From crossfire-devel-admin at archives.real-time.com Tue Oct 22 11:19:34 2002 From: crossfire-devel-admin at archives.real-time.com (crossfire-devel-admin@archives.real-time.com) Date: Thu Jan 13 17:53:19 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Unrouteable Mail for John.Cater@eng.monash.edu.au Message-ID: <01KNZKRG7PTU905KH5@vaxh.cc.monash.edu.au> Cannot route mail to the following: John.Cater@eng.monash.edu.au (No Route found) -------------- next part -------------- To use the Name Router to guess the Email address of a *Staff* member, send to First.Lastname@Group.monash.edu.au or First.Middle.Lastname@Group.monash.edu.au The Lastname field in the e-mail address *must* be supplied, and must match the person's last name. The First and Middle name fields also need to match the person's name, but can also be abbreviated or omitted as long as the resulting email address is not ambiguous. The list of supported Group fields is currently Adm, ArtDes, Arts, BusEco, CeLTS, Education, Eng, General, InfoTech, ITS, Law, Lib, Med, MonInt, Nursing, Sci, SPME, VCP and ZAF The Group field can be omitted to search all these Staff groups. A Staff search is available at: http://search.monash.edu.au/email/ To send Email to a *Student* send to @student.monash.edu To send Email to a someone not registered with the Name Router, you have to send to their full usercode@host.dept.monash.edu.au mailbox address. Note. This site does not want or condone unsolicited junk or chain email. This was an automated message from the Mail System. Please report problems to helpdesk@monash.edu.au Returned message follows -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: "Thomas J. Boyda" Subject: [CF-Devel] Problems running 1.4.0 server on solaris 2.8 Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2002 02:46:59 -0400 (EDT) Size: 11565 Url: http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20021023/27d6de22/attachment.mht From crossfire-devel-admin at archives.real-time.com Thu Oct 17 02:41:58 2002 From: crossfire-devel-admin at archives.real-time.com (crossfire-devel-admin@archives.real-time.com) Date: Thu Jan 13 17:53:19 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Unrouteable Mail for John.Cater@eng.monash.edu.au Message-ID: <01KNS37ZXKN69049QD@vaxh.cc.monash.edu.au> Cannot route mail to the following: John.Cater@eng.monash.edu.au (No Route found) -------------- next part -------------- To use the Name Router to guess the Email address of a *Staff* member, send to First.Lastname@Group.monash.edu.au or First.Middle.Lastname@Group.monash.edu.au The Lastname field in the e-mail address *must* be supplied, and must match the person's last name. The First and Middle name fields also need to match the person's name, but can also be abbreviated or omitted as long as the resulting email address is not ambiguous. The list of supported Group fields is currently Adm, ArtDes, Arts, BusEco, CeLTS, Education, Eng, General, InfoTech, ITS, Law, Lib, Med, MonInt, Nursing, Sci, SPME, VCP and ZAF The Group field can be omitted to search all these Staff groups. A Staff search is available at: http://search.monash.edu.au/email/ To send Email to a *Student* send to @student.monash.edu To send Email to a someone not registered with the Name Router, you have to send to their full usercode@host.dept.monash.edu.au mailbox address. Note. This site does not want or condone unsolicited junk or chain email. This was an automated message from the Mail System. Please report problems to helpdesk@monash.edu.au Returned message follows -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: Mark Wedel Subject: Re: [CF-Devel] artifact cloaks Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2002 00:13:21 -0700 Size: 3468 Url: http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20021017/af67fceb/attachment.mht From crossfire-devel-admin at archives.real-time.com Thu Oct 17 02:41:58 2002 From: crossfire-devel-admin at archives.real-time.com (crossfire-devel-admin@archives.real-time.com) Date: Thu Jan 13 17:53:35 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Unrouteable Mail for John.Cater@eng.monash.edu.au Message-ID: <01KNS37ZXKN69049QD@vaxh.cc.monash.edu.au> Cannot route mail to the following: John.Cater@eng.monash.edu.au (No Route found) -------------- next part -------------- To use the Name Router to guess the Email address of a *Staff* member, send to First.Lastname@Group.monash.edu.au or First.Middle.Lastname@Group.monash.edu.au The Lastname field in the e-mail address *must* be supplied, and must match the person's last name. The First and Middle name fields also need to match the person's name, but can also be abbreviated or omitted as long as the resulting email address is not ambiguous. The list of supported Group fields is currently Adm, ArtDes, Arts, BusEco, CeLTS, Education, Eng, General, InfoTech, ITS, Law, Lib, Med, MonInt, Nursing, Sci, SPME, VCP and ZAF The Group field can be omitted to search all these Staff groups. A Staff search is available at: http://search.monash.edu.au/email/ To send Email to a *Student* send to @student.monash.edu To send Email to a someone not registered with the Name Router, you have to send to their full usercode@host.dept.monash.edu.au mailbox address. Note. This site does not want or condone unsolicited junk or chain email. This was an automated message from the Mail System. Please report problems to helpdesk@monash.edu.au Returned message follows -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: Mark Wedel Subject: Re: [CF-Devel] artifact cloaks Date: Thu, 17 Oct 2002 00:13:21 -0700 Size: 3468 Url: http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20021017/af67fceb/attachment-0001.mht From crossfire-devel-admin at archives.real-time.com Tue Oct 22 11:19:34 2002 From: crossfire-devel-admin at archives.real-time.com (crossfire-devel-admin@archives.real-time.com) Date: Thu Jan 13 17:53:42 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Unrouteable Mail for John.Cater@eng.monash.edu.au Message-ID: <01KNZKRG7PTU905KH5@vaxh.cc.monash.edu.au> Cannot route mail to the following: John.Cater@eng.monash.edu.au (No Route found) -------------- next part -------------- To use the Name Router to guess the Email address of a *Staff* member, send to First.Lastname@Group.monash.edu.au or First.Middle.Lastname@Group.monash.edu.au The Lastname field in the e-mail address *must* be supplied, and must match the person's last name. The First and Middle name fields also need to match the person's name, but can also be abbreviated or omitted as long as the resulting email address is not ambiguous. The list of supported Group fields is currently Adm, ArtDes, Arts, BusEco, CeLTS, Education, Eng, General, InfoTech, ITS, Law, Lib, Med, MonInt, Nursing, Sci, SPME, VCP and ZAF The Group field can be omitted to search all these Staff groups. A Staff search is available at: http://search.monash.edu.au/email/ To send Email to a *Student* send to @student.monash.edu To send Email to a someone not registered with the Name Router, you have to send to their full usercode@host.dept.monash.edu.au mailbox address. Note. This site does not want or condone unsolicited junk or chain email. This was an automated message from the Mail System. Please report problems to helpdesk@monash.edu.au Returned message follows -------------- next part -------------- An embedded message was scrubbed... From: "Thomas J. Boyda" Subject: [CF-Devel] Problems running 1.4.0 server on solaris 2.8 Date: Tue, 22 Oct 2002 02:46:59 -0400 (EDT) Size: 11565 Url: http://shadowknight.real-time.com/pipermail/crossfire/attachments/20021023/27d6de22/attachment-0001.mht From mwedel at sonic.net Tue Oct 1 22:37:18 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:58 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] terrain and styles References: <000a01c262b5$9ed5a780$0a02a8c0@kameria> Message-ID: <3D9A69EE.9040706@sonic.net> Todd Mitchell wrote: > What's the deal with the terrain folder and the maps in there? Looks like > random encounters. What is this linked to? Nothing really. There used to be a random encounter setting in the config.h file - if set, then some random portion of grass, woods, etc squares would turn into random encounters and use those maps. This proved really annoying in most cases because you'd be wandering accross some terrain and suddenly get popped into those encounter maps. Really annoying if this happened inside some dungeon (or similiar) map. > > I have started to play with some of the random map styles (adding in a snowy > floor and decor, adding bears and wolves to the animal monster styles. Is > there anything I should be aware of in doing this (like don't do it because > soandso is in charge of that or suchandsuch depends on that.) I am trying > to make them a bit more balanced for the level they represent as well and > increase the variety a bit. Things like axing the unicorn from animal > styles 7-12... > Is is necessary to have a map for each level (topping out at the highest > level map, or is is ok to have maps like 1,3,5,9,15,20...) since the > documentation says that the closest level map will be used. Any problem > with adding in some new monster styles? Don't think there should be any issues with the above. PeterM did most/all of the random map code and maps for that matter, but he hasn't been active for quite a while, so I can't see it being an issue to fix up some of those things. dunno about numbering sequence - I notice all the existing monsterstyles are in contiguous order. Shouldn't be any issue with adding new monster styles. I would say don't add anything unless there is enough to warrant a style for it (eg, half a dozen or more monsters in the style). From leaf at real-time.com Thu Oct 3 19:02:05 2002 From: leaf at real-time.com (Rick Tanner) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:58 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] unique-items question (repost) Message-ID: ----- Original Message ----- From: "Todd Mitchell" I have mostly finished the realestate scripts I was doing to allow buying and selling of houses but have one outstanding issue. When a lot is sold or a player quits the lot(s) they own are recycled (the lot file updated to vacant status, the maps removed from unique-items) but if the lot maps are in memory (or temp maps or whatever e.g. 'Lots@Lot#@map' ) when it comes time for the server to release them, the maps are written back to unique-items (so they aren't getting recycled properly.). Is there a way to flush the maps from memory (or tempmaps or whatever) to prevent this? Even when testing out maps with unique floors, this is a bit of a problem since you have to shutdown the server then delete the unique-item maps to refresh your changes. Also if a player happened to be on a map when it was sold (or less likely, since the lots are expensive, when the owner quits) it would make this more of a problem (since the homes are accessable by static exits on the main maps someone could have wandered onto the entry way - or worse someone could have been let in by the owner and is wandering around (have to make sure there is an exit from each map to prevent players trapping other players in their homes). I guess you whould have to check for a player on the map, move them, and then recycle the map? From mwedel at sonic.net Fri Oct 4 01:36:12 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:58 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] unique-items question (repost) References: Message-ID: <3D9D36DC.1060104@sonic.net> Rick Tanner wrote: > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Todd Mitchell" > > I have mostly finished the realestate scripts I was doing to allow buying > and selling of houses but have one outstanding issue. When a lot is sold > or a player quits the lot(s) they own are recycled (the lot file updated > to vacant status, the maps removed from unique-items) but if the lot maps > are in memory (or temp maps or whatever e.g. 