerates mana regen; which would also help. -- Steven Lembark 2930 W. Palmer Workhorse Computing Chicago, IL 60647 +1 800 762 1582 From Kimmo.Hoikka at Digia.com Tue Mar 5 12:55:46 2002 From: Kimmo.Hoikka at Digia.com (Kimmo Hoikka) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:10 2005 Subject: [CF List] wraight References: <3C82A2ED.2030005@Digia.com><3C82FB11.406A4C53@sonic.net> <92980000.1015225990@dizzy.wrkhors.com> <20020305140108.076430e5.quinet@gamers.org> <49430000.1015340510@dizzy.wrkhors.com> Message-ID: <3C8514B2.40009@Digia.com> Steven Lembark wrote: > -- Rapha?l Quinet > >>> Another alternative is to say that fb and w's don't need >>> "food" but "lifeforce". They basically live at zero fp >>> forever and consume mana to survive. This means that if >>> their SP goes to zero they begin to "starve". Their >>> "food" would be existing restore mana potions and magic >>> crystals (basically they'd store "food" by charging the >>> thing before going into battle). >> >> At first, I thought that it would be a very good solution, but now I >> think that it would be hard to make that work. The regen rate for >> "lifeforce" would be (mana rate - food rate), but if the result is >> negative then the player would have a hard time to get enough mana to >> prepare for a battle. > > Except at very low levels, mana regen is higher than food > use. Adjusting the initial rates for fb's and w's would > allow for reasonable rates. A char w/ 25+ POW (wait for > an 18 stat on the char regen and put it on POW) would > normally regen at a fairly high rate. Note also that > praying accelerates mana regen; which would also help. mana regen is never too fast (at low levels especially), if mana is consumed for food, what is then used for casting??. this would just make special races way too weak, even now low level characters suffer for low sp regeneration, most of the time is spent just waiting so what would it become then, more fighter oriented playing less wizards and sorcerors, not the way to go. the idea of feeding from lifeforce of others, from draining or from fire or cold sounds more interesting. -- -Kimmo Hoikka +358407380747 -wwwhoikkacom -kimmo@hoikka From lembark at wrkhors.com Tue Mar 5 14:05:44 2002 From: lembark at wrkhors.com (lembark@wrkhors.com) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:10 2005 Subject: [CF List] wraight In-Reply-To: <3C8514B2.40009@Digia.com> References: <3C82A2ED.2030005@Digia.com><3C82FB11.406A4C53@sonic.net> <92980000.1015225990@dizzy.wrkhors.com> <20020305140108.076430e5.quinet@gamers.org> <49430000.1015340510@dizzy.wrkhors.com> <3C8514B2.40009@Digia.com> Message-ID: <2980000.1015358744@duke.wrkhors.com> > mana regen is never too fast (at low levels especially), if mana is consumed > for food, what is then used for casting??. this would just make special races > way too weak, even now low level characters suffer for low sp regeneration, > most of the time is spent just waiting so what would it become then, more > fighter oriented playing less wizards and sorcerors, not the way to go. the > idea of feeding from lifeforce of others, from draining or from fire or cold > sounds more interesting. The mana trick is obviously more of an issue at low levels. Simple fix is to adjust the "food" consumption based on level (or simply max HP). At low level it doesn't interfere at all; at high levels you presumably have pow==30. My main reason for liking this method is avoiding the 99Kg of food I have to carry into battle as a fb w/ str == 2. I end up dying of slowness or starvation way too often. If there were a way to remove the need to carry huge amounts of food it would more than offset some change in mana regen -- especially at higher levels where the mana regen is rather quick anyway. -- Steven Lembark 2930 W. Palmer Workhorse Computing Chicago, IL 60647 +1 800 762 1582 From mwedel at sonic.net Tue Mar 5 22:15:08 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:10 2005 Subject: [CF List] wraight (& fireborns) References: <3C82A2ED.2030005@Digia.com><3C82FB11.406A4C53@sonic.net> <92980000.1015225990@dizzy.wrkhors.com> <20020305140108.076430e5.quinet@gamers.org> <49430000.1015340510@dizzy.wrkhors.com> <3C8514B2.40009@Digia.com> <2980000.1015358744@duke.wrkhors.com> Message-ID: <3C8597CC.757A4B10@sonic.net> I'm not sure I like the idea of races surviving on mana and grace. IT already seems that waiting for mana and grace to go up is one of those things players already do, and increasing that waiting at all isn't going to make things very fun. I think fireborns using fire for food is good - it is relatively simple to do, and does change the nature of the race a bit. And it does then mean you don't need to carry food at all, as it doesn't do any good - you just need to carry those wands of fireball instead. Having a damage -> food mapping probably makes the most sense (the damage would be before modified by resistance). I sort of like the idea of a firepit in the tavern that the fireborns are hanging out in to get their food back up. Probably having free firepits in town is probably a fire exchange - if something like lava is used for the firepit, you don't get the food back that quickly, and even if free, it sort of makes up for the fact that there are probably many times when out adventuring there is no fire near by which means you need to use a wand/scroll/spell to feed. An extension of this idea might be that cold damage effective reduces food by some amount, but since they are already vulnerable to cold, that may be a bit much. For wraights, it is probably easier to abstract it to all races that are undead. I'm not sure the idea of sucking hp from those around you is that great - it would seem to make it more difficult for the wraith to adventure with others (as he would probably end up sucking his friends lifeforce also). Certainly tying it to the death of others works - things the wraith directly kills is easiest to do - things that die around the wraith (say by his friends actions) are harder, as when something dies, you then need to examine all the nearby squares to see if there is a wraith player around. The idea of a wraith carrying around a bag of live chickens for food comes to mind. To make it so that wraiths are completely hosed, they could also get some nominal food value from flesh items (maybe 1/10'th the value), and the basis there is still some small essence of life left in them. From peterm at tonks.EECS.Berkeley.EDU Tue Mar 5 23:19:15 2002 From: peterm at tonks.EECS.Berkeley.EDU (Peter Mardahl) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:10 2005 Subject: [CF List] wraight (& fireborns) In-Reply-To: Your message of "Tue, 05 Mar 2002 20:15:08 PST." <3C8597CC.757A4B10@sonic.net> Message-ID: <200203060519.g265JF204771@tonks.EECS.Berkeley.EDU> > > I think fireborns using fire for food is good - it is relatively simple to d > and does change the nature of the race a bit. And it does then mean you don' > need to carry food at all, as it doesn't do any good - you just need to carry > those wands of fireball instead. Having a damage -> food mapping probably ma > the most sense (the damage would be before modified by resistance). I sort o > like the idea of a firepit in the tavern that the fireborns are hanging out i > to get their food back up. Probably having free firepits in town is probably > fire exchange - if something like lava is used for the firepit, you don't get > the food back that quickly, and even if free, it sort of makes up for the fac > that there are probably many times when out adventuring there is no fire near > which means you need to use a wand/scroll/spell to feed. An extension of thi > idea might be that cold damage effective reduces food by some amount, but sin > they are already vulnerable to cold, that may be a bit much. I'm strongly against making fireborn eat fire instead of eating food. Nearly all the maps are designed to sustain creatures which eat food, not fire. Fireborn would thus be screwed--unless they were saddled with lots of wands of fireball/scrolls, WAY harder to obtain than food. Second, the food code would have to have ugly special purpose code to handle fireborn. I'd rather not hard-wire TOO much "archetype" type stuff into the game rule-code. In fact, I'd rather see the fireborn deleted as a character type, instead, and *I* introduced the fireborn. Third, what's so horrible about the idea of fireborn consuming food? *We* oxidize food using enzymes to make energy, why can't a fireborn oxidize food using flamey? A lit tallow candle is burning fat from an animal, after all. > For wraights, it is probably easier to abstract it to all races that are > undead. I'm not sure the idea of sucking hp from those around you is that gr I don't see anything wrong with "if(!op->undead) food--;". That's special purpose code, but "undead" is already an object property, and many places do special checks for undead anyway. Regards, PeterM From lembark at wrkhors.com Tue Mar 5 23:37:09 2002 From: lembark at wrkhors.com (Steven Lembark) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:10 2005 Subject: [CF List] wraight (& fireborns) In-Reply-To: <3C8597CC.757A4B10@sonic.net> References: <3C82A2ED.2030005@Digia.com><3C82FB11.406A4C53@sonic.net> <92980000.1015225990@dizzy.wrkhors.com> <20020305140108.076430e5.quinet@gamers.org> <49430000.1015340510@dizzy.wrkhors.com> <3C8514B2.40009@Digia.com> <2980000.1015358744@duke.wrkhors.com> <3C8597CC.757A4B10@sonic.net> Message-ID: <120850000.1015393029@dizzy.wrkhors.com> > I think fireborns using fire for food is good - it is relatively simple to do, Glad you're warming to the idea. > For wraights, it is probably easier to abstract it to all races that are > undead. I'm not sure the idea of sucking hp from those around you is > that great - it would seem to make it more difficult for the wraith to > adventure with others (as he would probably end up sucking his friends > lifeforce also). Certainly tying it to the death of others works - > things the wraith directly kills is easiest to do - things that die > around the wraith (say by his friends actions) are harder, as when > something dies, you then need to examine all the nearby squares to see if > there is a wraith player around. The idea of a wraith carrying around a > bag of live chickens for food comes to mind. Tie it to the damage done via spells cast by the character -- you already have to compute that anyway. Ingoring group effects for this seems reasonable. For whatever fraction of the "nutrition" they might get let them walk aroun eating whatever corpses are left over from their friends' fun (see below). That or add an innate "suck the life out of" skill that works similarly to "destruction" but adds the damage points to the char's food. Would work similarly to existing drain spells. > To make it so that wraiths are completely hosed, they could also get some > nominal food value from flesh items (maybe 1/10'th the value), and the > basis there is still some small essence of life left in them. Works for me. Simplest fix would be taking 1/10 of the food value from any corpse eaten. There might be a logical argument that "undead corpses" aren't going to have any life force but it sure would simplify things. enjoi. -- Steven Lembark 2930 W. Palmer Workhorse Computing Chicago, IL 60647 +1 800 762 1582 From henric at lysator.liu.se Wed Mar 6 02:54:22 2002 From: henric at lysator.liu.se (Henric Karlsson) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:10 2005 Subject: [CF List] wraight (& fireborns) In-Reply-To: <200203060519.g265JF204771@tonks.EECS.Berkeley.EDU> Message-ID: On Tue, 5 Mar 2002, Peter Mardahl wrote: > I'm strongly against making fireborn eat fire instead of eating > food. Nearly all the maps are designed to sustain creatures which > eat food, not fire. Fireborn would thus be screwed--unless they were > saddled with lots of wands of fireball/scrolls, WAY harder to obtain > than food. I agree with PeterM in this case, fireborns are already hard to play as it is, to have them hunt for non-existing fire doesn't improve that situation. But there is another issu why the food should remain, when you're about to starve to death you "blindly grab for food" and as long as you carry some kind of food you're ok for the moment. It's harder to blindly dive into fire. This also apply to the wraith disscussion. To go into battle with magic in the +10 and a nice regen rate and not having a reliable food supply is a pain in the.. /Henric (Gambold) From Kimmo.Hoikka at Digia.com Wed