From nicolas.weeger at laposte.net Mon May 20 12:34:11 2019 From: nicolas.weeger at laposte.net (Nicolas Weeger) Date: Mon, 20 May 2019 19:34:11 +0200 Subject: [crossfire] Cartography Message-ID: <201905201934.16669.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> Hello. There was a discussion on IRC about adding cartography to Crossfire, that is writing down map plans on a scroll. So I'm jolting some ideas around on the list, to see if there are good ideas to use ;) One idea was giving them a limiter number of uses, so players are motivated in exploring and making more maps. I'm not too sure though, maybe that's an artificial limit... Also, it probably wouldn't be a skill, but rather an object (cartography toolkit). Options include requiring a writing pen and using it; the magic mapping skill (so the map is the result of that spell), or using something based on the player's field of view; the toolkit being usable a certain number of times only or not. I was wondering how to display them ingame. Either as a magic map (like the magic mapping spell), or eg in a book (which requires a protocol change). Nicer in a book, IMO. From a technical point of view, I have a prototype, written as a C plugin, but it'll require more work :) Nicolas -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: signature.asc Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 198 bytes Desc: This is a digitally signed message part. URL: From nkipps at gmail.com Tue May 21 15:46:19 2019 From: nkipps at gmail.com (Nathaniel Kipps) Date: Tue, 21 May 2019 16:46:19 -0400 Subject: [crossfire] Cartography In-Reply-To: <201905201934.16669.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> References: <201905201934.16669.nicolas.weeger@laposte.net> Message-ID: Some of my ideas have been voiced in IRC already, but I'll throw a few things in here. --DraugTheWhopper On Mon, May 20, 2019 at 1:40 PM Nicolas Weeger wrote: > One idea was giving them a limiter number of uses, so players are motivated in > exploring and making more maps. > > I'm not too sure though, maybe that's an artificial limit... On one hand, you don't want to be constantly requiring players to do busywork to keep their maps up to date, but you also don't want them to do the process once and then benefit from it in perpetuity. Possibly a distinction could be drawn as to whether the player uses their own map, vs is given a map by another player (or an NPC cartographer)? > Also, it probably wouldn't be a skill, but rather an object (cartography > toolkit). > > Options include requiring a writing pen and using it; the magic mapping skill > (so the map is the result of that spell), or using something based on the > player's field of view; the toolkit being usable a certain number of times only > or not. I strongly like the idea of using tools instead of a skill. Perhaps most ideal would be to use a tool to write in a book or scroll (scrolls for one-offs, a book for your own personal map collection), but this implies that you can easily manipulate two items at once. (And I've never bee too impressed with how user-friendly the marking system is(maybe that's another discussion)) While a protocol extension (and accompanying client-server bits) would create the nicest looking result, can we rely on monospaced fonts to provide a text representation, like Nethack?