'Lots@Lot#@map' ) when it > comes time for the server to release them, the maps are written back to > unique-items (so they aren't getting recycled properly.). Is there a way > to flush the maps from memory (or tempmaps or whatever) to prevent this? > Even when testing out maps with unique floors, this is a bit of a problem > since you have to shutdown the server then delete the unique-item maps to > refresh your changes. If the entire map is unique, it never gets written as a temp map - it just cycles to/from disk directly. It shouldn't be too hard to make a call to explicitly save out a map in memory to disk - more appropriate in this case would be to delete it from memory, but see notes above. > > Also if a player happened to be on a map when it was sold (or less likely, > since the lots are expensive, when the owner quits) it would make this > more of a problem (since the homes are accessable by static exits on the > main maps someone could have wandered onto the entry way - or worse > someone could have been let in by the owner and is wandering around (have > to make sure there is an exit from each map to prevent players trapping > other players in their homes). I guess you whould have to check for a > player on the map, move them, and then recycle the map? Yes - if a player is on a map, he would need to get placed on some other map before it got saved out. However, there is no convenient way to do that right now. It's typically not obvious where a player should get relocated to from the map they are on. Now if a map was a single layer (eg, exit on it lead to non private map), you could do some trickery by clearing the unique flag on the map and setting the reset time to zero - then, when the player does finally vacate, the map will just reset without ever going to disk. Problem is if you have a multistory residence, this is tricky. For example, suppose you have the city, which leads to the first floor of the house. First floor has a staircase that leads to the second floor. You don't really want to clear out the first floor, because then the player on the second floor is effectively trapped (his staircase down leads to a non existent map). This is complicated to fix if the unique maps are stored in the player directory - they basically have to get cleaned up when the player quits. IMO, stuff in the players directory should only be avialable to that player, and not other players - if these maps can be visited by other players, they should be stored in a common unique maps area. In that case, you could have a script that catches a player quit event, and cleans out those maps right then (if not in memory or no players are on them). Otherwise, marks them for future removal, and update the exit that leads to them so no one can get to them. From jshelley at ictransnet.com Sat Oct 5 19:19:02 2002 From: jshelley at ictransnet.com (Johnny Shelley) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:58 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] alchemy experience bug(s?) Message-ID: Playing around w/ alchemy lately it seems that the experience for it has increased dramatically, perhaps a bit too much. Casting simple formulae twice was enough to go from 78->79 on the terribly evil metalforge experience scale. Even worse, theres an overflow in alchemy.c that can turn experience from successful castings into a negative integer. At line 172: int amount = numb*numb*calc_skill_exp(caster,item); Using an unsigned int for amount would at least keep this from taking experience away from a character who has just been wildly successful, although I'm not sure thats the best approach. johnny PGP Public Key available from: http://www.keyserver.net:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x17BF1DD3 From leaf at real-time.com Mon Oct 7 19:06:38 2002 From: leaf at real-time.com (Rick Tanner) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:58 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Crossfire website update Message-ID: I've made several improvements to the Crossfire website. Hopefully everyone will agree with me. =) The benefits are: 1.) The new site has better file path structure. No more mixed case file and directory names. 1A.) No more strange directory paths, such as /Client/client.html - it's now just client/index.html ( or just /client ) 2.) The average page size has dropped from 50kb to 30kb - so faster loading. Plus, the nested tables are gone, so page content should appear faster as well. 3.) Content is easier to update due to a more simplified layout 4.) Easier capability of tweaking look & feel and layout of the site through one Style Sheet file instead of 300+ pages of HTML via 4 templates 5.) Themes - don't like the colors or general layout - you have the potential to change it or customize your browser style to your own liking. ;) (http://crossfire.real-time.com/themes/) There are a couple of drawbacks - older browsers have problems supporting the visual layout. Content is still visable, and usability feature are in place for these browsers as well as non-visual browsers. Many URL's have changed. I've setup redirects for the more "popular" pages so people will be redirected to the new page automatically. Here's a summary of a few of them: Download (ftp sites) http://crossfire.real-time.com/download/ Clients http://crossfire.real-time.com/clients/ Mailing Lists http://crossfire.real-time.com/mailinglists/ FAQ http://crossfire.real-time.com/faq/ Screen Shots http://crossfire.real-time.com/screenshots/ Map Editors http://crossfire.real-time.com/editors/ Player's Handbook http://crossfire.real-time.com/guides/handbook/ Dragon Guide http://crossfire.real-time.com/guides/character/dragons.html Spoiler: http://crossfire.real-time.com/spoiler/ So, that's the big update. Enjoy. - Rick Tanner leaf@real-time.com From mwedel at sonic.net Tue Oct 8 01:10:12 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:58 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Problems running the latest CVS References: <20020923175811.A23986@zeus.fh-brandenburg.de> <3D9007FB.8070701@sonic.net> <20020924153756.A23874@zeus.fh-brandenburg.de> Message-ID: <3DA276C4.1020904@sonic.net> Jan Tobias Muehlberg wrote: > Mark Wedel: > > [snprintf()] > >> I put code in common/porting.c that will define a snprintf if configure >>doesn't detect one. Since __vsnprintf is probably not very portable, my >>implementation was to juse call vsprintf, and check ret against max - >>if ret is bigger, just abort. > > > Well, it works this way. Thanks for fixing. > At least for compiling on Sun you'll need to add '#include '. > I'm not sure but it should be the same for other unix-like OSs including > Linux? Most systems don't seem to need stdarg.h - linux doesn't, solaris 7+ doesn't. But there is no harm in adding it, so that's what I'll do. From michael.toennies at nord-com.net Wed Oct 9 17:25:11 2002 From: michael.toennies at nord-com.net (Michael Toennies) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:58 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] AW: [CF List] BIGworld In-Reply-To: <14180.1034197015@www19.gmx.net> Message-ID: As i like the tiled maps idea (i use it strong in daimonin), i must tell you that the code for it is mostly broken in the source and need alot of rework. In fact i had coded several days hard on it to make it stable. Moving on tiled maps is somewhat safe but nearly every other action will kick the server in the dust. Put monsters in tiled maps and try it out... It looks ok for the first moment, then the server will explode. Even try fire arrows around corner from one map to another. This is the reason (only one example function, used for tiled maps): int wall(mapstruct *m, int x,int y) { if (out_of_map(m,x,y)) return 1; return (GET_MAP_FLAGS(m,x,y) & P_NO_PASS); } Like this function from map.c are most other function broken (several dozen) which access maps. out_of_map() will look for tiled map. this will return true when there is a tiled map attached: out_of_map(m,-1,-1). GET_MAP_FLAGS() and all other macros will be out of bound and access memory somewhere. When you do a source search with out_of_map you will see alot and alot of this unsafe functions. The second more bad point is ... that out_of_map() and get_map_from_coord() are broken too! The fixed version i tested ALOT in daimonin ( and the server runs fine with it) looks like this. mapstruct *out_of_map(mapstruct *m, int *x, int *y) { /* Simple case - coordinates are within this local * map. */ if(!m) return NULL; if (*x>=0 && *x=0 && *y < MAP_HEIGHT(m)) return m; if (*x<0) { if (!m->tile_path[3]) goto y_test2; if (!m->tile_map[3] || m->tile_map[3]->in_memory != MAP_IN_MEMORY) load_and_link_tiled_map(m, 3); *x += MAP_WIDTH(m->tile_map[3]); return (out_of_map(m->tile_map[3], x, y)); } if (*x>=MAP_WIDTH(m)) { if (!m->tile_path[1]) goto y_test2; if (!m->tile_map[1] || m->tile_map[1]->in_memory != MAP_IN_MEMORY) load_and_link_tiled_map(m, 1); *x -= MAP_WIDTH(m); return (out_of_map(m->tile_map[1], x, y)); } y_test2: if (*y<0) { if (!m->tile_path[0]) return NULL; if (!m->tile_map[0] || m->tile_map[0]->in_memory != MAP_IN_MEMORY) load_and_link_tiled_map(m, 0); *y += MAP_HEIGHT(m->tile_map[0]); return (out_of_map(m->tile_map[0], x, y)); } if (*y>=MAP_HEIGHT(m)) { if (!m->tile_path[2]) return NULL; if (!m->tile_map[2] || m->tile_map[2]->in_memory != MAP_IN_MEMORY) load_and_link_tiled_map(m, 2); *y -= MAP_HEIGHT(m); return (out_of_map(m->tile_map[2], x, y)); } return NULL; /* Shouldn't get here */ } If you test all cases of map tiling you will find out why the old one is broken. When i remember right will you see the effect when you firing a arrow (fix the arrow function first) from map point 0,0 in direction northwest = to point -1,-1. Because the destination map is not direct attached to the map we stand, the out_of_map() function has moving through the other maps first. This will fail in some special cases with the crossfire function. Try the other positions too, you will see more bad effects. Also, you see i changed out_of_map() to get_map_from_coord() and deleted get_map_from_coord(). Its a bad idea to have both version. In nearly every case you use out_of_map() you will need the new map pointer... so its much better and faster and cleaner to call this function as pointer variant. btw, i have a way in mind, we can put moving multi arch objects on tiled maps. ATM, its is not possible to add multi arch monsters on tiled maps. If there is still a spell or something which can summon multi arch mobs, tiled maps will die horribly when the monster stay on map borders. Then the map will swaped out and the objects will released - but only parts. This can be avoided, when we use a kind of dirty flag. when inserting mob on a map, we will trace on which map we insert every part. We simply add a refcount to every map header where every multi arch add +1 when it adds a tail part to it and the head is in a different map. If the multi arch is removed/move or dead, the remove_ob decrease the refcount. Now a map can see there is a monster only partial on it. When we do the same for a map, where the head is but some tails on different maps, we can even avoid alot of dead locks. The map can say: aha, 2 mobs from me are on different maps, and on this different maps is not a player. So we can remove our objects and swap out. I will release daimonin 0.95 in some days. If you wait for it, you can grap the source and do a out_of_map search. Nearly every function i fixed is still source compatible to crossfire and can be copied 1:1. This can then be useful for both projects. Because it was really alot of work and i was not able to test every function or case. This remembers me to one more bad function... This time remove_ob()!!! First, i must say that this bug is very, very hidden. It will invoke very hidden side effects. Mainly 2 things: Some time, moving light sources are not shown right. The seem to "move behind the object" and drawn only every 2nd frame. Second, sometimes your pet or summoned golem leave for map window (the part you see in the client) and even you are sure it can return when you call him back (with range fire keys), it stucked somewhere. When you then moving behind him, you see it coming down from above. This effects will come and go, i don't was able to find out what it triggers. But i find out that the reason was not right set map flags - mainly IS_ALIVE. I traced it to remove_ob() and i find there this code part: .................. if (last==NULL) { /* set P_NEED_UPDATE, otherwise update_position will complain. In theory, * we could preserve the flags (GET_MAP_FLAGS), but update_position figures * those out anyways, and if there are any flags set right now, they won't * be correct anyways. */ SET_MAP_FLAGS(op->map, op->x, op->y, P_NEED_UPDATE); update_position(op->map, op->x, op->y); } else update_object(last, UP_OBJ_REMOVE); ........... This was looking very strange for me. In fact, i has never really understand what this code should avoid or do. I DELETED this code part and insert this instead: update_object(op, UP_OBJ_REMOVE); After this, the strange side effect never happens again for me. Todd Mitchell wrote: > > There are some options when you run java that may help this > > out: -Xmxmb increase the heap size the program can use. Yes indeed. If you want to open a lot of maps at once and/or huge ones, run it like "java -Xmx128mb -jar CFJavaEditor.jar". > > Monsters can cross tiled maps. [...] > > > One problem I see with this is player a stirs up some monsters and > player b comes walking by on his way to newbie map Alpha and gets > eaten alive. I agree it would be great if monsters relyably sticked to certain areas. Simple blocking squares could help there in several ways. Having certain mountain- and forest tiles block movement would allow a better structured worldmap: You can't always go straight, there can be hidden places, restricted areas, monsters can't rush around freely... It might be cool for example to encircle Brest with an unpassable mountain ridge. Players would have to walk through some underground dungeons to get to Brest, as it is a mid/high-level area. Also useful would be some kind of invisible "monster blocker" object that monsters cannot pass while players can. Movers don't do the job because groups of monsters always push each other across them. Basically any means to keep monsters sticking to a place would do. The main problem about it is to avoid monsters being kind of "trapped" and too easily killed. AndreasV -- +++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more http://www.gmx.net +++ NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen! _______________________________________________ crossfire-list mailing list crossfire-list@lists.real-time.com https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/crossfire-list From temitchell at sympatico.ca Thu Oct 10 23:30:58 2002 From: temitchell at sympatico.ca (Todd Mitchell) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:59 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] new