Mar 6 05:38:44 2002 From: Kimmo.Hoikka at Digia.com (Kimmo Hoikka) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:10 2005 Subject: [CF List] wraight (& fireborns) References: Message-ID: <3C85FFC4.8000603@Digia.com> Henric Karlsson wrote: >>I'm strongly against making fireborn eat fire instead of eating >>food. Nearly all the maps are designed to sustain creatures which >>eat food, not fire. Fireborn would thus be screwed--unless they were >>saddled with lots of wands of fireball/scrolls, WAY harder to obtain >>than food. >> >I agree with PeterM in this case, fireborns are already hard to play as it >is, to have them hunt for non-existing fire doesn't improve that >situation. > >But there is another issu why the food should remain, when you're about to >starve to death you "blindly grab for food" and as long as you carry some >kind of food you're ok for the moment. It's harder to blindly dive into >fire. This also apply to the wraith disscussion. >To go into battle with magic in the +10 and a nice regen rate and not >having a reliable food supply is a pain in the.. > i wonder if those who claim fireborn are hard to play ever really played a fireborn. I made a fireborn character yesterday, devoted myself to gorokh and got flaming aura, with fireborns ability to get ac with levels and flaming aura as level 1 prayer (and very effective) you can go through raffle or some other skeleton+giant place and get to level 12-14 with just praying and flaming and while getting the levels get an ac high enough for most low level monsters to be unable to hit you. you also get so high pow as a fireborn (I got 27 straight from the start) that your mana regeneration is fast and thus get magic to levels >10 very fast, int is also so high that you learn spellbooks very fast. the only problem as a fireborn is to achieve enough food for the enormous consumption that the fast sp/grace regeneneration makes. as for the rarity of fire, if a survey would be made on all players of crossfire of what is the element you have to be protected against?.... I guess 99% would ansver fire. in practice fire is the element that kills players most often, that is true both for low levels and especially for high levels. I have actually wondered why cold and electricity casted or breathed by monsters ceases to be a problem when you get levels even when you dont get any protection to them, fire continues to be a thread for even the highest levels, I have many high level characters with cold and elec resistance of 0% and still they never die for cold or elec, fire resistance is usually 60-70% and yet they die for fire... fire is btw also the most usual protection in existing equipment also. almost all maps have fire or fire casting or breathing monsters, most apartments have fireplaces so I do not see finding fire as a problem, the idea of Fireborn needing to live near fire is an interesting feature and it should be considered to be a neat detail, the consumption should not be a burden so that they should need to carry tons of scrolls and potions constantly. but if eating fire is considered too weird, fireborn could eat normal food of course, but for wraiths (or other undead) eating normal food is absurd, what organic parts you have when you are dead? another somehow absurd thing is mana regeneration increasing food consumption. I find it beeing in contradiction with the idea of magician, beeing strong in mind and usually weak in body; strong muscles consume lots of food, but strong mind consumes somewhat same as a weak mind. the stronger the magician is the more he needs to eat? I recall very few fantacy worlds where magicians are eating all the time, ususally they are described as spending more time with books while the barbarians and fighters eat and practice. -- Kimmo Hoikka Technology Manager, Architecture Digia Inc. Laserkatu 6, FIN - 53840 Lappeenranta E-mail: Kimmo.Hoikka@Digia.com Tel. 0424 7777 505 GSM: +358 40 7380747 ------------------------------------------------------------------ PRIVACY AND CONFIDENTIALITY NOTICE This message and any attachments are intended only for use by the named addressee and may contain privileged and/or confidential information. If you are not the named addressee you should not disseminate, copy or take any action in reliance on it. If you have received this message in error, please contact the sender immediately and delete the message and any attachments accompanying it. Digia does not accept liability for any corruption, interception, amendment, tampering or viruses occurring to this message. For more information, contact info@digia.com From lembark at wrkhors.com Wed Mar 6 10:02:02 2002 From: lembark at wrkhors.com (Steven Lembark) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:10 2005 Subject: [CF List] wraight (& fireborns) In-Reply-To: <200203060519.g265JF204771@tonks.EECS.Berkeley.EDU> References: <200203060519.g265JF204771@tonks.EECS.Berkeley.EDU> Message-ID: <193490000.1015430522@dizzy.wrkhors.com> > I'm strongly against making fireborn eat fire instead of eating > food. Nearly all the maps are designed to sustain creatures which > eat food, not fire. Fireborn would thus be screwed--unless they were > saddled with lots of wands of fireball/scrolls, WAY harder to obtain > than food. Cast burning hands at yourself or any size fireball near a wall. Now try casting "create food" in a dragon cave when you're already covered in flame and pick up the food before it burns. Which seems easier? > Third, what's so horrible about the idea of fireborn consuming food? Try carrying enough food to survive on w/ str == 2. If you're low level and carrying food (vs. waybreads) the speed hit will kill you nearly as often as starvation. -- Steven Lembark 2930 W. Palmer Workhorse Computing Chicago, IL 60647 +1 800 762 1582 From peterm at tonks.EECS.Berkeley.EDU Wed Mar 6 12:00:48 2002 From: peterm at tonks.EECS.Berkeley.EDU (Peter Mardahl) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:10 2005 Subject: [CF List] wraight (& fireborns) In-Reply-To: Your message of "Wed, 06 Mar 2002 13:38:44 +0200." <3C85FFC4.8000603@Digia.com> Message-ID: <200203061800.g26I0ni05538@tonks.EECS.Berkeley.EDU> > Henric Karlsson wrote: > > i wonder if those who claim fireborn are hard to play ever really played > a fireborn. I made a fireborn character yesterday, devoted myself to > gorokh and got flaming aura, with fireborns ability to get ac with In the early levels, fireborn can be EASIER to play, because you get a lot of mana and grace. However, fireborn are hurt badly at high levels because they cannot wear armour or use weapons, and are thus denied all the protections these normally give. The same is true of Quetzalcoatls: they're hozed at high levels, but strong at low levels. Such are the tradeoffs of these two special races. > another somehow absurd thing is mana regeneration increasing food > consumption. I find it beeing in contradiction with the idea of I don't consider this exactly absurd. It's a bit strange, but it's not so very unreasonable. And it makes all those mana points which get blown out cost the player something, which is good. > magician, beeing strong in mind and usually weak in body; strong muscles > consume lots of food, but strong mind consumes somewhat same as a weak > mind. the stronger the magician is the more he needs to eat? I recall > very few fantacy worlds where magicians are eating all the time, > ususally they are described as spending more time with books while the > barbarians and fighters eat and practice. We have no obligation to follow everyone else's lead. Furthermore, we should not, or we're just reimplimenting the same damn game. We should only consider this issue in and of itself and its impact on the game. I think it is a positive thing to require food use in order to regenerate mana. PeterM From lembark at wrkhors.com Wed Mar 6 12:50:22 2002 From: lembark at wrkhors.com (lembark@wrkhors.com) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:10 2005 Subject: [CF List] wraight (& fireborns) In-Reply-To: <200203061800.g26I0ni05538@tonks.EECS.Berkeley.EDU> References: <200203061800.g26I0ni05538@tonks.EECS.Berkeley.EDU> Message-ID: <18090000.1015440622@duke.wrkhors.com> -- Peter Mardahl on 03/06/02 10:00:48 -0800 >> Henric Karlsson wrote: >> >> i wonder if those who claim fireborn are hard to play ever really played >> a fireborn. I made a fireborn character yesterday, devoted myself to >> gorokh and got flaming aura, with fireborns ability to get ac with > > In the early levels, fireborn can be EASIER to play, because you > get a lot of mana and grace. However, fireborn are hurt badly at > high levels because they cannot wear armour or use weapons, > and are thus denied all the protections these normally give. > > The same is true of Quetzalcoatls: they're hozed at high levels, > but strong at low levels. Better way to say it is that you have to be more careful at higher levels. Q's are especially tricky -- they can use high-powered weapons that help greatly and w/ sufficient patience can learn some heavy-duty spells. FB's can get 30 pow w/ a +3 ring and still wear another or a talisman for combined free action and whatever you like. Given sufficient protection spells their hight speed and dex make them hard to hit (and Ruggilli makes them more-or-less immune to missiles). Add, say, a ring of free action and amulet of reflect spells and complete immunity to most poison and all fire. You have a pretty secure item. At higher levels w/ good POW you can summon some serious pet monsters or holy creatures. That and ball lightning will take you pretty far (with a few potions of cold resistance for good luck). > > Such are the tradeoffs of these two special races. > >> another somehow absurd thing is mana regeneration increasing food >> consumption. I find it beeing in contradiction with the idea of > > I don't consider this exactly absurd. It's a bit strange, but it's > not so very unreasonable. And it makes all those mana points > which get blown out cost the player something, which is good. > High mana regen == high exertion == high food use. Put it another way, casting all those spells takes energy, which has to come from somewhere. >> magician, beeing strong in mind and usually weak in body; strong muscles >> consume lots of food, but strong mind consumes somewhat same as a weak >> mind. the stronger the magician is the more he needs to eat? I recall >> very few fantacy worlds where magicians are eating all the time, >> ususally they are described as spending more time with books while the >> barbarians and fighters eat and practice. > > We have no obligation to follow everyone else's lead. Furthermore, we > should not, or we're just reimplimenting the same damn game. We should > only consider this issue in and of itself and its impact on the game. > I think it is a positive thing to require food use in order to regenerate > mana. Think of spells as an expenditure of personal energy. At that point the high food use tends to make sense. -- Steven Lembark 2930 W. Palmer Workhorse Computing Chicago, IL 60647 +1 800 762 1582 From mwedel at sonic.net Wed Mar 6 22:42:01 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:10 2005 Subject: [CF List] wraight (& fireborns) References: <200203060519.g265JF204771@tonks.EECS.Berkeley.EDU> <193490000.1015430522@dizzy.wrkhors.com> Message-ID: <3C86EF99.846C7090@sonic.net> Steven Lembark wrote: > > > I'm strongly against making fireborn eat fire instead of eating > > food. Nearly all the maps are designed to sustain creatures which > > eat food, not fire. Fireborn would thus be screwed--unless they were > > saddled with lots of wands of fireball/scrolls, WAY harder to obtain > > than food. > > Cast burning hands at yourself or any size fireball near > a wall. Now try casting "create food" in a dragon cave when you're > already covered in flame and pick up the food before it burns. Not necessarily a fair test. As I think about it, the problem with fireborn eating food is somewhat balance - at low levels, most fire spells either the fireborn or someone else casts won't do much damage, and thus the fireborn won't get much food value from it. If each town has a fire pit or similar free fire around, that isn't too terrible, since most low level adventures are near/in town, so you go to the firepit, wait for your food to be 999, then wander off. But that may not help you if the dungeon you are going to is a ways around. the biggest and most important question is whether such a change will make things more