Re: CF: What do you want?

[David Sundqvist <>]

On Tue, 1 Jun 1999, Mark Wedel wrote:

> David Sundqvist wrote:
>> <snippage>
>  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.)

True. Some things should also permeat the world in a far more obvious way.
Gods and alchemy would be two things, for example, where you should be
find hints of them in many more places.

Part of the problem is map responsibility; people rarely want to add new
features to places that they feel are 'someone elses'. This might be
easier as we have CVS access now and can do updates with much less risk of
collisions, it might also be easier if we go to a unified scale and have a
far larger world so you can more easily add things in the outside
world or cities without either adding a complete dungeon or stomping
around in someone elses quest.

Map versioning would be another idea, but it might add a lot of server
complexity. 
 
>  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.

Well, there's a hint of political climate in pup_land :). The general map
guidelines are fairly good, and specify a lot of sensible map design. The
only thing that could be added to them that I can think of right off 
would basically be what would constitute a good challange and a good
reward at different level maps, but that's a difficult one.

What would be nice would be a general world description with basic region
descriptions. Things like political affiliation (ruler, alliances),
majority religion, majority race, common monsters (no ice elementals in
desert regions, etc). This should be added and extended for any new
regions as guidelines for what types of things are ok to just throw in.

>  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.

Well, like I've said, I think it's difficult in the extreme to reach a
truly balanced game within the current context. It can be made better, but
it will still favour hack'n'slash rather than adventure/exploration/questing. 

That is not to say it isnt fun; it is fun. As a hack'n'slash
gauntlet-sortof game. Changing the direction would make it fun in a
different way tho, which might be a reason to fork off a 1.0 release with
the current or slightly improved balance and functionality, rather than
doing major changes and pointing to 0.95.4 as the stable
crossfire-hack'n'slash version game. Also, we already have maps, altho not
perfect, that work with the current 'balance', which would be severely
altered if we change the direction. This would again leave us with
versions that are not entirely runnable as 'production release' servers
for a while, but again going into a heavy development phase. 

>  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.

Well, I'd love to do map work, I'll just have to finish the support for it
first (images and mapeditor) ... actually tho, I think this discussion is
extremely important so we get some goals of where we want crossfire to go.
If we decide we want a change in direction, then we can set up good goals
and a good balance for what we actually want. Working from that we can
work out ways to get from here to there.
 
>  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. Some time will be spent on edge connections anyway, since they would
probably still be needed for 'context switches'. For example, if you
approach a building in the countryside, you might have a map switch in the
vincinity to activate the local context with monsters and NPC's. Same as
you wander off the road and into the forest, there might be a mapswitch
too, to switch naturally occuring monsters and such. Ideally this would be
supported in the server somehow, but it might be easier to support
multiple joined bordered maps in the editor by just specifying region
boundaries.
 
>  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.

Yes, that would be one way to work it out. The use I see for generators
would be pretty much like that, a 'treasurelist' which generates, for
example, Nothing, 1-2 Forest Goblins or 1-3 Birds or if night 1 Undead
Kobold or 1-2 Bats.
 
>  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.)

Yep, it would be a definite improvement.
 
>  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.  

True, and that's one of the biggest balance problems in the hack'n'slash.
160 clubs+1, 30 shortswords+2, etc, bring in some serious money. 

>  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.

Hmmm, I think I saw it on Christian Steibers server at some time. Having
special days would be a cool feature too :).
 
>  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.

I definitely like that :).

>  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. 

Yep. We'd have to figure out some way to control that. Time based objects?
Or time based generators? It would be interesting to have scriptable
moving of objects, or affinity of objects, so when Frank is generated at
the map border around 8 pm (will be generated there if the map is in
server for the moment, else he will be generated at his place at map
load), he will move to his guard post. Of course, even better would be if
there was a true scripting and such NPC's actually had sortof a 'real'
existence in the game, but that would be difficult and entail all sorts of
additions.

>  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.

Maybe somewhere between that tho... You dont want to wait for too long,
but neither will you want to have too short a time for certain things that
can only be done during some time of day. Perhaps 2 hours? 

>  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.

Yep. I think we'll have to look at it. Even more ideally, you should be
able to set the size on the client (not too hard to do actually) to
somewhere between current and 17x17, to accomodate those with extremely
old computers or laptops with small screens. 

I've been looking over the layer code in the server too, and it doesnt
look too hard to switch that over to a real layer based code either.
Extending with the maps having layer[x] (instead of floor and floor2) with
a number of layers being below player, some layers above player (trees?
effects like fog? (unless is_flying)? and light level information (which
would allow true shading rather than a bitmap mask)) seems possible to do,
and would add more intereting flavour too.

>  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.

8) Clean up archetypes and extend for the necessary changes.
9) Review code to avoid variable overloading

10) Above all, decide where we want this to go :).

As always, it would be very good to have input from everyone. :)
/David

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