stuff Message-ID: <000701c270de$ff37e8e0$0a02a8c0@kameria> Put some new stuff up at http://abraxis.sytes.net/CF/finished new pics for half orc new moving door arch (and a BASIC outline template for different styles) new anim for birds new food arch - cheeseburger (for a new map I'm working on- it wouldn't do for regular consumption) made minor changes to the Aljwaf map to make it easier to figure out how to get in to the tomb If anyone is interested (M.T?) I found a bunch of public domain graphics at http://www.idevgames.com in the resources section including a bunch of anime style character sprites (four direction, two frame sprites) where the bird amin here came from, and a collection of images which many of the crossfire classic set came from. Take care however, some of the images sets are designated for use only with MacOS games or games with primary MacOS versions (can't we all just get along?). From jshelley at ictransnet.com Sun Oct 13 02:22:10 2002 From: jshelley at ictransnet.com (Johnny Shelley) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:59 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] alchemy.. again Message-ID: Well, apparently you don't get negative experience for successful castings now (not that I saw anyway), but after a few normal looking successes, I suddenly jumped from 5 magic / 31 mental to 10 magic and 110 mental, exceeding the maximum experience.. eek! This was while creating simple formulae in multiples of 200. johnny PGP Public Key available from: http://www.keyserver.net:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x17BF1DD3 From jshelley at ictransnet.com Mon Oct 14 20:55:25 2002 From: jshelley at ictransnet.com (Johnny Shelley) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:59 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] artifact cloaks Message-ID: Its a minor thing, but I don't have cvs access so I can't make the change. Cloak of gorokh / devourers (I think those are the only two) have magic = 3. I don't think cloaks are ever generated with magic greater than 0, so these cloaks can never appear randomly. This is in lib/artifacts if anyone feels inclined to change this. johnny PGP Public Key available from: http://www.keyserver.net:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x17BF1DD3 From mwedel at sonic.net Thu Oct 17 02:13:21 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:59 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] artifact cloaks References: Message-ID: <3DAE6311.9040205@sonic.net> Johnny Shelley wrote: > Its a minor thing, but I don't have cvs access so I can't make the > change. > > Cloak of gorokh / devourers (I think those are the only two) have magic > = 3. I don't think cloaks are ever generated with magic greater than 0, > so these cloaks can never appear randomly. > > This is in lib/artifacts if anyone feels inclined to change this. Fixed in CVS now. From temitchell at sympatico.ca Sun Oct 20 03:23:51 2002 From: temitchell at sympatico.ca (Todd Mitchell) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:59 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] improved Aljwaf for Bigworld Message-ID: <000501c27812$0542bf00$0a02a8c0@kameria> I bulked up the Aljwaf quest for the Bigworld maps - this includes a good chunk of desert and a bigger ruin with more buildings. You can check it out at http://abraxis.sytes.net/CF/finished/bigworld -note this is not the same Aljwaf as for the regular map. These changes have also been ported to the regular CF map set (one extra map to make the transition) and is also available (in the maps tar) - only the world map exit has to point to *ruins 7,48* (or wherever you want it to point) and a return exit needs to be made on the ruins map to link it up. I must say there are a lot of nice features in the CFJavaEditor these days. This was the first time I have spent a bit of time with it and I really noticed the improvements. Especially like the help tips which are really helpful (don't do this - this works like this...) Two minor requests however - I would like to see the attack_movement codes done the same way as damage and material (so I don't have to look them up). The other thing is if more info for stuff like speed, ac, weapon damage and the like could be added to the tool tips (like ranges - say ac the lower the better, speed high - low (negative sign is for...). This second would save people a lot of time if they are new to mapmaking and since there is some confusion on these things in different clients(?). From tboyda at ntelos.net Tue Oct 22 01:46:59 2002 From: tboyda at ntelos.net (Thomas J. Boyda) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:59 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Problems running 1.4.0 server on solaris 2.8 Message-ID: Hello, I am trying to get the 1.4.0 server running on Solaris 2.8, but the server keeps on crashing with a SIGSEGV. The server compiles cleanly. Here is what I see when running crossfire -d: boyda@molecule$ crossfire -d Reading bmaps from /usr/games/crossfire/share/crossfire/bmaps...done (got 3910/3911/3911) Reading faces from /usr/games/crossfire/share/crossfire/faces...done Reading animations from /usr/games/crossfire/share/crossfire/animations...done. got (783) Reading archetypes from /usr/games/crossfire/share/crossfire/archetypes... arch-pass 1... Object Burning Tail of many lashings of Ruggilli seems to have too low item power? 45 > 12 Unrecognized string: attack type 1 Adding friendly object Evil Master, Bonehead. Object amulet of lifesaving had no item power, using 4 Object strange ring had no item power, using 4 Object tooth charm had no item power, using 7 Object Chaos Sword had no item power, using 13 Object Darkblade had no item power, using 24 Object Demonbane had no item power, using 7 Object dagger of fortune had no item power, using 7 Object Frost Hammer had no item power, using 13 Object Firestar had no item power, using 50 Object Gram had no item power, using 11 Object Holy Avenger had no item power, using 45 Object Kobold Dagger had no item power, using 4 Object Lava Slasher had no item power, using 18 calc_item_power got 25 enchantments for Katana of Masamune Object Katana of Masamune had no item power, using 50 Object Sting had no item power, using 4 calc_item_power got 24 enchantments for Belzebub's sword Object Belzebub's sword had no item power, using 50 Object Bonecrusher had no item power, using 4 Object Defender had no item power, using 5 Object Dragonslayer had no item power, using 7 Object Excalibur had no item power, using 30 Object Firebrand had no item power, using 5 Object Frostbrand had no item power, using 5 Object Staff of the Magi had no item power, using 18 Object Mjoellnir had no item power, using 7 Object Mournblade had no item power, using 27 Object Skullcleaver had no item power, using 4 Object Stormbringer had no item power, using 30 done Setting up archetable...done loading treasure... done arch-pass 2... done done Reading attack messages from /usr/games/crossfire/share/crossfire/attackmess...got 227 messages in 19 categories. Reading clockdata from /usr/games/crossfire/var/crossfire/clockdata...todtick=0 Welcome to CrossFire, v1.4.0 Copyright (C) 1994 Mark Wedel. Copyright (C) 1992 Frank Tore Johansen. Reading artifacts from /usr/games/crossfire/share/crossfire/artifacts...Object NULL seems to have too low item power? 5 > 1 Object NULL seems to have too low item power? 9 > 3 SIGSEGV received. zsh: IOT instruction (core dumped) crossfire -d Here is the crossfire -o output: boyda@molecule$ crossfire -o Reading bmaps from /usr/games/crossfire/share/crossfire/bmaps...done (got 3910/3911/3911) Reading faces from /usr/games/crossfire/share/crossfire/faces...done Reading animations from /usr/games/crossfire/share/crossfire/animations...done. got (783) Reading archetypes from /usr/games/crossfire/share/crossfire/archetypes... arch-pass 1... Object Burning Tail of many lashings of Ruggilli seems to have too low item power? 45 > 12 Unrecognized string: attack type 1 Adding friendly object Evil Master, Bonehead. Object amulet of lifesaving had no item power, using 4 Object strange ring had no item power, using 4 Object tooth charm had no item power, using 7 Object Chaos Sword had no item power, using 13 Object Darkblade had no item power, using 24 Object Demonbane had no item power, using 7 Object dagger of fortune had no item power, using 7 Object Frost Hammer had no item power, using 13 Object Firestar had no item power, using 50 Object Gram had no item power, using 11 Object Holy Avenger had no item power, using 45 Object Kobold Dagger had no item power, using 4 Object Lava Slasher had no item power, using 18 calc_item_power got 25 enchantments for Katana of Masamune Object Katana of Masamune had no item power, using 50 Object Sting had no item power, using 4 calc_item_power got 24 enchantments for Belzebub's sword Object Belzebub's sword had no item power, using 50 Object Bonecrusher had no item power, using 4 Object Defender had no item power, using 5 Object Dragonslayer had no item power, using 7 Object Excalibur had no item power, using 30 Object Firebrand had no item power, using 5 Object Frostbrand had no item power, using 5 Object Staff of the Magi had no item power, using 18 Object Mjoellnir had no item power, using 7 Object Mournblade had no item power, using 27 Object Skullcleaver had no item power, using 4 Object Stormbringer had no item power, using 30 done Setting up archetable...done loading treasure... done arch-pass 2... done done Reading attack messages from /usr/games/crossfire/share/crossfire/attackmess...got 227 messages in 19 categories. Reading clockdata from /usr/games/crossfire/var/crossfire/clockdata...todtick=0 Welcome to CrossFire, v1.4.0 Copyright (C) 1994 Mark Wedel. Copyright (C) 1992 Frank Tore Johansen. Non-standard include files: Secure: Datadir: /usr/games/crossfire/share/crossfire Localdir: /usr/games/crossfire/var/crossfire Perm file: /forbid Shutdown file: /shutdown Save player: Save mode: 0660 Playerdir: /players Itemsdir: /unique-items Use checksum: Tmpdir: /tmp Map max timeout: 1000 Map reset: Max objects: 25000 Use_calloc: Use_swap_stats: Explore mode: Shop listings: Max_time: 120000 SunOS molecule 5.8 Generic_108528-15 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-2 Here is the stack trace from the core file: $ gdb /usr/games/crossfire/bin/crossfire core GNU gdb 5.0 Copyright 2000 Free Software Foundation, Inc. GDB is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and you are welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain conditions. Type "show copying" to see the conditions. There is absolutely no warranty for GDB. Type "show warranty" for details. This GDB was configured as "sparc-sun-solaris2.8"... Core was generated by `crossfire -d'. Program terminated with signal 6, Abort. Reading symbols from /lib/libdl.so.1...done. Loaded symbols for /lib/libdl.so.1 Reading symbols from /lib/libcrypt_i.so.1...done. Loaded symbols for /lib/libcrypt_i.so.1 Reading symbols from /lib/libm.so.1...done. Loaded symbols for /lib/libm.so.1 Reading symbols from /lib/libsocket.so.1...done. Loaded symbols for /lib/libsocket.so.1 Reading symbols from /lib/libnsl.so.1...done. Loaded symbols for /lib/libnsl.so.1 Reading symbols from /lib/libc.so.1...done. Loaded symbols for /lib/libc.so.1 Reading symbols from /lib/libgen.so.1...done. Loaded symbols for /lib/libgen.so.1 Reading symbols from /lib/libmp.so.2...done. Loaded symbols for /lib/libmp.so.2 Reading symbols from /usr/platform/SUNW,Ultra-2/lib/libc_psr.so.1...done. Loaded symbols for /usr/platform/SUNW,Ultra-2/lib/libc_psr.so.1 #0 0xff19c724 in _libc_kill () from /lib/libc.so.1 (gdb) where #0 0xff19c724 in _libc_kill () from /lib/libc.so.1 #1 0xff135a84 in abort () from /lib/libc.so.1 #2 0x3d7b0 in fatal_signal (make_core=1, close_sockets=1) at init.c:700 #3 #4 0xff133344 in strlen () from /lib/libc.so.1 #5 0xff183098 in _doprnt () from /lib/libc.so.1 #6 0xff185270 in vsprintf () from /lib/libc.so.1 #7 0x80d64 in LOG (logLevel=llevDebug, format=0xbd030 "calc_item_power got %d enchantments for %s\n") at logger.c:56 #8 0x6f6f4 in calc_item_power (op=0x4021c8, flag=0) at item.c:209 #9 0x7706c in check_loaded_object (op=0x4021c8) at loader.l:146 #10 0x77ac8 in lex_load (op=0x4021c8, map_flags=0) at loader.l:278 #11 0x7f508 in load_object (fp=0x16b7d8, op=0x4021c8, bufstate=-4263048, map_flags=0) at loader.l:1041 #12 0x92c9c in init_artifacts () at treasure.c:1162 #13 0x3d2ec in init_beforeplay () at init.c:467 #14 0x3d088 in init (argc=2, argv=0xffbef934) at init.c:400 #15 0x41c14 in main (argc=2, argv=0xffbef934) at main.c:1149 (gdb) boyda@molecule$ gcc -v Reading specs from /usr/local/lib/gcc-lib/sparc-sun-solaris2.8/3.2/specs Configured with: ../configure --with-as=/usr/ccs/bin/as --with-ld=/usr/ccs/bin/ld --disable-nls Thread model: posix gcc version 3.2 BTW, I did not have a problem with the 0.95.7 server on this same system. Tom. ---- Thomas J. Boyda 276-676-0104 Unix Guru "Those who would give up essential liberty JAPH to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Benjamin Franklin, 1759 From mwedel at sonic.net Tue Oct 22 23:40:04 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:59 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Problems running 1.4.0 server on solaris 2.8 References: Message-ID: <3DB62824.1020802@sonic.net> Thomas J. Boyda wrote: > Hello, > > I am trying to get the 1.4.0 server running on Solaris 2.8, but the server > keeps on crashing with a SIGSEGV. The server compiles cleanly. this problem is fixed in CVS. From jshelley at ictransnet.com Wed Oct 23 00:21:51 2002 From: jshelley at ictransnet.com (Johnny Shelley) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:59 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Invisibility bugs Message-ID: Invisibilty on general seems to be broken. When cast as a spell, doubly so. Monsters without see_invisible 1 can see invisible players. When the spell is cast, it lasts a VERY short time, perhaps a few seconds at high levels. Previously, as a spell it was possible ot stay invisible for several minutes at high levels by recasting until you reached max duration. johnny PGP Public Key available from: http://www.keyserver.net:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0x17BF1DD3 From pstolarc at theperlguru.com Fri Oct 25 19:37:36 2002 From: pstolarc at theperlguru.com (pstolarc@theperlguru.com) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:59 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] CFJavaEditor Message-ID: The .jar file for CFJavaEditor in CVS appears to be corrupt. Also, attached is a win32 batch file to build the project. I built it, and everything appeared fine. (Actually, it appeared to run a bit quicker.) -Philip -------------- next part -------------- @echo off REM Run this from the root directory of the project, as checked out from CVS. REM To configure the script, you only need to set CF_JAVAPATH, (unless something changes dramatically.) REM Set this to the directory java is installed in SET CF_JAVAPATH=C:\Progra~1\Java\j2sdk1.4.0_02 mkdir class echo Compiling... %CF_JAVAPATH%\bin\javac -d class -classpath lib\png.jar;lib\visualtek.jar src\cfeditor\*.java REM The **** The following line is optional. Use it to test your compiled code**** REM %CF_JAVAPATH%\bin\java -classpath class/:lib/png.jar:lib/visualtek.jar cfeditor.CFJavaEditor echo Preparing to build .jar file... xcopy resource\HelpFiles\*.