or less fun. Its easy to say that right now that if your strength is 2, carrying around food is not that fun. But if the change is made, and now the fireborn is hunting for fire or using all his mana to create fire, that probably isn't fun either. At a certain point, then need for fire is not a big deal - the real question is if the fireborn can get to that point easily - most of the very low dungeons don't in general have spellcasters, so the fireborn will need to provide its own fire. I still think it would be a neat idea to try. I'm just not positive how well it will really work. I would say a fireborn with str == 2 has other problems, like just the general inability to get much loot. Of course, the str == 2 problem should in general only be a fairly low level problem - at some point you get the stat potions and raise up to something reasonable, and/or cast strength spells. From crossfire at suckfuell.net Thu Mar 7 02:44:13 2002 From: crossfire at suckfuell.net (Jochen Suckfuell) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:10 2005 Subject: [CF List] wraight (& fireborns) In-Reply-To: <3C86EF99.846C7090@sonic.net>; from mwedel@sonic.net on Wed, Mar 06, 2002 at 08:42:01PM -0800 References: <200203060519.g265JF204771@tonks.EECS.Berkeley.EDU> <193490000.1015430522@dizzy.wrkhors.com> <3C86EF99.846C7090@sonic.net> Message-ID: <20020307094413.A22197@ds217-115-141-141.dedicated.hosteurope.de> Hi! > > > I'm strongly against making fireborn eat fire instead of eating > > > food. Nearly all the maps are designed to sustain creatures which > > > eat food, not fire. Fireborn would thus be screwed--unless they were > > > saddled with lots of wands of fireball/scrolls, WAY harder to obtain > > > than food. > > > > Cast burning hands at yourself or any size fireball near > > a wall. Now try casting "create food" in a dragon cave when you're > > already covered in flame and pick up the food before it burns. Imagine a fireborn playing together in a party with a wraith (vuln: fire). F: "Step back, I'm hungry!!" :) Bye Jochen -- Jochen Suckfuell From henric at lysator.liu.se Thu Mar 7 08:19:03 2002 From: henric at lysator.liu.se (Henric Karlsson) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:10 2005 Subject: [CF List] wraight (& fireborns) In-Reply-To: <3C85FFC4.8000603@Digia.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 6 Mar 2002, Kimmo Hoikka wrote: > Henric Karlsson wrote: > > >I agree with PeterM in this case, fireborns are already hard to play as it > >is, to have them hunt for non-existing fire doesn't improve that > >situation. > > > >But there is another issu why the food should remain, when you're about to > >starve to death you "blindly grab for food" and as long as you carry some > >kind of food you're ok for the moment. It's harder to blindly dive into > >fire. This also apply to the wraith disscussion. > >To go into battle with magic in the +10 and a nice regen rate and not > >having a reliable food supply is a pain in the.. > > > i wonder if those who claim fireborn are hard to play ever really played > a fireborn. I made a fireborn character yesterday, devoted myself to > gorokh and got flaming aura, with fireborns ability to get ac with Ok report back when you've killed Lorkas (and his minions), if you still think fireborns are as easy to play as other races you win. > levels and flaming aura as level 1 prayer (and very effective) you can > go through raffle or some other skeleton+giant place and get to level > 12-14 with just praying and flaming and while getting the levels get an Are you trying to say that fireborns are easy to play because flaming aura is given at a too low level or that flaming aura is too powerful? > ac high enough for most low level monsters to be unable to hit you. you > also get so high pow as a fireborn (I got 27 straight from the start) Yes fireborns are easy to get to medium/high levels fast, but they still are hard to play as soon as you face spell casting monster because they can't get high resistances. > almost all maps have fire or fire casting or breathing monsters, most No, maps with fire breathers are not that common, in scorn there are? 2? Spellcasters usually cast more spells than fire only, so I wouldn't depend on them as a food source. > apartments have fireplaces so I do not see finding fire as a problem, They do? only fireplace I can think of is the one in Nurnberg which you have to be a scolar of Kurte to access. > the idea of Fireborn needing to live near fire is an interesting feature > and it should be considered to be a neat detail, the consumption should > not be a burden so that they should need to carry tons of scrolls and Ok, here I agree completely and I should probably stop my complaints right away, because I'm a little curious how it would acctually look like if implemented. After all with the new dragon race there are 3 races that can't use armour and both Q and fireborn are rather equal. But I still think that the ability to store food that can be auto applied is rather important, but maybe this drawback could be offset by some sustenance bonus (if a motivation is needed, magic energy could be considered a more effective way to store and use energy than food) hmm, maybe dust/balms/potions with fire effects could be auto applied? /Henric (Gambold) From lembark at wrkhors.com Thu Mar 7 09:51:47 2002 From: lembark at wrkhors.com (Steven Lembark) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:10 2005 Subject: [CF List] wraight (& fireborns) In-Reply-To: <3C86EF99.846C7090@sonic.net> References: <200203060519.g265JF204771@tonks.EECS.Berkeley.EDU> <193490000.1015430522@dizzy.wrkhors.com> <3C86EF99.846C7090@sonic.net> Message-ID: <309690000.1015516307@dizzy.wrkhors.com> > the biggest and most important question is whether such a change will > make things more or less fun. Its easy to say that right now that if > your strength is 2, carrying around food is not that fun. But if the > change is made, and now the fireborn is hunting for fire or using all his > mana to create fire, that probably isn't fun either. > > At a certain point, then need for fire is not a big deal - the real > question is if the fireborn can get to that point easily - most of the > very low dungeons don't in general have spellcasters, so the fireborn > will need to provide its own fire. > > I still think it would be a neat idea to try. I'm just not positive how > well it will really work. > > I would say a fireborn with str == 2 has other problems, like just the > general inability to get much loot. Of course, the str == 2 problem > should in general only be a fairly low level problem - at some point you > get the stat potions and raise up to something reasonable, and/or cast > strength spells. You can cast str spells, which uses mana, which requires food, which... Low str is a general problem that makes it hard to play. Not carrying food would be a plus... Let's assume that mana regen > food use rate (this is adjustable by character anyway). Unless they are regenerating mana or hp, fb's don't use much food. At that point a single flame spell (say "invoke burning hands") could be made equivalent to enough food for a recharge (say 10-20 mp). At fairly low levels they can also get "flaming aura" to charge up with, which doesn't interfere with mp regen at all -- in fact the praying speeds it up. As the char goes up in levels the mp go up pretty steeply, which means that both food use and mp regen go up. Again, the food is a fraction of mp regen. However much mp you use casting a fire spell will give you more than that much "food". A single "large fireball" or few rounds of "flaming aura" might be enough to feed you fully. You'll also probably use fire spells in battle, which have the byproduct of "feeding" you then. At high levels you'll have enough mana to cast whatever you need for food, and will probably be around fire-causing items in dungeons frequently enough to get "fed" on the fly. If we leave the char's "food" at zero and have it live on hp, the code changes are minimal: (1) The damage caused by fire stat needs to be changed to a negative number in the struct (no code change required). (2) The number of hp may need to be raised (also no code change). (3) The hp cycler already has a max value limit (used for healing spells). This should prove sufficient for clampng the hp to a reasonable level when fire exposure causes negative damage. (4) The "eating" code needs to be adjusted so that non-flesh char's (fb's and w's) get no/miminal benefit from normal food. This involves one modification to the "food benefit" calculator to multiply a "how much benefit do you get from food" entry in the char's struct. Net code change could be simple as changing a default value, adding one constant to the char and multiplying by it when the character eats. This assumes that the char survives w/ [near-] zero fp all the time, living off slowly reducing hp that get regen-ed by fire (in the case of fb's) or a "suck the life out of" spell/skill in w's. Which in turns requires that they both get fairly high hp to begin with (so that the slowly reducing value doesn't get them killed every 10 sec). -- Steven Lembark 2930 W. Palmer Workhorse Computing Chicago, IL 60647 +1 800 762 1582 From mwedel at sonic.net Thu Mar 7 22:54:52 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:11 2005 Subject: [CF List] wraight (& fireborns) References: <200203060519.g265JF204771@tonks.EECS.Berkeley.EDU> <193490000.1015430522@dizzy.wrkhors.com> <3C86EF99.846C7090@sonic.net> <309690000.1015516307@dizzy.wrkhors.com> Message-ID: <3C88441C.E6CD7184@sonic.net> Steven Lembark wrote: > You can cast str spells, which uses mana, which requires > food, which... Low str is a general problem that makes it > hard to play. Not carrying food would be a plus... Probably true for all races. > for food, and will probably be around fire-causing items in dungeons > frequently enough to get "fed" on the fly. > > If we leave the char's "food" at zero and have it live on hp, the > code changes are minimal: I still don't see why that is an advantage to still having them use food. Its a fairly trivial change to modify the code such that when a fireborn gets hits by fire, his food goes up. Fairly easy to also make it so they can't eat normal food, or gets less effect. > > (1) The damage caused by fire stat needs to be changed to a > negative number in the struct (no code change required). Not sure what you mean here - remember, fire still has to cause damage to non fireborns. > > (2) The number of hp may need to be raised (also no code change). actually, I'm pretty sure hit point for all characters is hard coded. Increasing con will increase hp to some extent, but probably not as much as you mean. > (3) The hp cycler already has a max value limit (used for healing > spells). This should prove sufficient for clampng the hp > to a reasonable level when fire exposure causes negative > damage. Actually, I'm also not sure of this - this may be the case for the cases which natural re-gen hp, but it may certainly be possible to super charge the hp above the max, like can happen with mana and grace. In any case, wherever/whatever adds food or hp would be pretty easy to make sure it doesn't exceed max. > > (4) The "eating" code needs to be adjusted so that non-flesh > char's (fb's and w's) get no/miminal benefit from normal > food. This involves one modification to the "food benefit" > calculator to multiply a "how much benefit do you get from > food" entry in the char's struct. yeah - this is fairly easy. > This assumes that the char survives w/ [near-] zero fp all the > time, living off slowly reducing hp that get regen-ed by fire > (in the case of fb's) or a "suck the life out of" spell/skill > in w's. Which in turns requires that they both get fairly high > hp to begin with (so that the slowly reducing value doesn't get > them killed every 10 sec). As said, I don't think fireborns living off hp is a good thing - this would seem to put them at greater disadvantage if no fire is around, and probably make life really easy when fire is around (the fire from the wyverns or dragons might more than offset the physical damage they do). If fire gives them food, it means they don't need to carry around food (just need to have spells), yet doesn't really provide any shift in balance otherwise (the big question is how hard is it for the fireborns to get fire for food). From lembark at wrkhors.com Thu Mar 7 23:21:36 2002 From: lembark at wrkhors.com (Steven