Re: CF: What do you want?

[Mark Wedel <>]

David Sundqvist wrote:

> Yes. IMO, an adventuring game is also more fun to work on for the
> developers. As an action game, I'd argue that crossfire is already fairly
> complete. With some graphics fixups and some map fixups it would be pretty
> much finished, because I dont think it's possible to balance with
> reasonable means. The amount of monsters and the speed of the game makes
> it too unpredictable to judge how changes affect the gathering of money
> and experience; relations and question becomes a minor point in the game.
> 
> So, IMO, we should work towards the adventure/exploration type game.

 Note that balance will always be hard to tune as long as significant
developement still goes on.

 Crossfire is probably less balanced now than it has been in the past - many new
features have been added without the maps keeping up to date (gods, skills,
bodyparts, spells, etc.)

 Now this problem can be reduced in the future by perhaps not making new
features automatically show up on maps, so the maps have to be updated before
they get the new features.  Perhaps some form of version number in the map
object itself is needed - if current feature version is 0953, and map version is
0942, then don't generate any of the new stuff beyond 0942.

 However, that gets pretty complicated as the treasure lists and other objects
need to now contain that version information.

> 
> Agreed. There are still many maps that lack floors, many that lack
> lighting info, etc. If we make a push to change the game we could also
> include good guidelines for mapmakers (including a thought out world with
> history, political, racial and religious direction of different areas,
> flora, fauna etc (extendable, of course, for those who want to add new
> regions)), especially if we start moving towards balancing the game.

 True.  I think the general map guidelines currently in place are not bad, but
there is no current political climate or even any signs of politics at all in
the world.  While the politics in the old ultima games was not especially deep,
there were certainly differnet regions with different kings and different towns
certainly had a different flavor of what you could by there and what the town
was like.

> 
> Wether this should be pre-1.0 or post-1.0 I'm not sure yet. The changes
> should be well thought out, and as I said, IMO, as an action game
> crossfire is pretty stable as is (0.95.3 with the disappearing archetype
> patch and the caching fix has been stable for me). Some functionality in
> the pipeline could be used in both game types, but that could be
> backported if people feel like it.

 It depends on the what the goal for 1.0 really is.  The schedule suggest  it to
be a truly stable and truly balance game.  Whether we want to redo the emphasis
of the game before or after that is a fair question.  There isn't really a good
answer - it would primarily depend on if people want 1.0 out ASAP - if that is
the case, then we should pretty much freeze all new features now, only do bug
fixes, and start balancing stuff.

 But to be honest, I am more interested in doing coding that map tweaking and
the like.  So for a 1.0 to happen with the above goals, I think some people need
to step forward and volunteer to balance the maps and the game.

> Yes, and current games are moving towards a single-scale approach. The
> issue of performance isnt as important for the server anymore; we should
> have a fairly large leeway even to play a large amount of people on a
> server these days.

 Thats true.  If a single scale approach is decided on, then automatic map
tiling would probably become a higher priority, as you otherwise spend a lot
time dealing with edge connections and the like.


> Yes, we should move a bit towards smaller houses; this would be good
> anyway if we balance monsters to be a good challange as 3-4 rather than no
> challange in hundreds. Realestate would be more 'expensive', but I
> dont really think that's a problem, since we can always build up or down.
> Remember, for example, that old-city is already virtually a 'town' in
> pretty much such a scale.

 True.  I think if the game moves to more adventuring time, the use of
generators should be eliminated or greatly reduced.  Generators just add the the
hack and slash.  Or the other option would be to add some form of population
control - the generator will generator as long as there are less than X number
of monsters on the map - if more than that, the generator stops producing.  The
problem with some maps as I see it is they start with few monsters but unless
you move fast enough, monsters start to swarm, which one again is just hack and
slash.

> 
> If we implement more detailed shopkeepers, we could also figure in such as
> racial and religious group liking (see earlier mail), to affect pricing in
> shops. A dwarf of the same religion would probably sell cheaper to another
> dwarf, altho he might even refuse to sell to an halforc.

 True.  There has been discussion in the past to get rid of the Charisma
attribute, since players will just use a bank character or the like instead of
worrying about high charisma.  Racial, political, and religous adjustments could
easily take the place of charisma, and would also make it harder for people to
use bank characters (too many combinations to cover all bases.)

 In real life, shop keepers should also limit what they buy.  IF someone comes
in with 200 short swords, it is unlikely the shop keeper will want all 200.  The
problem with limiting what the shopkeeper buys, however, is that it could turn
into first person to hit the shopkeeper manages to sell his stuff and make a
fortune, while later people suffer by only being able to sell a few things.  The
later could perhaps be somewhat fixed by having the local guardhouse/armory buy
up large quantities of stuff assuming it is standard equipment.

 I think this problem won't be as big an issues if the game is not quite as much
hack/slash, such that you don't kill 100 orcs all that often.  


> Agreed. It's currently 11x11, but I think that wouldnt be too hard to
> extend. LOS limiting view area instead (and brightness (by the way, there
> was a patch sometime for day/night cycling, what happened to that? With
> some time-scale like 24 cf hours per 8 hours realtime it could be pretty
> cool. Affect things like generation of undeads, appearance of some sorts
> of NPC characters, shop opening times (altho that should be most of the
> time :) and it could be interesting)). Perhaps 16x16 would be a good area
> to choose.

 I don't ever remember seeing a day/night cycling patch.  I know there was talk
of adding such a feature.  Certainly, adding a crossfire time system/calendar
(with various holy days for the various gods and so on) would be a nice touch. 
Perhaps some day your prayers are more affective because the planets align
properly and you can channel more with your god, while other days things are
less effective.

 I certainly don't think shops should be open 24 hours a day.  Or it may depend
- the armorer may very well work during the daytime hours, but close for night. 
However, johns pawn shop may be open at night, but you won't get as good prices.

 But adding a definate time could certainly make things more interesting.  You
could get a rumor that the guard Frank knows the password and is willing to tell
it to you for a price, but he only comes in after 8 pm.  Certainly, some events
should be driven by time. 

 However, it that is done, the crossfire time to real time has to be pretty
quick - you don't want to have to wait 4 real hours so you can wait for the
right time to meet someone.  Perhaps a 1 real hour = 1 game day would work.  For
those doing the math, that means 1 game tick would be roughly 3 seconds.  That
doesn't seem that unreasonable.

 The size of the viewable area should probably be odd, so that there is a
definate center point to put the player on (so perhaps 17x17?)  Ideally, this
could be semi configurable, so future changes don't require a significant amount
of recoding.


 Anyways, to get down to a basic list of features to make the game more
adventure like.  Note this is not a complete list, and mainly focuses on issues
that affect playbalance - things to add that don't affect playbalance are not
immediately listed as they could be done at a later time:

 1) Make a unified or two map scale.
 2) Add day/night and a crossfire calendar, and trigger certain things by time.
 3) Make the viewable area larger.
 4) Add more flavor to the game - different politics in different regions, gods,
etc.
 5) There are probably things that need to be added to just be able to make
better adventuring maps - challenges that require something other than killing
the creature.  I think there may be some needed coding to support that.
 6) Add personality to major artifacts - expand the egoitem file.
 7) Review all maps and clean up/ditch maps as needed after the above changes
are made.
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