* class\resource\HelpFiles /s /i xcopy resource\conf\*.* class\resource\conf /s /i xcopy resource\icons\*.* class\resource\icons /s /i xcopy resource\system\*.* class\resource\system /s /i Echo Deleting all CVS directories in the class directory... REM If there are any new subdirectories here in the future, make sure to get rid of them too. deltree /Y resource\HelpFiles\CVS deltree /Y resource\conf\CVS deltree /Y resource\icons\CVS deltree /Y resource\system\CVS cd class echo Extracting .jars... %CF_JAVAPATH%\bin\jar xvf ..\lib\png.jar echo Extracting .jars... %CF_JAVAPATH%\bin\jar xvf ..\lib\visualtek.jar echo Cleaning... deltree /Y META-INF echo Building .jar... %CF_JAVAPATH%\bin\jar cfm ..\CFJavaEditor.jar ..\manifest.txt .\*.* cd .. echo Done. echo Press any key to test your .jar file... pause > NUL REM The **** The following line is optional. Use it to test your jar file**** %CF_JAVAPATH%\bin\java -jar CFJavaEditor.jar From andi.vogl at gmx.net Sat Oct 26 10:42:55 2002 From: andi.vogl at gmx.net (Andreas Vogl) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:59 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] CFJavaEditor References: Message-ID: <1039.1035646975@www21.gmx.net> Philip wrote: > The .jar file for CFJavaEditor in CVS appears to be corrupt. Uhm, that's true. I have wrongfully comitted the jar file as ascii, while I'd have to flag it as binary. So, I'll try to put that right. > Also, attached is a win32 batch file to build the project. I built it, > and everything appeared fine. (Actually, it appeared to run a > bit quicker.) Thanks for that build script. I've tested it on WinXP and it works fine (Except the deltree command isn't found, but that's minor). I'll rename it to "build_win.bat" and put it on CVS, okay? AndreasV -- +++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more http://www.gmx.net +++ NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen! From root at garbled.net Sun Oct 27 02:04:40 2002 From: root at garbled.net (Tim Rightnour) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:59 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Monsters sleeping Message-ID: So I've noticed recently there was a change to make monsters far away from you sleep. I'm wondering if this is having the intended effect. What I see, is that areas that used to be packed end-to-end with monsters, are now containing one or two, and a generator at the back of the room. Someone on IRC mentioned that this is due to the monsters sleeping, and blocking the generators. It doesn't really have the old "gauntlet" feel when everything is just a big empty room. But thats just my opinion. I've also found that my spells are a lot less useful, as I can't area-blast a horde anymore, I have to run around picking them off singly. --- 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 Sun Oct 27 02:04:46 2002 From: root at garbled.net (Tim Rightnour) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:59 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Money issues Message-ID: So, through my own playing, and listening to my friends at work who I've hooked on the game.. I've noticed a few problems with the money system. (umm duh) Basically, one problem is, that other than for the most basic of goods, shops are completely useless. 1) When you are low level, you could *really* use the stuff you find in shops. Unfortunately, it's all so high priced, you can't afford it. 2) When you finally can afford it, you don't need it anymore. 3) Now that you have all this dough.. you just end up either collecting piles of gems, or wandering about looking for various niche items, like a ring of elrond. 4) eventually, money becomes wholly useless. I think I can solve the first three of these. #4 is more complex, because it deals with the issue of what does a super-high-level player really need to buy anyhow? So I think we should leave that one for later. Anyhow, here is my three part solution: 1) Greatly reduce the selling price and value of most common goods. Scrolls, wands, staves, potions, armor, weapons. This allows low level charactrers and newbies, which are arguably the only people who use this stuff, to actually buy them from shops. 2) Increase the frequency things like books scrolls and whatnot appear on the low level maps. 3) Make high level stores. The third point is the most important. What we should do, is make a list of the towns, and crank the level of the shops in those towns. That way, more high-level goodies will appear there. It gives mid-level players somehwere to spend thier money. Especially given that high level shops will start to have things like random-artifacts pop up, with much greater frequency. Ideally, the highest level shops, should pretty much be completely stocked by random-artifacts. For example, and just off the top of my head: Scorn: leave it alone Wolfsburg: level 3-4 Navar: level 5-6 Santo Dominon: level 7-8 Brest: level 9-10 --- 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 pstolarc at theperlguru.com Sun Oct 27 16:09:51 2002 From: pstolarc at theperlguru.com (pstolarc@theperlguru.com) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:59 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Money issues In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <0qjoru4ahktjpdbsgot4h3cmsbcu62lgoe@flonk> PLEASE, OH PLEASE DO NOT REPEAT THE "(dis)economy of Scorn" THREAD. http://mailman.real-time.com/pipermail/crossfire-list/2002-August/001037.html ******** On Sun, 27 Oct 2002 01:04:46 -0700 (MST), Tim Rightnour wrote: ... >1) Greatly reduce the selling price and value of most common goods. Scrolls, >wands, staves, potions, armor, weapons. This allows low level charactrers and >newbies, which are arguably the only people who use this stuff, to actually buy >them from shops. The problem with this, is that newbies get money from selling stuff, hence you only move the issue. The low level chars then have less money to spend on the less expensive items. >2) Increase the frequency things like books scrolls and whatnot appear on the >low level maps. I don't use any attack spell items, because I don't get experience for them. Hence, I can't really comment on this. (It always felt fine to me.) >3) Make high level stores. > >The third point is the most important. What we should do, is make a list of >the towns, and crank the level of the shops in those towns. That way, more >high-level goodies will appear there. It gives mid-level players somehwere to >spend thier money. Especially given that high level shops will start to have >things like random-artifacts pop up, with much greater frequency. Ideally, the >highest level shops, should pretty much be completely stocked by >random-artifacts. I like this idea, but I would run through the maps in the area as DM, and mapinfo them to get a feel for the average difficulty level of those maps. And in the end, I don't see it as having all that much effect. Artifacts, (justifiably), are more powerful than anything that can be found in the stores. So, what's the point? The way I play is to get +2 equipment from the stores. This is easily within the reach of most newbies the way things stand. And it's fairly easy to find. Once I'm set with mostly +2 equipment, I go adventuring for artifacts, only buying equipment to replace stuff that got hit with acid. I then save up for spellbooks, resistance potions, amulets, rings and enchant armour scrolls. -Philip From root at garbled.net Tue Oct 29 04:59:32 2002 From: root at garbled.net (Tim Rightnour) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:59 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New weather stuff, and bigmap thoughts Message-ID: Just a status update on the new weather stuff, and some requests for people working on the bigmap. 1) Weather computation should now be fully working. The game is now capable of computing the weather for any given square. 2) Weather currently has no effect on players or gameplay. I plan to change that soon, but starting slowly. Ideas welcome, but lets keep it simple to start. 3) If you want to play with the weather, you need to do a few things: a) use the bigmaps set, and set all the appropriate settings in the settings file. b) set dynamiclevel to at least 1. c) you will probably want to turn fastclock on, so you can watch it move quickly enough to be interesting. d) compile utils/maps.c "gcc -o maps maps.c" will do. e) run crossfire. cd var/crossfire; run the maps program. Look at the pretty pictures. you can simulate your favorite weather channel with: (ksh) xv -wloop -wait 2 -poll skymap.ppm & while sleep 2 do maps done Now.. for the part where I need some help. There are a few things I think would make the weather run smoother, and some things that I think would make the effects much much cooler: 1) The world could really use some more rivers, lakes, small ponds, etc. The center of the world is pretty dry, and I really had to tweak the humidity to keep it from becoming a barren desert. Specifically, I think some rivers off the mountains might be good. 2) I'm probably not adjusting temperature for elevation enough. Someone might want to look at that and give me some feedback. 3) I could really use some more graphics to make this really come together. Some things that would be really really helpful: translucent puddles, so you can see it's been raining. perhaps a few different ones, or stackable ones so the ground looks more and more soaked as the rain progresses. Not sure if or how this would work with something like a tree. translucent snow, just like the above. Also, an ice-field graphic, for when the poles start freezing. Maybe frozen rivers and lakes? If someone felt particularly adventurous, some of the town buildings would look cool with snow on the roofs. I know there are snow-covered trees.. is there anything else we've missed? an accumulating hail graphic of some sort, like the above. Anything else you can think of that might show the effects of weather. I'm open to suggestions here. I was thinking of giving snow hp, so they can devolve into puddles, which would eventually evaporate. (also, a sicko with burning hands could see direct effect) 4) A side note, but I really think a good streetlamp graphic would be nice, so the lights in the city don't just magically appear from nowhere. Perhaps similar to those yellow torcheries in temples. Possibly a few different kinds, so backwater towns have less advanced lighting. Also, the doors of major buildings in town should probably be lit up. (IMHO) A few people have said the outside world is impossible to navigate at night. Maybe we want to pepper some streetlamps on the main roads? A graphic for a handheld lamp (like a brass lamp) would be useful. Nethack might have one we can steal. (night is going to neccesitate better lighting options) --- 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 Tue Oct 29 07:17:17 2002 From: andi.vogl at gmx.net (Andreas Vogl) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:59 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New weather stuff, and bigmap thoughts References: Message-ID: <516.1035897437@www21.gmx.net> I still have little idea how this weather stuff is going to work. Could you please explain the functionality more and what you are planning to do? A few questions: 1. In which kind is weather going to affect gameplay? 