Lembark) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:11 2005 Subject: [CF List] wraight (& fireborns) In-Reply-To: <3C88441C.E6CD7184@sonic.net> References: <200203060519.g265JF204771@tonks.EECS.Berkeley.EDU> <193490000.1015430522@dizzy.wrkhors.com> <3C86EF99.846C7090@sonic.net> <309690000.1015516307@dizzy.wrkhors.com> <3C88441C.E6CD7184@sonic.net> Message-ID: <132400000.1015564896@dizzy.wrkhors.com> -- Mark Wedel > Steven Lembark wrote: > >> You can cast str spells, which uses mana, which requires >> food, which... Low str is a general problem that makes it >> hard to play. Not carrying food would be a plus... > > Probably true for all races. More so for fb's due to limited str and inability to use stat-raising equip's. Having a str spell run out just as you're dodging a demilich or whatnot is a a real pain. > > >> for food, and will probably be around fire-causing items in dungeons >> frequently enough to get "fed" on the fly. >> >> If we leave the char's "food" at zero and have it live on hp, the >> code changes are minimal: > > I still don't see why that is an advantage to still having them use > food. Its a fairly trivial change to modify the code such that when a > fireborn gets hits by fire, his food goes up. Fairly easy to also make > it so they can't eat normal food, or gets less effect. I was just trying to find a way of doing it with minimum code changes. Having fire == food would be just fine for me. One idea: Come up with a hack character (other than fb) to test the whole thing on. Call it a "hakophile" and see how the thing works. If people like the thing changing it to fb isn't all that difficult; if we don't it vanishes w/o a trace. >> >> (1) The damage caused by fire stat needs to be changed to a >> negative number in the struct (no code change required). > > Not sure what you mean here - remember, fire still has to cause damage > to non fireborns. For fb's only, the struct entry for damage could have its sign reversed. This would cause an increase in hp rather than decrease. > >> >> (2) The number of hp may need to be raised (also no code change). > > actually, I'm pretty sure hit point for all characters is hard coded. > Increasing con will increase hp to some extent, but probably not as much > as you mean. > > >> (3) The hp cycler already has a max value limit (used for healing >> spells). This should prove sufficient for clampng the hp >> to a reasonable level when fire exposure causes negative >> damage. > > Actually, I'm also not sure of this - this may be the case for the cases > which natural re-gen hp, but it may certainly be possible to super charge > the hp above the max, like can happen with mana and grace. In any case, > wherever/whatever adds food or hp would be pretty easy to make sure it > doesn't exceed max. Given your note on (2), above, then don't modify the max and allow fb's to supercharge their hp. However much fire they "consume" will increase their hp to the point that they don't need food for that much longer. >> >> (4) The "eating" code needs to be adjusted so that non-flesh >> char's (fb's and w's) get no/miminal benefit from normal >> food. This involves one modification to the "food benefit" >> calculator to multiply a "how much benefit do you get from >> food" entry in the char's struct. > > yeah - this is fairly easy. > >> This assumes that the char survives w/ [near-] zero fp all the >> time, living off slowly reducing hp that get regen-ed by fire >> (in the case of fb's) or a "suck the life out of" spell/skill >> in w's. Which in turns requires that they both get fairly high >> hp to begin with (so that the slowly reducing value doesn't get >> them killed every 10 sec). > > As said, I don't think fireborns living off hp is a good thing - this > would seem to put them at greater disadvantage if no fire is around, and > probably make life really easy when fire is around (the fire from the > wyverns or dragons might more than offset the physical damage they do). That was the point, if fb's are composed basically of flame in the first place. And flame spells are among the lowest-level ones available (e.g., flaming hands, small fireball). > > If fire gives them food, it means they don't need to carry around food > (just need to have spells), yet doesn't really provide any shift in > balance otherwise (the big question is how hard is it for the fireborns > to get fire for food). The shift in balance is in having to plan getting fire w/o either giving one's self away or frying all the treasure. Other theory was minimizing the changes required in code. Given the idea of "supercharging" hp it seems possible that the entire issue could be tested by negating a constant and a one-opt test like if( char_type == CHAR_FB ) food_value /= 20; in the "eating" code. -- Steven Lembark 2930 W. Palmer Workhorse Computing Chicago, IL 60647 +1 800 762 1582 From mwedel at sonic.net Thu Mar 7 23:57:30 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:11 2005 Subject: [CF List] wraight (& fireborns) References: <200203060519.g265JF204771@tonks.EECS.Berkeley.EDU> <193490000.1015430522@dizzy.wrkhors.com> <3C86EF99.846C7090@sonic.net> <309690000.1015516307@dizzy.wrkhors.com> <3C88441C.E6CD7184@sonic.net> <132400000.1015564896@dizzy.wrkhors.com> Message-ID: <3C8852CA.D3A3A785@sonic.net> Steven Lembark wrote: > > More so for fb's due to limited str and inability to > use stat-raising equip's. Having a str spell run out > just as you're dodging a demilich or whatnot is a a > real pain. Note that to some extent, the changes may be similar to the fireborn just stashing a pile of food near the entrance to the dungeon, and running back their periodically to much up to 999 food, then go adventuring again. > > I was just trying to find a way of doing it with minimum > code changes. Having fire == food would be just fine for me. thats easy to do - you just need to insert a few lines in the attack code such taht if the target is a fireborn, food goes up. > > One idea: Come up with a hack character (other than fb) to > test the whole thing on. Call it a "hakophile" and see how > the thing works. If people like the thing changing it to > fb isn't all that difficult; if we don't it vanishes w/o > a trace. Certainly it should be tested and see if it is feasible - I'm really not sure as it is now - at low levels, the fireborn may just end up going to a nearby fireplace to get food up - at some level, this isn't a lot different than current play, of go in, adventure some, leave to regain mana and hp, go back in, etc. all it really means is that the fireborn wanders a little farther. > > >> > >> (1) The damage caused by fire stat needs to be changed to a > >> negative number in the struct (no code change required). > > > > Not sure what you mean here - remember, fire still has to cause damage > > to non fireborns. > > For fb's only, the struct entry for damage could have its sign > reversed. This would cause an increase in hp rather than decrease. I guess I'm confused what struct and what field. You certainly don't want to modify the spells the fireborn casts in such a way, as it would also heal other monsters. And in fact, since the fireborn has 100 resistance to fire, some special hack would be needed in the attack code in any place. > > Actually, I'm also not sure of this - this may be the case for the cases > > which natural re-gen hp, but it may certainly be possible to super charge > > the hp above the max, like can happen with mana and grace. In any case, > > wherever/whatever adds food or hp would be pretty easy to make sure it > > doesn't exceed max. > > Given your note on (2), above, then don't modify the max and > allow fb's to supercharge their hp. However much fire they > "consume" will increase their hp to the point that they > don't need food for that much longer. There would have to be a limit (2 x normal hp or something) - otherwise the fireborn could get mondo hp and make easy work of some of the toughest monsters. > That was the point, if fb's are composed basically of > flame in the first place. And flame spells are among > the lowest-level ones available (e.g., flaming hands, > small fireball). But really only in the hands of players - you usually don't go against spell casters monsters until at least level 5 or so. So if the fireborn has to cast spells for hp, this just increases his wait time for mana regen - for hp, you are probably almost always going to want to have max before heading into a dungeon - this could create a situation where it is near impossible to have both max hp and max mana. Which is one reason having it food I think works better - food has a much higher total allowed (999 - ok, at very high levels, players may get hp that high). But it does mean that a fireborn that starts with max food in town should be able to get a decent amount of the dungeon done, and then find fire or whatever to get food back up. If its his hit points, chances are he might leave town at max, gets to dungeon at less than max, has to fire up, and now has less than max mana, waits for that to get up, and once again has less than max hp. mana regen would have to be faster than hp loss, but the effect will still almost certainly be that the player will spend more time waiting for those to go up. Also, having it be hp would seem to me to make it impossible for a fireborns hp to naturally go up unless he is in fire. This could really screw the fireborn - imagine he got into a treasure chamber with no magic, but that also released big nasty monster - he's basically hosed now, as his hp will continue to go down with no way to get them up again. At least if food is a seperate stat, assuming he has enough food, his hp will get maxed out. > The shift in balance is in having to plan getting fire w/o > either giving one's self away or frying all the treasure. > Other theory was minimizing the changes required in code. > Given the idea of "supercharging" hp it seems possible that > the entire issue could be tested by negating a constant and > a one-opt test like if( char_type == CHAR_FB ) food_value /= 20; > in the "eating" code. The frying treasure is probably not a big deal in most cases - in most all dungeons, there are places to cast a spell that does not have treasure. The fact that many people already cast large spells at monsters seems to suggest at some level frying treasure isn't really a big deal. Plus, there are spells like firebolt which are pretty narrowly focused - even things like runes would probably work as an even safer method. From lembark at wrkhors.com Fri Mar 8 09:13:52 2002 From: lembark at wrkhors.com (Steven Lembark) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:11 2005 Subject: [CF List] wraight (& fireborns) In-Reply-To: <3C8852CA.D3A3A785@sonic.net> References: <200203060519.g265JF204771@tonks.EECS.Berkeley.EDU> <193490000.1015430522@dizzy.wrkhors.com> <3C86EF99.846C7090@sonic.net> <309690000.1015516307@dizzy.wrkhors.com> <3C88441C.E6CD7184@sonic.net> <132400000.1015564896@dizzy.wrkhors.com> <3C8852CA.D3A3A785@sonic.net> Message-ID: <183140000.1015600432@dizzy.wrkhors.com> > I guess I'm confused what struct and what field. You certainly don't > want to modify the spells the fireborn casts in such a way, as it would > also heal other monsters. > > And in fact, since the fireborn has 100 resistance to fire, some special > hack would be needed in the attack code in any place. Last time I looked the resistance is accomplished by a multiplier that effects the damage. If the sign if this value were reversed then "damage" would be added to the hp rather than subtracted. > Which is one reason having it food I think works better - food has a much > higher total allowed (999 - ok, at very high levels, players may get hp > that high). But it does mean that a fireborn that starts with max food > in town should be able to get a decent amount of the dungeon done, and > then find fire or whatever to get food back up. If its his hit points, > chances are he might leave town at max, gets to dungeon at less than max, > has to fire up, and now has less than max mana, waits for that to get up, > and once again has less than max hp. mana regen would have to be faster > than hp loss, but the effect will still almost certainly be that the > player will spend more time waiting for those to go up. At low levels they can get a wand, potion or spell. > Also, having it be hp would seem to me to make it impossible for a > fireborns hp to naturally go up unless he is in fire. This could really > screw the fireborn - imagine he got into a treasure chamber with no > magic, but that also released big nasty monster - he's basically hosed > now, as his hp will continue to go down with no way to get them up again. > At least if food is a seperate stat, assuming he has enough food, his hp > will get maxed out. That would be a problem. But fb's are already completely screwed facing monsters in places with no magic (though casting flaming aura outside the door would go a long way towards keeping them going). -- Steven Lembark 2930 W. Palmer Workhorse Computing Chicago, IL 60647 +1 800 762 1582 From mwedel at sonic.net Sat Mar 9 01:50:16 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:11 2005 Subject: [CF List] wraight (& fireborns) References: <200203060519.g265JF204771@tonks.EECS.Berkeley.EDU> <193490000.1015430522@dizzy.wrkhors.com> <3C86EF99.846C7090@sonic.net> <309690000.1015516307@dizzy.wrkhors.com> <3C88441C.E6CD7184@sonic.net> <132400000.1015564896@dizzy.wrkhors.com> <3C8852CA.D3A3A785@sonic.net> <183140000.1015600432@dizzy.wrkhors.com> Message-ID: <3C89BEB8.5C31E922@sonic.net> Steven Lembark wrote: > > > I guess I'm confused what struct and what field. You certainly don't > > want to modify the spells the fireborn casts in such a way, as it would > > also heal other monsters. > > > > And in fact, since the fireborn has 100 resistance to fire, some special > > hack would be needed in the attack code in any place. > > Last time I looked the resistance is accomplished by a > multiplier that effects the damage. If the sign if this > value were reversed then "damage" would be added to the > hp rather than subtracted. Nope - if the sign for resistance is negative, you take more damage - this is how vulnerabilities are done. The code form attack.c is: dam *= (100-op->resist[attacknum]); if (dam >= 100) dam /= 100; else dam = (dam > (random_roll(0, 99, op, PREFER_LOW))) ? 