CF: Quest & Characters and Alchemy

["Michael Toennies" <>]

Hi

I read about the quest, alchemy and character thread and i think, you miss
one very important point
in the discussion.

It is the difference between player <-> his game character on the one side
and the program <-> coder
on the other.

In the thread about the "siegfried" & "Siegfried" Scott Wedel say something
very important:
That the player must think in this case like the game programmer and not
like the character in game.

Its also important that you make a difference between the player and his
game character.

For alchemy it means that we need a mechanism that seperates the knowlege of
the player
about a recipe from the knowlege his game character has.

At this point, alchemy is a skill of the player, not of his game character.
And thats a major mistake.

The skill system shows the right way. It determinate what the character
knows and can do, independent
from the player knowledge. For example must you has a special literacy skill
to read books.
If the book holds a alchemy recipe you must learn, you must have level X in
literacy skill. Thats
mean automatically your character is also level X and.... and so on.

Players knowledge should give the player a adventage in the way, he plays
the game. but it should not
effect direct player character. It is a task for game design to avoid here
side effects.

A simple example for a side effect of player knowledge is the mopoon quest
in lake city. You must say there
a password to get teleported. In the normal way, you must first get an
special item and give it to mopoon to
get the password. In this example the side effect is not very important, but
there are other exploits you can
think about. In complexer quests, you should not break the "game line" in
this way.

An example for a "ok" side effect is the demonologic tower. If you write
down the passwords you can avoid
wit a new char the summoning of the elementals and the liches, because you
don't miss game parts if you don't do it.
Here the players knowledge saves time. The summoning is game play the player
already has seen, so he can drop it.

So, what we need for alchemy is to seperate the characters knowlege from the
playes knowledge. That means
that we need a alchemy list the player must learn.

I prefer to integrate it in the skill system. If you see the skill list you
see:

mental..........lvl:  8 (xp:144456/250000)
- jeweler
- alchemy

Let make it in this way:

mental..........lvl:  8 (xp:144456/250000)
- jeweler
- alchemy (2 known recipes)

We should list this with "skills". With the new cmd "skill alchemy", you
get:

skill alchemy         (mental..........lvl:  8 (xp:144456/250000))

known recipes:
- potion of restoration (lvl 10)
need: horn of unicorn, 2 water of wise (or so , i can't remember ;)
- balm of travelling (lvl 2)
 need: ...

Now if one cast alchemy on a cauldron, nothing happens if the caster don't
know the
recipe or/and don't has the proper level. Coding it, should be easy. All
neede technique
is in game for other effects.

The skill recipes can come with skill scrolls (i think only the minor
should). The greater ones
should be part of quests. At the end there you meet a special monster or get
a special item.
Talk/sacrifice items should give you the recipe.

This is also a game booster. To build up your character is the main heart of
a game like crossfire.
People will play for weeks, only to get the last recipe.

A similiar concept is needed for quests. What we need are titles! It should
looks like this:

MyChar wizard lvl 20
Hero of scorn.
Hero of the fire temple.
Lord of the ring :)

and so on. A simple

typedef struct title_list {
    char *title;
    struct title_list *next;
}struct title_list;

and we can add an infinitive list of titles to a character.

With this we can also create "one time solving" quests! If you got a title
at the end of a quest,
you can't step again in the teleporter which brings you to the starting
point. Or you can let him
play the quest for exp but gate the end item so a char can't get him a 2nd
time (but that need some
more work, to avoid he log in with a lev 1 char to get the item).

Also, only to get the simple title is a game booster. To complete your title
list let you play and play...

Michael

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