2. Does weather change maps? When there is a tree for example, and it gets dry. Will that three vanish? Is weather going to change tiles like grass into desert? Or is it more like a new form of "animation", which is able to change images according to weather conditions? More to the point: The worldmaps are not randommaps - They are going to get shaped out by the hands of various mapmakers over time. Is the weather code able to destroy something that a mapmaker has tried to create (e.g. roads, patters of grass/forest etc)? 3. What you said makes the impression you want to add additional layers of graphics (translucent puddles for example, maybe clouds, raining animation... )? AFAIK it is currently not possible to display more than 3 layers of graphics. Are you aware of that? Do you plan to change the fundamental rendering methods of CF? Are you aware that doing so might seriously increase network bandwidth as more tile-information has to be transferred per frame? Generally I'm not against your work, although I know little about it. However, I am slightly concerned about the way you commit changes to CVS without asking for consent here on the list. You wrote the committed code would not affect gameplay yet, but it is obviously a foundation to serious changes in some aspects (gameplay, bandwith, map-format, rendering, ...). IMHO these effects should be discussed before they get implemented. AndreasV -- +++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more http://www.gmx.net +++ NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen! From temitchell at sympatico.ca Tue Oct 29 10:35:18 2002 From: temitchell at sympatico.ca (Todd Mitchell) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:02:59 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New weather stuff, and bigmap thoughts References: Message-ID: <000601c27f69$2c095d20$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> > Now.. for the part where I need some help. There are a few things I think > would make the weather run smoother, and some things that I think would make > the effects much much cooler: > > 1) The world could really use some more rivers, lakes, small ponds, etc. The > center of the world is pretty dry, and I really had to tweak the humidity to > keep it from becoming a barren desert. Specifically, I think some rivers off > the mountains might be good. For sure, I am doing a bit in this direction, but I expect that since water is useful for blocking off areas as well much of this work will come along with new design rather than all at once. >> 2) I'm probably not adjusting temperature for elevation enough. Someone might > want to look at that and give me some feedback. I don't know if you read the map list, but I proposed changing the bigworld map so that mountain2 bacame mountain4 (no_pass) and wasteland becomes 'glacier' which is passable (icy graphic tile - in CVS). I ran this on my server (ran a find replace program on all world maps except Lake Town) the and saw the following effects: 1. The landscape was much more interesting to navigate as the blocked tiles were not all bunched together. 2. There was a large amount of new territory made available as icefields (new winter ecology to develop). 3. Lots of premade nooks and crannies for encounters ready to be developed I really liked it and propose it as a change to the big world map. I like the idea that instead of the traditional north-south pole climate pattern, that bigworld could be considered a elevation climate pattern (warm low, cold high). Who says the world has to be a globe? This could have some effect on your weather if you include the glacier tiles as adding to humidity. > 4) A side note, but I really think a good streetlamp graphic would be nice, so > the lights in the city don't just magically appear from nowhere. Perhaps > similar to those yellow torcheries in temples. Possibly a few different kinds, > so backwater towns have less advanced lighting. Also, the doors of > major buildings in town should probably be lit up. (IMHO) I was starting to use the braizer in this context (see the new inns in the CVS) and was going to extend this to the cities as well. This sort of lighting is great atmosphere. > A few people have said the outside world is impossible to navigate at night. > Maybe we want to pepper some streetlamps on the main roads? Ya - like that, was going to do some. I am using braizers now, but a nice streetlight graphic would be swell. > A graphic for a handheld lamp (like a brass lamp) would be useful. Nethack > might have one we can steal. (night is going to neccesitate better lighting > options) This would be neat as well, I believe that M.T. posted something about developing this for Daimonin. Applying light sources. From root at garbled.net Tue Oct 29 13:28:46 2002 From: root at garbled.net (Tim Rightnour) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:00 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New weather stuff, and bigmap thoughts In-Reply-To: <516.1035897437@www21.gmx.net> Message-ID: On 29-Oct-02 Andreas Vogl wrote: > 1. In which kind is weather going to affect gameplay? Initially, very slightly. My initial thoughts were: 1) If it's really cold outside, you heal slower. 2) If it's hot and dry out, you consume food faster. (slightly) 3) lots of snow might make walking slower. 4) Maybe if the wind is really high, it will push items around a bit. 5) Heavy storms reduce visibilty. More specific things could be done along those lines, but I have yet to solidify any. Perhaps fireborns heal faster in hot weather? Cold dragons heal great in the freezing cold? I'm still mulling ideas over in my head. I don't want to introduce a zillion effects on the players at once, and just open up chaos. > 2. Does weather change maps? When there is a tree for example, > and it gets dry. Will that three vanish? Is weather > going to change tiles like grass into desert? > > Or is it more like a new form of "animation", which is > able to change images according to weather conditions? I realize this. Per the discussion we had about this many many moons ago, I will not be just flipping the switch and letting all the map icons go hog wild. I plan to hinge everything on the setting dynamiclevel. In this way, the DM chooses how much he wants weather to affect the game: 0: No weather. It's not even generated. 1: Weather, no effect on the maps. Minor gameplay effects. 2: Weather, snow accumulates, puddles. mostly eye candy. 3: Poles/lakes freeze, flowers and herbs grow on the grass with the right conditions. New things grow and change, but no modification of the underlying tiles. 4: Weather controls the underlying tiles. Forests die and dissapear, deserts become forests, etc etc. The DM will have complete control of how much, or how little, he wants the weather to affect the game. If he doesn't want the maps potentially being screwed up by the weather, then he will probably choose 2 or 3. > 3. What you said makes the impression you want to add > additional layers of graphics (translucent puddles for example, > maybe clouds, raining animation... )? > AFAIK it is currently not possible to display more than 3 layers > of graphics. Are you aware of that? Do you plan to change the > fundamental rendering methods of CF? I wasn't aware of the 3 part.. but I did know there is a limit to what you can stack. Really I just want to have a few different snow/puddle types..so I can obscure the underlying tile somewhat in the snow. I definately do not want actual rain animation or clouds. Those would be a significant kill on the server bandwidth. Basically, there will be no visual cue that it's raining, other than the occasional puddle.. which should be no worse on bandwith than walking into a dungeon filled with items. I don't plan on rewriting the graphics engine just to make the weather pretty. The best way to describe it is: Imagine if you walked into scorn one day, and rather than the roads and grass, it was just white with snow. Now admittedly this would probably never happen, as it seems we put scorn in a tropical climate.. but you get the idea. > Generally I'm not against your work, although I know little > about it. However, I am slightly concerned about the way you > commit changes to CVS without asking for consent here > on the list. I thought all this was discussed ages ago? I've just been really lazy about getting around to it. And like I said, there really is no effect on the gameplay whatsoever, unless you explicitly go and flip the lever. --- 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 Tue Oct 29 13:40:38 2002 From: root at garbled.net (Tim Rightnour) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:00 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New weather stuff, and bigmap thoughts In-Reply-To: <000601c27f69$2c095d20$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> Message-ID: BTW, I don't know if you ever get on IRC, but if you do.. I'd like to chat with you about some of this stuff. On 29-Oct-02 Todd Mitchell wrote: > I don't know if you read the map list, but I proposed changing the bigworld > map so that mountain2 bacame mountain4 (no_pass) and wasteland becomes > 'glacier' which is passable (icy graphic tile - in CVS). > I ran this on my server (ran a find replace program on all world maps except > Lake Town) the and saw the following effects: > > 1. The landscape was much more interesting to navigate as the blocked tiles > were not all bunched together. > 2. There was a large amount of new territory made available as icefields > (new winter ecology to develop). > 3. Lots of premade nooks and crannies for encounters ready to be developed > > I really liked it and propose it as a change to the big world map. > I like the idea that instead of the traditional north-south pole climate > pattern, that bigworld could be considered a elevation climate pattern (warm > low, cold high). Who says the world has to be a globe? > This could have some effect on your weather if you include the glacier tiles > as adding to humidity. Basically, I did use a pole-based climate system. However, the north and south poles are the NW and SE corners of the map. Elevation should play a major role in temperature, but right now I'm not sure I've tuned it right. I'm not familiar with your proposal, but I would like to see some snow-capped mountains up high. My initial thoughts were that if the game was set to one of the higher dynamic settings, the poles would freeze solid, creating a small frozen ice/glacier area for people to play around with. >> 4) A side note, but I really think a good streetlamp graphic would be > I was starting to use the braizer in this context (see the new inns in the > CVS) and was going to extend this to the cities as well. This sort of > lighting is great atmosphere. I completely agree. Larger cities might be really well lit, almost daytime at night, whereas smaller ones might be more sparse, spookier. --- 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 temitchell at sympatico.ca Tue Oct 29 14:06:21 2002 From: temitchell at sympatico.ca (Todd Mitchell) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:00 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New weather stuff, and bigmap thoughts References: Message-ID: <000c01c27f86$a7bfb820$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> > > 2. Does weather change maps? When there is a tree for example, > > and it gets dry. Will that three vanish? Is weather > > going to change tiles like grass into desert? > > > > Or is it more like a new form of "animation", which is > > able to change images according to weather conditions? I think this would work well - certain arches could be created to animate this way (tree with buds, tree with leaves, tree with bare branches, tree with snow) or for the ground (puddles, mud, snow, flowers) and then it would be easy for map makers to use them in their maps (or if all is well, to redo some of the existing arches to use weather animation.) I think some of this kind of graphic is already available with a bit of modification. BTW, does the weather machine send messages to the client? ('it is raining.', 'it is very windy') - this alone does add to the game since imagination is pretty powerful tool. From root at garbled.net Tue Oct 29 15:20:24 2002 From: root at garbled.net (Tim Rightnour) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:00 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New weather stuff, and bigmap thoughts In-Reply-To: <000c01c27f86$a7bfb820$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> Message-ID: On 29-Oct-02 Todd Mitchell wrote: > I think this would work well - certain arches could be created to animate > this way (tree with buds, tree with leaves, tree with bare branches, tree > with snow) or for the ground (puddles, mud, snow, flowers) and then it would > be easy for map makers to use them in their maps (or if all is well, to redo > some of the existing arches to use weather animation.) > I think some of this kind of graphic is already available with a bit of > modification. I'm no artist.. but it seems to me like it might be easier to make a graphic that could be placed on top of an existing one. Say for example we wanted fruit on a tree. We could make a fruit image, and when placed on top of the tree, it would appear like there was fruit on it. Theoretically, a player could pick that fruit. My ideal system is that based on the weather over a period of time in a spot, certain trees would produce certain fruit. Like if the climate is just right, the trees might be apple trees. Players could pick the apples. Ideally, some trees would be ultra-rare, and would provide things