1 : 0; so giving a negative resistance will not do what you want to do. From lembark at wrkhors.com Sat Mar 9 10:24:33 2002 From: lembark at wrkhors.com (Steven Lembark) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:12 2005 Subject: [CF List] wraight (& fireborns) In-Reply-To: <3C89BEB8.5C31E922@sonic.net> References: <200203060519.g265JF204771@tonks.EECS.Berkeley.EDU> <193490000.1015430522@dizzy.wrkhors.com> <3C86EF99.846C7090@sonic.net> <309690000.1015516307@dizzy.wrkhors.com> <3C88441C.E6CD7184@sonic.net> <132400000.1015564896@dizzy.wrkhors.com> <3C8852CA.D3A3A785@sonic.net> <183140000.1015600432@dizzy.wrkhors.com> <3C89BEB8.5C31E922@sonic.net> Message-ID: <382440000.1015691073@dizzy.wrkhors.com> > Nope - if the sign for resistance is negative, you take more damage - > this is how vulnerabilities are done. > > The code form attack.c is: > > dam *= (100-op->resist[attacknum]); > if (dam >= 100) dam /= 100; > else > dam = (dam > (random_roll(0, 99, op, PREFER_LOW))) ? 1 : 0; > > so giving a negative resistance will not do what you want to do. Shows how long its been since I've played around inside the code... Ah well, so much for that syntatic suger. Steven Lembark 2930 W. Palmer Workhorse Computing Chicago, IL 60647 +1 800 762 1582 From mwedel at sonic.net Wed Mar 20 01:29:23 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:12 2005 Subject: [CF List] Crossfire 1.1.0 released. Message-ID: <3C983A53.7CB2DC56@sonic.net> Crossfire 1.1.0 has been released. Files released for this version: sums (bsd) filename 29201 1320 crossfire-1.1.0-arch.tar.bz2 16596 1415 crossfire-1.1.0-arch.tar.gz 06084 3044 crossfire-1.1.0-maps.tar.bz2 61083 4408 crossfire-1.1.0-maps.tar.gz 52909 2654 crossfire-1.1.0.tar.bz2 48537 2986 crossfire-1.1.0.tar.gz 09418 363 crossfire-client-1.2.0.tar.gz Sums (md5) 3c7e9fcf0c881ddbc70949f453b9f91e crossfire-1.1.0-arch.tar.bz2 a5d24ab18c1342bf564f6e1b9f420732 crossfire-1.1.0-arch.tar.gz d05c1abad504ff25132269feb1aaa165 crossfire-1.1.0-maps.tar.bz2 70b4e4e60b530e7dc259be32493141fc crossfire-1.1.0-maps.tar.gz abb4f360f0f0a6f83db9bf3e00e1ddb7 crossfire-1.1.0.tar.bz2 824e6d9a91ee0321629a9e99ad4e264f crossfire-1.1.0.tar.gz d7ef48af6268f0ee15ae06aafa92e1c4 crossfire-client-1.2.0.tar.gz crossfire-client-1.2.0 is the client (X11) distribution - standard X11 and gtk interfaces are provided. crossfire-1.1.0.tar.{gz/bz2} contains the server code with prebuilt archetype and image files. crossfire-1.1.0.arch.tar.{gz/bz2} contains the unpacked archetype changes. This is not needed if you only want to compile the server and play the game. crossfire-1.1.0-maps.tar.{gz/bz2} contains the maps. This is needed with the server distribution. FOR FIRST TIME USERS: You will only need the appropriate server, map and client file. You do not need the arch file. If you are a first time user, you may want the doc file unless you are using a web based player referance. If you just want to play the game at some remote server, you need the client and perhaps some version of the doc file. Crossfire is avaible on the following ftp sites Primary: ftp://ftp.sourceforge.net/pub/sourceforge/crossfire (64.28.67.101) ftp://ftp.ifi.uio.no/pub/crossfire (129.240.64.44) Secondary: ftp://ftp.real-time.com/pub/games/crossfire ftp://ftp.cs.city.ac.uk/pub/games/crossfire/ ftp://ftp.sunet.se/pub/unix/games/crossfire (130.238.127.3) ftp://ftp.cs.titech.ac.jp/pub/games/crossfire ftp://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/games/roguelike/crossfire/ ftp://crossfire.futt.org//pub/crossfire I uploaded this version to just ftp.scruz.net and sourceforge- it should be on the other ftp sites in a short time Mark Wedel mwedel@sonic.net From lorddevi at link.ca Thu Mar 21 07:18:23 2002 From: lorddevi at link.ca (Lord_Devi) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:12 2005 Subject: [CF List] Missing face files. Message-ID: <3C99DD9F.7000800@link.ca> I installed and ran the newest crossfire(1.1.0) but when I run the crossfire binary i get an error message complaining about missing face files. I was wondering if someone might be able to help me out. I played crossfire ages ago and loved it, thought I'd try again and pity... it doesn't work for me now =) Reading bmaps from /usr/games/crossfire/share/crossfire/bmaps...done (got 3826/3827/3827) Reading faces from /usr/games/crossfire/share/crossfire/faces...Can't open faces file: No such file or directory buf = /usr/games/crossfire/share/crossfire/faces Thanx for the time =) From jbontje at suespammers.org Thu Mar 21 08:44:59 2002 From: jbontje at suespammers.org (Joris Bontje) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:12 2005 Subject: [CF List] Missing face files. In-Reply-To: <3C99DD9F.7000800@link.ca> References: <3C99DD9F.7000800@link.ca> Message-ID: <20020321144459.GA26079@mids.student.utwente.nl> On Thu, Mar 21, 2002 at 07:18:23AM -0600, Lord_Devi wrote: > I installed and ran the newest crossfire(1.1.0) but when I run the > crossfire binary i get an error message > complaining about missing face files. I was wondering if someone might > be able to help me out. I played > crossfire ages ago and loved it, thought I'd try again and pity... it > doesn't work for me now =) > > Reading bmaps from /usr/games/crossfire/share/crossfire/bmaps...done > (got 3826/3827/3827) > Reading faces from /usr/games/crossfire/share/crossfire/faces...Can't > open faces file: No such file or directory > buf = /usr/games/crossfire/share/crossfire/faces You are completely right, the faces file isn't installed when you do make install. A work around is to manually copy crossfire-1.1.0/lib/faces to the share/crossfire directory. I will fix it in the CVS version. Thanks for reporting! Joris Bontje -- Gpg Key: Id=0xF19326A9 / http://mids.student.utwente.nl/~mids/jbontje.pub Key fingerprint = 730D 9B3A F406 F28A 957D 6397 31E8 6D4C F193 26A9 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 240 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20020321/77bfd0ce/attachment.pgp From temitchell at sympatico.ca Thu Mar 21 10:16:45 2002 From: temitchell at sympatico.ca (Todd Mitchell) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:12 2005 Subject: [CF List] Missing face files. References: <3C99DD9F.7000800@link.ca> <20020321144459.GA26079@mids.student.utwente.nl> Message-ID: <002301c1d0f3$ccd31360$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> I noticed that the faces directory was missing too - and it does not seem to be in the gz file on extract either (or at least in the lib dir.) I made an empty faces directory in /share/crossfire and the game runs although I noticed that the map does not refresh as quickly as before (1.0.0) in the DX client anyway. Otherwise I found this install better than the 1.0.0 (no other problems on REDHAT 7.1 using the -prefix (which did not work for me installing 1.0.0)). ----- Original Message ----- From: Joris Bontje To: Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2002 9:44 AM Subject: Re: [CF List] Missing face files. From lorddevi at link.ca Thu Mar 21 10:51:09 2002 From: lorddevi at link.ca (Lord_Devi) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:12 2005 Subject: [CF List] Missing face files. Message-ID: <3C9A0F7D.8010403@link.ca> Yeah, i noticed that there is no lib/faces either. Would it be possible perhaps to use a faces dir from a previous version of crossfire? From temitchell at sympatico.ca Thu Mar 21 10:46:32 2002 From: temitchell at sympatico.ca (Todd Mitchell) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:12 2005 Subject: [CF List] Missing face files. References: <3C99DD9F.7000800@link.ca> <20020321144459.GA26079@mids.student.utwente.nl> <002301c1d0f3$ccd31360$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> Message-ID: <001e01c1d0f7$f68cb2c0$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> I have noticed however that the jcrossclient1.0 explodes now however. Would this be because I have no faces anymore? ----- Original Message ----- From: Todd Mitchell To: Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2002 11:16 AM Subject: Re: [CF List] Missing face files. > I noticed that the faces directory was missing too - and it does not seem to > be in the gz file on extract either (or at least in the lib dir.) I made an > empty faces directory in /share/crossfire and the game runs although I > noticed that the map does not refresh as quickly as before (1.0.0) in the DX > client anyway. Otherwise I found this install better than the 1.0.0 (no > other problems on REDHAT 7.1 using the -prefix (which did not work for me > installing 1.0.0)). > > ----- Original Message ----- > From: Joris Bontje > To: > Sent: Thursday, March 21, 2002 9:44 AM > Subject: Re: [CF List] Missing face files. > > > > _______________________________________________ > crossfire-list mailing list > crossfire-list@lists.real-time.com > https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/crossfire-list > From jbontje at suespammers.org Thu Mar 21 12:33:33 2002 From: jbontje at suespammers.org (Joris Bontje) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:12 2005 Subject: [CF List] Missing face files. In-Reply-To: <002301c1d0f3$ccd31360$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> References: <3C99DD9F.7000800@link.ca> <20020321144459.GA26079@mids.student.utwente.nl> <002301c1d0f3$ccd31360$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> Message-ID: <20020321183333.GA347@mids.student.utwente.nl> On Thu, Mar 21, 2002 at 11:16:45AM -0500, Todd Mitchell wrote: > I noticed that the faces directory was missing too - and it does not seem to > be in the gz file on extract either (or at least in the lib dir.) I made an > empty faces directory in /share/crossfire and the game runs although I > noticed that the map does not refresh as quickly as before (1.0.0) in the DX > client anyway. Otherwise I found this install better than the 1.0.0 (no > other problems on REDHAT 7.1 using the -prefix (which did not work for me > installing 1.0.0)). faces isnt a directory, its a file generated by collect.pl it should be automatically generated when you run make, but it probably wasn't cause it was not properly listed in the Makefile.in It should be fixed now, with the CVS... if you still have problems, please say so. Regards, Joris Bontje / mids -- Gpg Key: Id=0xF19326A9 / http://mids.student.utwente.nl/~mids/jbontje.pub Key fingerprint = 730D 9B3A F406 F28A 957D 6397 31E8 6D4C F193 26A9 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 240 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20020321/a5978950/attachment.pgp From Kimmo.Hoikka at Digia.com Wed Mar 27 13:26:22 2002 From: Kimmo.Hoikka at Digia.com (Kimmo Hoikka) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:12 2005 Subject: [CF List] levels & spells Message-ID: <3CA21CDE.1090208@Digia.com> Hi, A few things have come into discussion amongst players on the crossfire servers from time to time. Most players (after they get familiar with the game) find the level system not working at the moment. Once you get to level 40-50 you suddenly bounce to level 110 in one night and stop gaining levels anymore and thus loose one aspect on the game. Just take a look at the highscore list of any server, you see players on levels 1-50 and the rest in level 110. this is due to the fact that after level 25-30 you start getting exp rather big amounts and the level difference practically stops growing (1.000.000 at level 25 and 1.600.000 at level 80). From the best monsters you can get 5-6 total levels at one kill. Two possible solutions: more levels (200, 300, ...) or change in the experience requirement so that it makes highest levels harder to reach. I know, i know... it only delays the fact that most players get to level 110 eventually but anyway, currently it is way too fast reachable. The same applies to skill levels, you get your skills to level 107 and loose way to gain exp on that skill --> stop using that skill --> eventually stop playing. btw, why the exp requirements for levels are not parameteres outside the sourcecode? a neat formula could do the thing the table does currently (x ^ 1.5 or similar) Another funny thing, call it a bug or a feature, is that once you get to level 107 in wisdom with 130900000 exp you stop loosing exp once you change the god. a few days ago I changed god about a dozen times on full exp and lost nothing, then died (dropped to 104) and changed god, lost 74 levels on wisdom (dropped to 30).... loosing nothing is not good and loosing 74 levels is way too much, perhaps something should be done there. anyway I went a while through the valriel random map and gained 45 levels back in one night, that kind of ruins the meaning of the idea of a level... Another thing of annoyance is the spell effect messages (your flaming aura ignites kobold etc). they are really neat when you cast one spell, but they really make the game unplayable with real spellcasting. I don't know if the ones who coded that effect ever tried with normal network connection and with cascaded spells. Just go to a server and cast 20 flaming auras ang go in middle of monsters..., your client gets stuck displaying you 20 x messages of the spell striking and meanwhile your commands do not get to the server. The next time server responds to your command you are propably dead (have died dozens of times because of that). Worst is when some of the monsters is immune to that attacktype, you get useless messages that stuck your client, and if your friend happens to walk on your spells he gets also stuck with the messages. Perhaps it would be enough to show the effect message once for same category spell... -- ___ <@,@> Kimmo Hoikka - www.hoikka.com [`-'] Pellonm?enraitti 3 as 8, 53850 Lpr -"-"- +358(0)40 738 0747 From henric at lysator.liu.se Thu Mar 28 08:24:39 2002 From: henric at lysator.liu.se (Henric Karlsson) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:13 2005 Subject: [CF List] levels & spells In-Reply-To: <3CA21CDE.1090208@Digia.com> Message-ID: On Wed, 27 Mar 2002, Kimmo Hoikka wrote: > Hi, > > A few things have come into discussion amongst players on the crossfire > servers from time to time. Most players (after they get familiar with > the game) find the level system not working at the moment. Once you get > to level 40-50 you suddenly bounce to level 110 in one night and stop > gaining levels anymore and thus loose one aspect on the game. Just take > a look at the highscore list of any server, you see players on levels > 1-50 and the rest in level 110. this is due to the fact that after level > 25-30 you start getting exp rather big amounts and the level difference > practically stops growing (1.000.000 at level 25 and 1.600.000 at level > 80). From the best monsters you can get 5-6 total levels at one kill. > As I see it the level cap at 110 isn't the problem, the problem is that you get there to easy. And a few game issues are dependant on that lvl cap I guess, like weapon enchantments (both by gods and from scrolls) Just to increase the limit would solve nothing. Then it would be better to make the xp requirements to the next level a little more exponential. or Remove a few the the worst xp maps. I'm primary thinking of the temples of Valriel and Gorock, 100 levels! There are 29 defined random levels for angels I think, so a max depth of 30 would be enough to encounter all monsters. More than that is just a free xp source. (btw this is probably one of the major reasons why Gorock is generally considered one of the better gods (along with flaming aura and vitriol) > Another thing of annoyance is the spell effect messages (your flaming > aura ignites kobold etc). they are really neat when you cast one spell, > but they really make the game unplayable with real spellcasting. I don't > know if the ones who coded that effect ever tried with normal network > connection and with cascaded spells. Just go to a server and cast 20 I think area spell messages has already been downsized, but flaming aura and balllightning still generates *alot* of messages. The problem in both cases is that the spell exists quite a long time and you can have several instances of the spell in effect simultaneous. A fix for this could be to only allow 1 flaming aura / caster. But maybe increase the damage to reflect this. A better fix for ball lightning would probably be to decrease the duration time. /Henric From Kimmo.Hoikka at Digia.com Thu Mar 28 10:59:48 2002 From: Kimmo.Hoikka at Digia.com (Kimmo Hoikka) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:13 2005 Subject: [CF List] levels & spells References: Message-ID: <3CA34C04.6090305@Digia.com> > > >Just to increase the limit would solve nothing. Then it would be better to >make the xp requirements to the next level a little more exponential. >or >Remove a few the the worst xp maps. I'm primary thinking of the temples >of Valriel and Gorock, 100 levels! There are 29 defined random levels for >angels I think, so a max depth of 30 would be enough to encounter all >monsters. More than that is just a free xp source. (btw this is probably >one of the major reasons why Gorock is generally considered one of the >better gods (along with flaming aura and vitriol) > Removing the best exp maps is the worst solution for the too easy level gain problem. In the busiest servers (>10 simultaneous players) there is already a problem of finding areas of interest (and of exp). The random maps are good (exp and lots of interesting random stuff in chests) and if they are removed/changed, exp is somewhat harder to gain, yes, but the game will loose playability a lot since you then have more players rushing into less areas. I would like to see even harder (and more exp giving areas) more as most of the older maps are just full of goblins and normal (easy) low level monsters. The level problem is better solved with more exponential level requirement than removing means of getting exp (random maps). -- ___ <@,@> Kimmo Hoikka - www.hoikka.com [`-'] Pellonm?enraitti 3 as 8, 53850 Lpr -"-"- +358(0)40 738 0747 From lembark at wrkhors.com Thu Mar 28 11:17:38 2002 From: lembark at wrkhors.com (Steven Lembark) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:13 2005 Subject: [CF List] levels & spells In-Reply-To: <3CA21CDE.1090208@Digia.com> References: <3CA21CDE.1090208@Digia.com> Message-ID: <478190000.1017335858@dizzy.wrkhors.com> > displaying you 20 x messages of the spell striking and Same happens if you pray. Duplicate message supression would help a great deal on long-haul networks. -- Steven Lembark 2930 W. Palmer Workhorse Computing Chicago, IL 60647 +1 800 762 1582 From scott at campy.tymnet.com Thu Mar 28 11:27:11 2002 From: scott at campy.tymnet.com (Scott Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:13 2005 Subject: [CF List] levels & spells Message-ID: <200203281727.KAA28015@moots.tymnet.com> >> displaying you 20 x messages of the spell striking and > >Same happens if you pray. Duplicate message supression would >help a great deal on long-haul networks. I'd think the solution would be for the server to send just the message index value which the client then prints. If that was done then also compression on the connection should largely resolve the issue of duplicate messages over slow connections. It should be a client issue regarding the display of repeated identical messages. As for experience levels, sounds to me like the table of experience needed per level should be contained in a configuration file read at startup that can easily be editted. The cf distribution could contain a couple of different sample configs with comments on how each affects gameplay. From lembark at wrkhors.com Thu Mar 28 11:54:19 2002 From: lembark at wrkhors.com (Steven Lembark) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:13 2005 Subject: [CF List] levels & spells In-Reply-To: <200203281727.KAA28015@moots.tymnet.com> References: <200203281727.KAA28015@moots.tymnet.com> Message-ID: <483520000.1017338059@dizzy.wrkhors.com> > I'd think the solution would be for the server to send just the message > index value which the client then prints. If that was done then also > compression on the connection should largely resolve the issue of > duplicate messages over slow connections. That would cut down but not eliminate the problem. Network latency can cause the repeat messages to still cause problems. One approach would be for the server to send a heartbeat- type message indicating that the last event is still continuing (e.g., you're still praying). That would limit the traffic to one event per, say, second. Until a new message gets passed. -- Steven Lembark 2930 W. Palmer Workhorse Computing Chicago, IL 60647 +1 800 762 1582 From andi.vogl at gmx.net Thu Mar 28 12:38:35 2002 From: andi.vogl at gmx.net (Andreas Vogl) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:13 2005 Subject: [CF List] levels & exp In-Reply-To: <200203281727.KAA28015@moots.tymnet.com> Message-ID: <000301c1d687$c89b6240$c86ebb81@gizmo> in reply to the level/experience issues posted by Scott W., Henric K. and Kimmo H.: > Most players [...] find the level system not working at the moment. > [...] after level 25-30 you start getting exp rather big amounts and > the level difference practically stops growing [...]. This is sooo true. Indeed, the experience gap between levels stops growing at ~level 50 which is all but silly under the current setting. It made some sense while the death penalty was huge, but that has been reduced so the logical consequence is to raise level gaps. And yes, doing so would implicitly rise the death penalty again (Has been discussed before). But I think the current situation on the game-servers shows more than clearly that it is required. > possible solution: more levels (200, 300, ...) Raising the maxlevel is a seperate issue. It doesn't solve the above problem - but it would be a nice addition. Big and only problem here: Very hard to change in the code because the maxlevel is so often used as hardcoded value (for array-dimensions, part of formulaes etc). Extremely high risk of causing MASSIVE bugs! > Remove a few the the worst xp maps. I'm primary thinking of the > temples of Valriel and Gorock, 100 levels! Currenlty we have too little maps. Unbalanced maps should therefore be fixed, not removed. We could insert tougher monsters at the higher randommap stages for example, to balance the experience gains. > As for experience levels, sounds to me like the table of > experience needed per level should be contained in a configuration > file read at startup that can easily be editted. I don't agree here. Multiple experience models would cause way too much chaos. The experience model must be hardcoded and identical on all servers. Maps have to be designed after that *one* experience model. Players should also be able to get used to one model. Andreas From scott at campy.tymnet.com Thu Mar 28 12:58:58 2002 From: scott at campy.tymnet.com (Scott Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:13 2005 Subject: [CF List] levels & exp Message-ID: <200203281858.LAA28086@moots.tymnet.com> > >I don't agree here. Multiple experience models would cause way too >much chaos. The experience model must be hardcoded >and identical on all servers. Maps have to be designed after that >*one* experience model. Players should also be able to get used >to one model. Why does map design care about exp model? I'd think that maps are designed to the player level and not the number of exp points. The exp model would only seem to enter a map design if the map design expects a player to be gaining levels at particular points during the map. And if that is true which means that a player has not gained enough levels part way through a particular map (or series of maps) to reach completion which then forced character to leave and adventure elsewhere to get strong enough to continue then maybe it wouldn't be such a bad thing to have to see more of the world. I certainly do not believe that the exp model must be hardcoded on all servers. From andi.vogl at gmx.net Thu Mar 28 16:03:33 2002 From: andi.vogl at gmx.net (Andreas Vogl) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:13 2005 Subject: [CF List] levels & exp In-Reply-To: <200203281858.LAA28086@moots.tymnet.com> Message-ID: <000001c1d6a4$6b7058b0$c86ebb81@gizmo> in reply to Scott W.: > > > >I don't agree here. Multiple experience models would cause way too > >much chaos. The experience model must be hardcoded > >and identical on all servers. Maps have to be designed after that > >*one* experience model. Players should also be able to get used > >to one model. > > Why does map design care about exp model? Maps *contain* experience. So how much exp should I add on my new "Great Dragon of Chaos"? 