that could be used in alchemy. Same with herbs, flowers, mushrooms, etc. > BTW, does the weather machine send messages to the client? ('it is > raining.', 'it is very windy') - this alone does add to the game since > imagination is pretty powerful tool. Not yet. It will, like the "it's lighter, darker" stuff.. but I haven't written it yet. I didn't mention it, because it really has no effect on the game in that sense. BTW.. I've been fiddling with your snow stuff.. I like the snow images.. I'm working on trying to get them to work with my system. Haven't quite figured out how to melt them though. :) Great work on those though. --- 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 temitchell at sympatico.ca Tue Oct 29 18:21:25 2002 From: temitchell at sympatico.ca (Todd Mitchell) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:00 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] New weather stuff, and bigmap thoughts References: Message-ID: <000801c27faa$48b9cfe0$0a02a8c0@kameria> > > I think this would work well - certain arches could be created to animate > > this way (tree with buds, tree with leaves, tree with bare branches, tree > > with snow) or for the ground (puddles, mud, snow, flowers) and then it would > > be easy for map makers to use them in their maps (or if all is well, to redo > > some of the existing arches to use weather animation.) > > I think some of this kind of graphic is already available with a bit of > > modification. > > I'm no artist.. but it seems to me like it might be easier to make a graphic > that could be placed on top of an existing one. Say for example we wanted > fruit on a tree. We could make a fruit image, and when placed on top of the > tree, it would appear like there was fruit on it. Theoretically, a player > could pick that fruit. > > My ideal system is that based on the weather over a period of time in a spot, > certain trees would produce certain fruit. Like if the climate is just right, > the trees might be apple trees. Players could pick the apples. Ideally, some > trees would be ultra-rare, and would provide things that could be used in > alchemy. Same with herbs, flowers, mushrooms, etc. > Not too sure but I would say that both approachs would work well here for different things. Some things it would be nice to have a 'weather' animation just to keep things simple and I believe lighten the load (less objects) - this would be stuff like forest and ground tiles - buildings, generic trees, perhaps. Some other arches could be placed on top for special objects like the plants you mention. This is purely speculation on my part - I have no idea on how this would play out performance wise. From mwedel at sonic.net Wed Oct 30 00:35:07 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:00 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Money issues References: <0qjoru4ahktjpdbsgot4h3cmsbcu62lgoe@flonk> Message-ID: <3DBF7D9B.7050305@sonic.net> pstolarc@theperlguru.com wrote: >>1) Greatly reduce the selling price and value of most common goods. Scrolls, >>wands, staves, potions, armor, weapons. This allows low level charactrers and >>newbies, which are arguably the only people who use this stuff, to actually buy >>them from shops. > > > The problem with this, is that newbies get money from selling stuff, hence > you only move the issue. The low level chars then have less money to spend > on the less expensive items. I tend to find that big money makers at low levels is all the +1 and +2 (and occasional +1 of lythander or what not) armor and weapons. So cost of scrolls and wands could be reduced without much effect. But yeah, if you get less for that +2 armor, means you are just as far away from buying that +2 shiled (if that's what your after). Reducing value (and cost) of armor/weapons does have some advantage in that money and gems found in the dungeon is now more valuable. Also, the delta for buy/sell could be decreased. > I like this idea, but I would run through the maps in the area as DM, and > mapinfo them to get a feel for the average difficulty level of those maps. > And in the end, I don't see it as having all that much effect. Artifacts, > (justifiably), are more powerful than anything that can be found in the > stores. So, what's the point? > > The way I play is to get +2 equipment from the stores. This is easily > within the reach of most newbies the way things stand. And it's fairly > easy to find. Once I'm set with mostly +2 equipment, I go adventuring for > artifacts, only buying equipment to replace stuff that got hit with acid. > I then save up for spellbooks, resistance potions, amulets, rings and > enchant armour scrolls. The artifacts being talked about are those from the lib/artifacts file. Things like artifact cloaks and rings show up rarely in all cases. So if you were looking for one, and found one in a shop, you may end up buying it. I would note that having larger numbers of some of the more commonly desired random items could help drain some money. Often, I know I may be needing pro fire/cold potions, and would be willing to buy a whole bunch, but the shops don't have any. But that probably won't make much difference for low levels.. From mwedel at sonic.net Wed Oct 30 01:22:40 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:00 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Monsters sleeping References: Message-ID: <3DBF88C0.4090608@sonic.net> Tim Rightnour wrote: > So I've noticed recently there was a change to make monsters far away from you > sleep. I'm wondering if this is having the intended effect. > > What I see, is that areas that used to be packed end-to-end with monsters, are > now containing one or two, and a generator at the back of the room. Someone on > IRC mentioned that this is due to the monsters sleeping, and blocking the > generators. > > It doesn't really have the old "gauntlet" feel when everything is just a big > empty room. But thats just my opinion. I've also found that my spells are a > lot less useful, as I can't area-blast a horde anymore, I have to run around > picking them off singly. IMO, the way it now works now is probably preferable. There has always been the issue of there just being too many monsters, and thus too much loot. This solves some of that problem. The bigger problem it solved is that monsters now sit still, so when you get to the far side of a level (that isn't just a big chamber), the monsters are still there, instead of all of them coming towards you at the start of the level. If an area is supposed to be packed full of monsters, then the map maker should put those monsters in. But IMO, large rooms of lots of generators and monsters are some of the least interesting levels - great place to get lots of quick/easy exp, but perhaps thats some of the problem - making it a little harder to get lots of quick and easy exp and loot is probably a good thing. From kbulgrien at worldnet.att.net Wed Oct 30 21:24:46 2002 From: kbulgrien at worldnet.att.net (Kevin R. Bulgrien) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:00 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Cannot make crossfire In-Reply-To: <3DBF88C0.4090608@sonic.net> References: Message-ID: <5.1.0.14.0.20021030212235.00aa55a0@postoffice.worldnet.att.net> I'm not sure why this happens: [root@krayp120 crossfire]# make cd . && /bin/sh /home/operator/cvs/crossfire/crossfire/utils/missing --run autoconf autoconf: configure.in: No such file or directory make: *** [configure] Error 1 [root@krayp120 crossfire]# There is no configure.in file. Is the INSTALL file not up to date, and am I missing an important step? I don't have autoconf on my system. Is this now a requirement? From tanner at real-time.com Wed Oct 30 23:20:49 2002 From: tanner at real-time.com (Bob Tanner) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:00 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Cannot make crossfire In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.0.20021030212235.00aa55a0@postoffice.worldnet.att.net> References: <5.1.0.14.0.20021030212235.00aa55a0@postoffice.worldnet.att.net> Message-ID: <200210302320.49084.tanner@real-time.com> On Wednesday 30 October 2002 09:24 pm, Kevin R. Bulgrien wrote: > I'm not sure why this happens: > > [root@krayp120 crossfire]# make > cd . && /bin/sh /home/operator/cvs/crossfire/crossfire/utils/missing --run > autoconf autoconf: configure.in: No such file or directory > make: *** [configure] Error 1 > [root@krayp120 crossfire]# > > There is no configure.in file. Is the INSTALL file not up to date, and am > I missing an important step? I don't have autoconf on my system. Is this > now a requirement? First, never compile things as root. Simple command like this: all:: rm -rf / And your system is gone. Try the autogen.sh -- Bob Tanner | Phone : (952)943-8700 http://www.mn-linux.org, Minnesota, Linux | Fax : (952)943-8500 http://www.linuxjustworks.com | Linux Just Works! Key fingerprint = AB15 0BDF BCDE 4369 5B42 1973 7CF1 A709 2CC1 B288 From root at garbled.net Thu Oct 31 03:20:28 2002 From: root at garbled.net (Tim Rightnour) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:00 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Money issues In-Reply-To: <3DBF7D9B.7050305@sonic.net> Message-ID: On 30-Oct-02 Mark Wedel wrote: > I tend to find that big money makers at low levels is all the +1 and +2 > (and > occasional +1 of lythander or what not) armor and weapons. So cost of > scrolls > and wands could be reduced without much effect. > > But yeah, if you get less for that +2 armor, means you are just as far away > from buying that +2 shiled (if that's what your after). > > Reducing value (and cost) of armor/weapons does have some advantage in that > money and gems found in the dungeon is now more valuable. Also, the delta > for > buy/sell could be decreased. I think Mark described it much better than I did. I don't mean to drop the value of everything, just the more common, and useful stuff. What this would mean is, that when you find a particularly valulable item, say a ring, where you get 100plat.. you can afford more scrolls than you could have before. Also.. if the price of weapons and armor in the shops drop, then a player might actually be able to afford a decent set of starting equipment with what we give him to start. (which, I feel should be more) I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a warrior, to be able to get himself a decent set of armor, and a nice stick to wave around, to start out with. When he finishes the newbie training ground.. he should be able to afford a full set of armor, and quite possibly a +1 sword. Perhaps the price to identify should be dropped as well. I mean really.. who uses those beyond like level 5? > The artifacts being talked about are those from the lib/artifacts file. > Things like artifact cloaks and rings show up rarely in all cases. So if you > were looking for one, and found one in a shop, you may end up buying it. > > I would note that having larger numbers of some of the more commonly > desired > random items could help drain some money. Often, I know I may be needing pro > fire/cold potions, and would be willing to buy a whole bunch, but the shops > don't have any. > > But that probably won't make much difference for low levels.. What it will allow IMHO, is a few things: 1) Low level players may want a particular item, say a special ring, or a certain cloak, or crown. They can save up for it, and actually have a shot at buying it. 2) Mid level players can look for that one particular peice of equipment to round out thier arsenal. --- 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 jajcus at bnet.pl Thu Oct 31 01:56:33 2002 From: jajcus at bnet.pl (Jacek Konieczny) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:00 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Cannot make crossfire In-Reply-To: <5.1.0.14.0.20021030212235.00aa55a0@postoffice.worldnet.att.net> References: <5.1.0.14.0.20021030212235.00aa55a0@postoffice.worldnet.att.net> Message-ID: <20021031075633.GC446@serwus.bnet.pl> On Wed, Oct 30, 2002 at 09:24:46PM -0600, Kevin R. Bulgrien wrote: > I'm not sure why this happens: ... > autoconf: configure.in: No such file or directory ... > There is no configure.in file. Is the INSTALL file not up to date, and am > I missing an important step? I don't have autoconf on my system. It seems you do have autoconf, but a very old one (which uses "configure.in" instead of "configure.ac"). >Is this now a requirement? It is a requirement when you are compiling sources from CVS or if you made some modification to Makefiles or configure.ac file. It should not be requirement if you use released tarballs. You could also have such problem if your system clock is not set right. Greets, Jacek From mwedel at sonic.net Thu Oct 31 02:27:35 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:00 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Cannot make crossfire References: <5.1.0.14.0.20021030212235.00aa55a0@postoffice.worldnet.att.net> Message-ID: <3DC0E977.5060103@sonic.net> Kevin R. Bulgrien wrote: > I'm not sure why this happens: > > [root@krayp120 crossfire]# make > cd . && /bin/sh /home/operator/cvs/crossfire/crossfire/utils/missing --run autoconf > autoconf: configure.in: No such file or directory > make: *** [configure] Error 1 > [root@krayp120 crossfire]# > > There is no configure.in file. Is the INSTALL file not up to date, and am > I missing an important step? I don't have autoconf on my system. Is this > now a