1 million or 20 million? - Depends on how much the experience is worth in the model of course. If a level 100 player gains 3 levels for killing it, that was too much. But if a level 60 player gains only 1 level that might be okay. > [...] The exp model would only seem to enter a map > design if the map design expects a player to be gaining levels at > particular points during the map. [...] That is of minor importance. Generally maps shouldn't contain sudden severe changes of difficulty. Most maps follow that rule. Andreas From mwedel at sonic.net Fri Mar 29 00:19:23 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:13 2005 Subject: [CF List] levels & spells References: <200203281727.KAA28015@moots.tymnet.com> <483520000.1017338059@dizzy.wrkhors.com> Message-ID: <3CA4076B.1F0DBE5C@sonic.net> Steven Lembark wrote: > > That would cut down but not eliminate the problem. Network > latency can cause the repeat messages to still cause problems. > One approach would be for the server to send a heartbeat- > type message indicating that the last event is still > continuing (e.g., you're still praying). That would limit > the traffic to one event per, say, second. Until a new > message gets passed. the index method also doesn't work when a large percentage of the message may be the monster your are killing (eg, define code 1234 as 'Your flaming aura zaps the %s' saves some amount of bandwidth, but is still costly if that %s is 'greater demon'. Unless things like greater demon and all the other names are also tagged. It should be mentioned that the server DOES have the functionality to repeat messages. The problem is that too many messages pass the NDI_UNIQUE flag to draw_info. The reason NDI_UNIQUE exists is that it preserves ordering and reduces latency of sending that particular message (if NDI_UNIQUE is not set, it may be several ticks before the server sends the message to the client). The other reason is that if the message is really unique (say a shop listing), you don't want it invalidating the cache of messages the server is buffering. Obviously, things like the praying messages and some spells should not be using the NDI_UNIQUE flag. a simple fix to the problem. Scott Wedel wrote: > > As for experience levels, sounds to me like the table of experience needed > per level should be contained in a configuration file read at startup that > can easily be editted. The cf distribution could contain a couple of different > sample configs with comments on how each affects gameplay. This is a good idea - compiled in values are generally not good. IT should be mentioned that in the past, I believe the level differences were much more, but there were problems with that. Increasing the level limit IMO is a bad idea. As it is now, most of the game is designed for levels less than 50 (spells you get, etc). Increasing the level limit is not likely to do anything but delay by a minor amount of people getting maxed out, and even more whining that 'there should be more level 200 dungeons out there) and what not. From mwedel at sonic.net Fri Mar 29 00:42:11 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:13 2005 Subject: [CF List] levels & exp References: <000001c1d6a4$6b7058b0$c86ebb81@gizmo> Message-ID: <3CA40CC3.520CCB45@sonic.net> Andreas Vogl wrote: > > in reply to Scott W.: > > > > > >I don't agree here. Multiple experience models would cause way too > > >much chaos. The experience model must be hardcoded > > >and identical on all servers. Maps have to be designed after that > > >*one* experience model. Players should also be able to get used > > >to one model. > > > > Why does map design care about exp model? > > Maps *contain* experience. > > So how much exp should I add on my new "Great Dragon of Chaos"? > 1 million or 20 million? - Depends on how much the experience is > worth in the model of course. > If a level 100 player gains 3 levels for killing it, that was too > much. But if a level 60 player gains only 1 level that might be okay. But I think that is some of the idea behind having a variable experience system. If a server admin wants to make it tougher for players to advance at high levels, they change the experience values need for the higher levels. Certainly, a server admin could make things too tough (or easy) depending on how they change the tables. But like anything in crossfire, that is true if you change some values. Of course, the values right now are not immutable right now - right now it is just tougher for the server admin to change the values, as they have to go into the the source code to change it. Making it a file read at load time certainly makes it easier to experiment and find values that seem to work properly. From temitchell at sympatico.ca Fri Mar 29 11:23:22 2002 From: temitchell at sympatico.ca (Todd Mitchell) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:13 2005 Subject: [CF List] levels & spells References: <200203281727.KAA28015@moots.tymnet.com> <483520000.1017338059@dizzy.wrkhors.com> <3CA4076B.1F0DBE5C@sonic.net> Message-ID: <000c01c1d746$6d573980$0a02a8c0@kameria> What about cutting down or eliminating the buffer? I noticed that the times when I am having the most fun are also the times when I am pounding keys like a maniac and this tends to get me killed. (Like any bad habit - I know better but it is fun). I don't mind getting 40 messages when I cast poision cloud or fireball, but do mind that when I fire a whole lot of arrows it is quite a while before the buffer clears and I can run away. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Mark Wedel" To: Sent: Friday, March 29, 2002 1:19 AM Subject: Re: [CF List] levels & spells > Steven Lembark wrote: > > > > That would cut down but not eliminate the problem. Network > > latency can cause the repeat messages to still cause problems. > > One approach would be for the server to send a heartbeat- > > type message indicating that the last event is still > > continuing (e.g., you're still praying). That would limit > > the traffic to one event per, say, second. Until a new > > message gets passed. > > the index method also doesn't work when a large percentage of the message may > be the monster your are killing (eg, define code 1234 as 'Your flaming aura zaps > the %s' saves some amount of bandwidth, but is still costly if that %s is > 'greater demon'. Unless things like greater demon and all the other names are > also tagged. > > It should be mentioned that the server DOES have the functionality to repeat > messages. The problem is that too many messages pass the NDI_UNIQUE flag to > draw_info. The reason NDI_UNIQUE exists is that it preserves ordering and > reduces latency of sending that particular message (if NDI_UNIQUE is not set, it > may be several ticks before the server sends the message to the client). The > other reason is that if the message is really unique (say a shop listing), you > don't want it invalidating the cache of messages the server is buffering. > > Obviously, things like the praying messages and some spells should not be using > the NDI_UNIQUE flag. a simple fix to the problem. > > Scott Wedel wrote: > > > > As for experience levels, sounds to me like the table of experience needed > > per level should be contained in a configuration file read at startup that > > can easily be editted. The cf distribution could contain a couple of different > > sample configs with comments on how each affects gameplay. > > This is a good idea - compiled in values are generally not good. IT should be > mentioned that in the past, I believe the level differences were much more, but > there were problems with that. > > Increasing the level limit IMO is a bad idea. As it is now, most of the game > is designed for levels less than 50 (spells you get, etc). Increasing the level > limit is not likely to do anything but delay by a minor amount of people getting > maxed out, and even more whining that 'there should be more level 200 dungeons > out there) and what not. > _______________________________________________ > crossfire-list mailing list > crossfire-list@lists.real-time.com > https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/crossfire-list From lembark at wrkhors.com Fri Mar 29 15:37:06 2002 From: lembark at wrkhors.com (Steven Lembark) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:13 2005 Subject: [CF List] levels & spells In-Reply-To: <3CA4076B.1F0DBE5C@sonic.net> References: <200203281727.KAA28015@moots.tymnet.com> <483520000.1017338059@dizzy.wrkhors.com> <3CA4076B.1F0DBE5C@sonic.net> Message-ID: <13230000.1017437826@dizzy.wrkhors.com> > Obviously, things like the praying messages and some spells should not > be using the NDI_UNIQUE flag. a simple fix to the problem. Amen. -- Steven Lembark 2930 W. Palmer Workhorse Computing Chicago, IL 60647 +1 800 762 1582 From misleb at onshore.com Fri Mar 29 16:23:50 2002 From: misleb at onshore.com (misleb@onshore.com) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:13 2005 Subject: [CF List] New To Crossfire Message-ID: <20020329220545.EDAC16B65A@mailgw.onshore.com> Hello, I have been a Nethack player on and off for years now. I was looking for something a little more engaging. I always considered making a multiplayer version. Seems like Crossfire is it (plus a lot of other features). I have only played crossfire briefly just to see the interface and such. Seems to be pretty much what I ever could have hoped for, short of playing one of those bloated commercial multiplayer online games. Anyway, I had a few questions about the current status and community. I noticed that there are many servers running at any given time. Are these servers usually running the same basic "world" (set of maps?) Why not just one server? Or just a couple? Seems like it would be more fun with lots of people running around in a single (large) world. I noticed that there are usually never more than 5 or so people on any given server at any given time. Is Crossfire meant to be a social thing or just a few people who happen to running around in the same world together? I understand that you COULD create parties and fight monsters together, but does it happen? How long do the servers generally run? Are we talking weekly turnover or monthly? Also, I am not quite clear on how or if the servers refresh the monsters/quests. If a server has been played by enough people, does it get depleted of monsters/quests/artifacts? Thanks, -matthew From jbontje at suespammers.org Fri Mar 29 16:43:34 2002 From: jbontje at suespammers.org (Joris Bontje) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:13 2005 Subject: [CF List] New To Crossfire In-Reply-To: <20020329220545.EDAC16B65A@mailgw.onshore.com> References: <20020329220545.EDAC16B65A@mailgw.onshore.com> Message-ID: <20020329224334.GA29902@mids.student.utwente.nl> On Fri, Mar 29, 2002 at 04:23:50PM -0600, misleb@onshore.com wrote: > [cut] > I noticed that there are many servers running at any given time. Are > these servers usually running the same basic "world" (set of maps?) Why > not just one server? Or just a couple? Seems like it would be more fun > with lots of people running around in a single (large) world. It is an opensource game, everybody is free to start his/her own server. There are 3 'big' servers running: crossfire.jyu.fi metalforge.real-time.com mids.student.utwente.nl These are the big ones because (I think): They have fast connections Are updated regulary Are online 24/7 With a realtime game it is important to have a small latency... You can't do that with 1 server. I think it would be best to have a server at every center of crossfire playing... The other small servers are probably people trying to become big... Now the problem is... do we have a limited userbase, if so, are multiple servers bad for it, spreading of the users or, is the amount of users limited because there arent enough fast servers... The current maps are only playable with a small amount of players. 10-15 is a maximum, otherwise some areas get too crowded. Ofcourse this depends on the players, if they team up, or explore new places a server can have more. For performance the amount is limited too... but I have never experimented with that, but I should. > I noticed that there are usually never more than 5 or so people on > any given server at any given time. Is Crossfire meant to be a social > thing or just a few people who happen to running around in the same > world together? I understand that you COULD create parties and fight > monsters together, but does it happen? There are enough multiplayer features and people are known to play crossfire multiplayer (understatement). Actually there is quite some helping and teamplaying which is fun. > How long do the servers generally run? Are we talking weekly turnover > or monthly? Also, I am not quite clear on how or if the servers refresh > the monsters/quests. If a server has been played by enough people, does > it get depleted of monsters/quests/artifacts? Server run till they crash :) Most maps are resetted individually every 2 hours, but that depends. On my server I delete players who save with 0-1000 exp after some time, just to clean up a little, but I don't have a strong policy on that. Some maps, for instance pupland' raffle1 is very popular because of the specific enemies you find there.. There are often requests to the dungeon master to manually reset it. With more people you will have more of these problems. I think shortening the reset time isnt good for everything, having more maps is better. Thanks for starting this discussion, I think it is very usefull and we can learn a lot by observing the current usage and state of the game. Joris Bontje / mids -- Gpg Key: Id=0xF19326A9 / http://mids.student.utwente.nl/~mids/jbontje.pub Key fingerprint = 730D 9B3A F406 F28A 957D 6397 31E8 6D4C F193 26A9 -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 240 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20020329/ec1506e3/attachment.pgp From mwedel at sonic.net Fri Mar 29 23:04:39 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:13 2005 Subject: [CF List] levels & spells References: <200203281727.KAA28015@moots.tymnet.com> <483520000.1017338059@dizzy.wrkhors.com> <3CA4076B.1F0DBE5C@sonic.net> <000c01c1d746$6d573980$0a02a8c0@kameria> Message-ID: <3CA54767.144D113D@sonic.net> Todd Mitchell wrote: > > What about cutting down or eliminating the buffer? I noticed that the times > when I am having the most fun are also the times when I am pounding keys > like a maniac and this tends to get me killed. (Like any bad habit - I know > better but it is fun). I don't mind getting 40 messages when I cast poision > cloud or fireball, but do mind that when I fire a whole lot of arrows it is > quite a while before the buffer clears and I can run away. At least on the unix client, this is controlled by the cwindow option - how many commands ahead the server can be. The default is 10. From mwedel at sonic.net Fri Mar 29 23:13:09 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:13 2005 Subject: [CF List] New To Crossfire References: <20020329220545.EDAC16B65A@mailgw.onshore.com> <20020329224334.GA29902@mids.student.utwente.nl> Message-ID: <3CA54965.8EDC2571@sonic.net> Joris Bontje wrote: I think the latency issue is one of the big reasons for multiple servers. In crossfire, each turn is 120 ms. In many cases, the combat will be settled one way or the other in some number of real-time seconds. Given these considerations, latency can mean the difference between noticing your hp going down and using that heal potion before your dead and actually being dead. > Some maps, for instance pupland' raffle1 is very popular because of the > specific enemies you find there.. There are often requests to the > dungeon master to manually reset it. With more people you will have more > of these problems. I think shortening the reset time isnt good for > everything, having more maps is better. Yep - and duplicating the map probably doesn't solve the problem (Eg, have a raffle1a, raffle1b, all the same content but different instances). In that case, the player may just do them in order since if they liked the first one for hte monsters it contains, they probably like the second one with the same monsters. Many maps have a problem in that they don't reset if anyone visits them before they would reset. Eg, if raffle1 is due to reset at 1 pm, and someone visits it at 12:45 pm, now it won't reset to 2:45 pm. This is controllable in the maps themselves, and all shops ignore that visit factor, but those are about the only that do. The reason behind that is that it could take more than 2 hours to solve a dungeon, and you don't want the early parts resetting on you. > > Thanks for starting this discussion, I think it is very usefull and we > can learn a lot by observing the current usage and state of the game. > > Joris Bontje / mids > -- > Gpg Key: Id=0xF19326A9 / http://mids.student.utwente.nl/~mids/jbontje.pub > Key fingerprint = 730D 9B3A F406 F28A 957D 6397 31E8 6D4C F193 26A9 > > -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Part 1.2Type: application/pgp-signature From andi.vogl at gmx.net Sun Mar 31 03:58:21 2002 From: andi.vogl at gmx.net (Andreas Vogl) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:14 2005 Subject: [CF List] levels & exp Message-ID: <000101c1d89a$9a71ff90$c86ebb81@gizmo> in reply to Scott W. and Mark W.: > [...] The number of exp gained should be in line to that of other > maps of similar difficulty. Maps should be designed to be > consistent with other maps. [...] > [...] Making it a file read at load time certainly makes it easier > to experiment and find values that seem to work properly. [...] Well, okay. I agree. If this feature helps to find a better exp-model, that wouldn't be bad. The "original" file shipping with the CF server would probably still pose a standard. Andreas From mwedel at sonic.net Sun Mar 31 16:11:27 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:14 2005 Subject: [CF List] levels & exp References: <000101c1d89a$9a71ff90$c86ebb81@gizmo> Message-ID: <3CA7898F.129E003@sonic.net> Andreas Vogl wrote: > Well, okay. I agree. > If this feature helps to find a better exp-model, that wouldn't > be bad. The "original" file shipping with the CF server would > probably still pose a standard. Yep - just any many of the files currently in lib pose the standard. The spell params file can be adjusted to increase damage, or have higher sp costs, or whatever else, but I'm not sure how many people really change that. Also, as the only level dependent things seem to be experience and saving throughs (at least these are the only values that key on MAXLEVEL), making it a file read at load time would also make it easier for people to increase the maximum level if they so desired (put 200 entries in instead of 110). This way, those people that want to have higher levels can do so if they want. From reeve at ductape.net Sun Mar 31 20:37:45 2002 From: reeve at ductape.net (Scott Barnes) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:14 2005 Subject: [CF List] levels & exp In-Reply-To: <000101c1d89a$9a71ff90$c86ebb81@gizmo> References: <000101c1d89a$9a71ff90$c86ebb81@gizmo> Message-ID: <1017628672.7104.12.camel@asellus.localnet> Okay, I just wanted to throw my two silver coins in :) I was playing iLarn today, and it occurred to me what the main problem with the experience issues and also just a fun factor, there aren't enough dungeons that follow the simple "start wussy and go down for about 20 or 30 floors, each one several levels harder than the one before." I would personally love to see more maps like that. For one, the quests in Scorn would make a good start for redesigning. They're too short, too simple (or in some cases, like the quest for the special mushroom, too hard), and generally the floors of the dungeons are all around the same difficulty level, but they should start easy and get progressively harder. The best example I know of from Crossfire itself would be the raffles or the power plant, though those progress too quickly and are far too short. How about a cave or something that goes down about 20 floors (all random) and the monsters should start off with like kobolds and orcs, then get strong as the player moves down the floors, ending with an very strong monster (say, ancient red dragon) and a valuable artifact. Well, that's just my opinion. :) -- Reeve the cat ------------- -----BEGIN FORTUNE----- Who loves me will also love my dog. -- John Donne ------END FORTUNE------ -----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK----- Version: 3.12 GCS d? s: a? C++++ UL++++ P+ L++++ E- W++ N o K- w--- O M-- V-- PS+++ PE Y PGP t+++ 5 X+ R+++ tv+ b+++ DI++ D+ G e* h-- r+++ y** ------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 232 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part Url : http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20020331/83af32a2/attachment.pgp From mwedel at sonic.net Sun Mar 31 22:57:10 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:14 2005 Subject: [CF List] levels & exp References: <000101c1d89a$9a71ff90$c86ebb81@gizmo> <1017628672.7104.12.camel@asellus.localnet> Message-ID: <3CA7E8A6.829A4BEC@sonic.net> Scott Barnes wrote: > > Okay, I just wanted to throw my two silver coins in :) > I was playing iLarn today, and it occurred to me what the main problem > with the experience issues and also just a fun factor, there aren't > enough dungeons that follow the simple "start wussy and go down for > about 20 or 30 floors, each one several levels harder than the one > before." I would personally love to see more maps like that. For one, > the quests in Scorn would make a good start for redesigning. They're > too short, too simple (or in some cases, like the quest for the special > mushroom, too hard), and generally the floors of the dungeons are all > around the same difficulty level, but they should start easy and get > progressively harder. The best example I know of from Crossfire itself > would be the raffles or the power plant, though those progress too > quickly and are far too short. How about a cave or something that goes > down about 20 floors (all random) and the monsters should start off with > like kobolds and orcs, then get strong as the player moves down the > floors, ending with an very strong monster (say, ancient red dragon) and > a valuable artifact. Well, that's just my opinion. :) There are some very deep random dungeons. The problems I have with some of them is that since they only use 'standard' monsters, the difficulty can jump pretty good. The giant race dungeon comes to mind - you start with things like ogres, then small trolls, hill giants, and then goes to trolls. There is a pretty big gap (I find) between the hill giant and trolls - I might be able to slice my way through the hill giants without much trouble, but once the trolls show it, it becomes quite difficult. The real solution is more dungeons. I don't necessarily think that the entire series should necessarily go from level 1 to 30 - by series, I mean something like the set of quests you get in scorn. Most of the good commercial games I have played have good side quests to fill in some level and exp you may need. but realistically, the amount of maps in crossfire have not increased much in recent time, and thats probably the bigger issue - having more maps, even if not part of a larger quest, but rather something like 'there is a cool item at the end of this (which the raffles basically are))' to fill in for more of the levels would be most useful.