requirement? If your grabbing out of CVS, there can be issues in terms of the datestamps of the files. Do a 'rm configure; cvs update configure; touch configure', and then hopefully the configure/make will work. From andi.vogl at gmx.net Thu Oct 31 05:42:59 2002 From: andi.vogl at gmx.net (Andreas Vogl) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:00 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Cannot make crossfire References: <5.1.0.14.0.20021030212235.00aa55a0@postoffice.worldnet.att.net> Message-ID: <14734.1036064579@www57.gmx.net> > > I'm not sure why this happens: > > [root@krayp120 crossfire]# make > cd . && /bin/sh /home/operator/cvs/crossfire/crossfire/utils/missing --run > autoconf > autoconf: configure.in: No such file or directory > make: *** [configure] Error 1 > [root@krayp120 crossfire]# > > There is no configure.in file. Is the INSTALL file not up to date, and am > I missing an important step? I don't have autoconf on my system. Is this > now a requirement? Lots of people have responded, guess you already have some clues what to do. I just want to add that on my system (SuSE linux), I've seen the *exact* same errormessage when I first tried to compile crossfire after the automake patch. The reason is simply your automake version is too old. Newer versions of automake also need autoconf. So you need to install: 1) Newest version of autoconf, 2) then newest version of automake (override or delete former version). See: Installation was pretty simple. After that I had no more troubles compiling newest versions of crossfire. AndreasV -- +++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more http://www.gmx.net +++ NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen! From mwedel at sonic.net Thu Oct 31 22:11:30 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:00 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Money issues References: Message-ID: <3DC1FEF2.6060305@sonic.net> Tim Rightnour wrote: > Also.. if the price of weapons and armor in the shops drop, then a player might > actually be able to afford a decent set of starting equipment with what we give > him to start. (which, I feel should be more) Well, right now starting characters get random equipment. For some characters, this is good stuff. For others, it isn't all that good. It probably makes more sense to give them some amount of money and let them buy what they want. Specific class/races may get certain items (eg, I know one starts with a powercrystal). This opens a potential bug of a new person could start a bunch of characters and accumulate the gold, but compared to most of the abuses, that is real small time. Considering that it seems some number of veteran players will drop off loads of golds (or good equipment) for new players, this really isn't an issue. > > I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a warrior, to be able to get himself > a decent set of armor, and a nice stick to wave around, to start out with. > When he finishes the newbie training ground.. he should be able to afford a > full set of armor, and quite possibly a +1 sword. One thing that could be done (which I think I said) is reduce the buy/sell gap. New players/characters will typically get reamed pretty good on this - can cost many times more to buy something back than you just sold it for. Ideally, doing something like having information in the object itself which contains 'resale' perantage is the most flexible. Eg, gems could have a value of 2%, meaning you get 98% of value when you sell, costs 102% of value when you buy. Other items maybe have a value of 10 -> 25%. Perhaps bargaining skill reduces that rate by some portion (eg, if the item has a 25% fee, but your level 20 in bargaining, maybe that fee is 20%). > > Perhaps the price to identify should be dropped as well. I mean really.. who > uses those beyond like level 5? Perhaps - I think the bigger issue perhaps for newbies is the right process - do the detect magic/curse first, and then identify the magic stuff that is left over. > 1) Low level players may want a particular item, say a special ring, or a > certain cloak, or crown. They can save up for it, and actually have a shot at > buying it. Only problem is that you never no if it will be in the shop when you have the money. Personally, I think some of the shops should be less random. Eg, the armor shop in scorn should stock normal and +1 versions of all the item types, and maybe leave the rest for random stuff that may be less obscure - this that shops market - low level. From mwedel at sonic.net Mon Oct 14 23:48:37 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:03:00 2005 Subject: [CF-Devel] Alchemy thoughts Message-ID: <3DAB9E25.2040909@sonic.net> Some of this has probably been discussed before, but I was going to do some work to fix the experience flaws in alchemy (exp is basically the square of the number of objects). My initial thought to that ws to just add an 'exp' field to the formula table, and use that. This contral right there would do wonders - fix the above bug, but also let you tune exp for other factors (a hard to do formula because of rare components but in itself that isn't very complicated could perhaps have a high reward vs a formula that has many parts, but all of them common. But when I thought about this, I thought about refining alchemy more. So here is my idea: Instead of the 'recipe' structure, put the formula into an object structure. Some fields may need to get overloaded (or additional ones added to the object structure) - fields I see (parens are current name in recipe file) other_arch (arch): was this formula creates nrof (yield): max number this can create recipe treasurelist (chance) - likelihood of formula appearing in books - basically, make a treasurelist of all the recipes that you want to randomly appear, and when a recipe book is made, it uses that to choose one msg (ingred): Recipe (ingredients) for this. is_used_up (trans): Converts an existing object as the base object slaying (keycode): player must have force with matching slaying field to make this recipe New fields as far as recipes: exp: How much exp you get for making this item level: 'level' of the recipe - basic value to determine probability of making this recipe. Eg, when you make it, it rolls a d20 and adds your alchemy level - this has to be higher than the level of the recipe for you to succeed. In this way, you could set up recipes that require a reasonable amount of exp to make what I'd also do is make a new type of object - RECIPE (or maybe ALC_FORMULA, suggestions?). When a recipe book is created, it would basically just take the above described arch and change the face appropriately. When a player applies it, a minor amount of server code would digest what the message string is and describe the recipe. Also, at the same time, the code would check to see if the player knows this recipe - if he doesn't, we make an invisible copy of this object and insert it in the players inventory (so checking to see if the player knows it if is just seeing if he has an object of the same name in his inventory). What this last point allows is twofold: 1) Player can do something like 'alchemy' and see what recipes he knows, and the formula for them. 2) Could make a requirement that the player has to know the recipe in order to execute it, or alternatively, adjust probability of success. Overall advantages: 1) Makes alchemy more balanced. 2) Hopefully makes alchemy more useful. 3) Reduces some redundant code (generic object loader can now be used to read the formulae file, instead of using its own, as well as not needing recipelists and like stuff). Actually, if this is done, you don't have a formulae file anymore - you just have a 'formulae' arch directory, since these are now arches. 4) Would allow map designers to put new recipes on their maps! All they would have to do is make the appropriate 'RECIPE' object on the map with the appropriate fields (note for such new recipes to work, they player would have to know the recipe, as that recipe wouldn't be in the list of global recipes, but that is probably a good thing) Thoughts? Suggestions? comments? From muzz at albatross.pond.sub.org Sun Oct 6 15:59:15 2002 From: muzz at albatross.pond.sub.org (Frank Muzzulini) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:30 2005 Subject: [CF List] New experience system on metalforge Message-ID: <8765wf5lng.fsf@albatross.pond.sub.org> A month ago or so, metalforge.real-time.com started to use a new expierence code. I guess some of you might have tried it yet and I think it's time to start discuss it now. I don't know if it is even an official experiment (I just joined this list yesterday), but I think changing this code would be a good idea in anyway, though I dislike the version I found on metalforge. First why do I think it should change? Well the current code is stupid for two reasons. First you need 900k exp to get from level 19 to 20 and 1600k to get from 100 to 101, which make you get levels ever faster, the farer you are and second the limit of 107 for a single skill is artifical. Now how is it on metalforge: Now you need more and more exp to get to new levels, until you reach level 100 at nearly 1 billion exp, then for some strange reason you are 110 in no time. At the same time however you notice that single skills max out at 350 million and level 79. Now 79 is surely as artificial as it was before and it is a sever downgrade for expierenced high level chars. Not to forget level 79 physical let's you use only 20 weapon enhancements, so many of us won't be able to use their personal weapons any more. My suggestion for the new system is the following: Let the 350 million (which are mostly fixed by the fact that 6*350 million is nearly 2^31) be enough to reach level 100 and a good deal more to reach 110 overall. Additionally add one to the weapon enhancements you can use at start, so that the max level gives 26 enhancements again. What do you think? Puff -- Puff, the magic (ancient electricity) dragon (alias Anvil, the Berserker Orc) From joel at mamia.prninfo.com Sun Oct 6 20:21:15 2002 From: joel at mamia.prninfo.com (Joel South) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:30 2005 Subject: [CF List] New experience system on metalforge In-Reply-To: <8765wf5lng.fsf@albatross.pond.sub.org> from "Frank Muzzulini" at Oct 06, 2002 10:59:15 PM Message-ID: <200210070121.VAA01972@mamia.prninfo.com> I agree with Frank. The exp scale on metalforge is good in that is takes longer to gain levels, however, the max level of each catagory is too low. Going from 26 to 20 enchantments sucks, plus a lot of other things are weakened, such as the power of one's spells, damage, wc, etc. I don't really have any chars on metalforge that have any weapon enchantments yet, but I would like to get 26 enchantments. Also I would hate it if this exp scale came to mids or jyu, where I do have characters with enchanted weapons. Joel Southall (Zar on mids)(Orodruin or Sharnak on metalforge) (Tramaka on jyu) From yann.chachkoff at mailandnews.com Mon Oct 7 09:03:18 2002 From: yann.chachkoff at mailandnews.com (Yann Chachkoff) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:30 2005 Subject: [CF List] New experience system on metalforge Message-ID: <3DA19864@mailandnews.com> Some thoughts about all this... Another alternate experience system was tested some time ago on my own server (chachkoff.dyndns.org): Maximum level of 29, for an amount of experience of 934999998 points/skill at most. The idea behind this was to make life harder for high-level characters (the experience progression stayed the same as they're in the standard scale), by making high level progression much slower. Setting the maximum level for skills to 29 would make it harder to cast powerful spells; it would also mean that common spells like Burning Hands couldn't reach as much destructive power as before. The main wish was to push players to more cooperative work - A group could achieve tasks a single person couldn't. Results were somewhat disappointing, although not entierly unexpected. Results could be summarized as follow : - Power gamers generally didn't like the idea of lowering the maximum level of power one could gain, mostly because some quests would have become "too dangerous to make". Few people were actually ready to make dangerous quests with their high-level character. - Power gamers generally seem to avoid team-play if they can; cooperation in Crossfire appears to be more item/trade-oriented ("I give you this item to help you") than direct "cooperative hunt" ("Let's regroup to kill those dragons"). (I don't say there aren't exceptions - but those appear to be 'common rules'). Both of the above points are directly related to the psychological profile of the average Crossfire power-gamer. Both are in direct contradiction with the ideas behind the tweaked experience scale. I - and some others - would have preferred a higher average difficulty level for Crossfire at high levels; however, since too few people accepted the concept, I put an end to the experiment. Since it seems that the idea is showing up again, I restarted my server for those interested - it could be interesting to see concrete returns from players on all those systems and try to take the better from it. Y. Chachkoff ------------------------------------------------ Help supporting JXFire ! (http://jxfire.sf.net) ------------------------------------------------ From fhhz at voila.fr Mon Oct 7 10:13:49 2002 From: fhhz at voila.fr (=?iso-8859-1?Q?fhhz?=) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:30 2005 Subject: [CF List] =?iso-8859-1?Q?bug?= Message-ID: I've a big problem : my machine crahsed, and when i restarted the game, i could do absolutely nothing, not even 'say' ! The only commands that does something is 'help' (and even 'help topics' does'nt work). But my character is "alive", for i regenerate hp... Could you help me ? My character's name is Altair. ------------------------------------------ Faites un voeu et puis Voila ! www.voila.fr From temitchell at sympatico.ca Mon Oct 7 11:18:44 2002 From: temitchell at sympatico.ca (Todd Mitchell) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:30 2005 Subject: [CF List] New experience system on metalforge References: <3DA19864@mailandnews.com> Message-ID: <000401c26e1d$36d48700$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> I wonder how much of the dislike of cooperative questing comes from the fact that the combat system and much map design sort of discourages this style of play. I wonder if the fixes to monster sensing ranges (now they don't all rush you from all over the map) will improve this? I really like the idea of co-operation, but I can see how play style would favour single player currently. Mob is not just a noun in this case, many monsters do not have an adequate AI to make multiplayer work - they just rush. Then again I did get the chance to watch a level 100 paladin playing - he just hid around a corner and lobbed seeking spells quite a lot. Since the monsters were all trapped in rooms, to avoid a mid map pileup, and could not reach him there was no need for co-operative play there. Using more varied attack movements for monsters would be one solution. I have suggested in the past that an additional pass condition that would allow flying (creatures and objects) to pass while blocking ground movement (walking players and monsters) would encourage a lot more multiplayer fighting (more possible use of tactics and missile weapons) as well as increasing the possible complexity of maps. ----- Original Message ----- From: Yann Chachkoff To: Sent: Monday, October 07, 2002 10:03 AM Subject: RE: [CF List] New experience system on metalforge > Some thoughts about all this... > > Another alternate experience system was tested some time ago on my own server > (chachkoff.dyndns.org): Maximum level of 29, for an amount of experience of > 934999998 points/skill at most. > > The idea behind this was to make life harder for high-level characters (the > experience progression stayed the same as they're in the standard scale), by > making high level progression much slower. > > Setting the maximum level for skills to 29 would make it harder to cast > powerful spells; it would also mean that common spells like Burning Hands > couldn't reach as much destructive power as before. The main wish was to push > players to more cooperative work - A group could achieve tasks a single person > couldn't. > > Results were somewhat disappointing, although not entierly unexpected. Results > could be summarized as follow : > > - Power gamers generally didn't like the idea of lowering the maximum level of > power one could gain, mostly because some quests would have become "too > dangerous to make". Few people were actually ready to make dangerous quests > with their high-level character. > > - Power gamers generally seem to avoid team-play if they can; cooperation in > Crossfire appears to be more item/trade-oriented ("I give you this item to > help you") than direct "cooperative hunt" ("Let's regroup to kill those > dragons"). > > (I don't say there aren't exceptions - but those appear to be 'common rules'). > Both of the above points are directly related to the psychological profile of > the average Crossfire power-gamer. Both are in direct contradiction with the > ideas behind the tweaked experience scale. I - and some others - would have > preferred a higher average difficulty level for Crossfire at high levels; > however, since too few people accepted the concept, I put an end to the > experiment. > > Since it seems that the idea is showing up again, I restarted my server for > those interested - it could be interesting to see concrete returns from > players on all those systems and try to take the better from it. > > Y. Chachkoff > ------------------------------------------------ > Help supporting JXFire ! (http://jxfire.sf.net) > ------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > crossfire-list mailing list > crossfire-list@lists.real-time.com > https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/crossfire-list From leaf at real-time.com Mon Oct 7 19:06:38 2002 From: leaf at real-time.com (Rick Tanner) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:31 2005 Subject: [CF List] Crossfire website update Message-ID: I've made several improvements to the Crossfire website. Hopefully everyone will agree with me. =) The benefits are: 1.) The new site has better file path structure. No more mixed case file and directory names. 1A.) No more strange directory paths, such as /Client/client.html - it's now just client/index.html ( or just /client ) 2.) The average page size has dropped from 50kb to 30kb - so faster loading. Plus, the nested tables are gone, so page content should appear faster as well. 3.) Content is easier to update due to a more simplified layout 4.) Easier capability of tweaking look & feel and layout of the site through one Style Sheet file instead of 300+ pages of HTML via 4 templates 5.) Themes - don't like the colors or general layout - you have the potential to change it or customize your browser style to your own liking. ;) (http://crossfire.real-time.com/themes/) There are a couple of drawbacks - older browsers have problems supporting the visual layout. Content is still visable, and usability feature are in place for these browsers as well as non-visual browsers. Many URL's have changed. I've setup redirects for the more "popular" pages so people will be redirected to the new page automatically. Here's a summary of a few of them: Download (ftp sites) http://crossfire.real-time.com/download/ Clients http://crossfire.real-time.com/clients/ Mailing Lists http://crossfire.real-time.com/mailinglists/ FAQ http://crossfire.real-time.com/faq/ Screen Shots http://crossfire.real-time.com/screenshots/ Map Editors http://crossfire.real-time.com/editors/ Player's Handbook http://crossfire.real-time.com/guides/handbook/ Dragon Guide http://crossfire.real-time.com/guides/character/dragons.html Spoiler: http://crossfire.real-time.com/spoiler/ So, that's the big update. Enjoy. - Rick Tanner leaf@real-time.com From mwedel at sonic.net Mon Oct 7 23:35:26 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:31 2005 Subject: [CF List] New experience system on metalforge References: <3DA19864@mailandnews.com> <000401c26e1d$36d48700$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> Message-ID: <3DA2608E.50807@sonic.net> Todd Mitchell wrote: > I wonder how much of the dislike of cooperative questing comes from the fact > that the combat system and much map design sort of discourages this style of > play. The crossfire design probably isn't great for multiplay for the various reasons: 1) Many dungeons have narrow passages, so you really can't get two people side by side bashing on that monster. 2) Monsters vs player hp is a large disparity - this basically means that most attacks players do will kill (or seriously harm) other players - thus, it becomes very dangerous to get in the way of another players attack (be it weapon or spell). 3) There isn't any way right now to cast spells over/around a player in front of you. You can't use the tactic of big tough fighter stands in the corrider while mage sits back and helps with offensive spells like many live RPG's allow (if this was possible, point #1 wouldn't be as much an issue). 4) most combats are over _very_ quickly - either you kill the opposing monster in a few seconds, or you don't have much hope. There are very few combats which go on for any amount of time - this also makes cooperation harder - if for example you have someone that backs you up and casts healing spells, by the time you can tell that other person 'I need healing', your probably dead. So all that person could really do is just cast a spell on you every second or two and hope that pacing is correct. Point #4 can be corrected pretty easily - easy enough to just add some multiplier that is applied to all damage (eg, 0.50) - that would double the length of combats for example. However, for fairness, everything else that adjusts hp also needs to get hit by this multiplier (regeneration, curing spells, etc). Could be just as easy to change that multiplier for number of HP the characters/monsters have (if you double everyones hit points, combats shoudl also take twice as long, and don't need to much with regen/healing spell logic). From mwedel at sonic.net Mon Oct 7 23:48:16 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:31 2005 Subject: [CF List] New experience system on metalforge References: <8765wf5lng.fsf@albatross.pond.sub.org> Message-ID: <3DA26390.4040607@sonic.net> Frank Muzzulini wrote: > Now how is it on metalforge: Now you need more and more exp to get to > new levels, until you reach level 100 at nearly 1 billion exp, then > for some strange reason you are 110 in no time. At the same time > however you notice that single skills max out at 350 million and level > 79. Now 79 is surely as artificial as it was before and it is a sever > downgrade for expierenced high level chars. Not to forget level 79 > physical let's you use only 20 weapon enhancements, so many of us > won't be able to use their personal weapons any more. I don't know why going from level 100 to 110 should be really quick - that is an oddity - the curve keeps getting steeper at those levels, so it shouldn't happen. I agree that not being able to use your personal weapons is a bummer. Note in any case, I don't have any qualms about new players only being able to enchant their weapon 20 times and not 26. Life changes. It would be stupid to put some limitation that basically says no new code can weak players. Considering that a lot of stuff has been added over time that makes characters more powerful, there is some give and take on that. I note that the level 79 max for skills isn't truly a limit - it is only a limit if you want 6 skills maxed out. If you decide to purely focuse on one skill, you can get it to level 110. If you split your exp between 2 skills, they both can be 100. Split between three skills is level 93. I will also note that if your purely focus on one skill and make it level 109, you can still get all your other skills to level 55 or so. I personally do not have any problem with those restrictions - this new system forces you to put some focus on your character. Do you want to be the best fighter in the world? Fine, but your not going to be the best magician at the same time. At some point, weapons you can use, number enchantments, and all that is going to get redone. No matter what skill you focus on, you sort of need to be able to get improved weapons - this also discourages focusing on one skill (basically means everyone needs physical simply to be able to enchant their weapons). At some point, the item power stuff will get balanced out, and you'll perhaps be able to enhant more than just your weapon, but you will have some limit on what you can equip based on the total item power of your items. Thus, you could make a really awesome enchanted weapon, but if you want to use it, your not going to be able to wear all your other awesome items at the same time. From lembark at wrkhors.com Tue Oct 8 00:08:06 2002 From: lembark at wrkhors.com (Steven Lembark) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:31 2005 Subject: [CF List] New experience system on metalforge In-Reply-To: <3DA2608E.50807@sonic.net> References: <3DA19864@mailandnews.com> <000401c26e1d$36d48700$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> <3DA2608E.50807@sonic.net> Message-ID: <227830000.1034053686@[192.168.200.4]> >> I wonder how much of the dislike of cooperative questing comes from the >> fact that the combat system and much map design sort of discourages this >> style of play. > > The crossfire design probably isn't great for multiplay for the various > reasons: > > 1) Many dungeons have narrow passages, so you really can't get two people > side by side bashing on that monster. Depends on the spells: destruction, for example, isn't a problem. > > 2) Monsters vs player hp is a large disparity - this basically means that > most attacks players do will kill (or seriously harm) other players - > thus, it becomes very dangerous to get in the way of another players > attack (be it weapon or spell). > > 3) There isn't any way right now to cast spells over/around a player in > front of you. You can't use the tactic of big tough fighter stands in > the corrider while mage sits back and helps with offensive spells like > many live RPG's allow (if this was possible, point #1 wouldn't be as much > an issue). One way to look at this is that if you stand in front of people casting spells you're gonna get hit. Dungeons can work around this (e.g., raffle w/ two ways for warrier & mage), but most don't. The tweaks might be better made by adding limited immunities to spell types from players (see below) or giving > 4) most combats are over _very_ quickly - either you kill the opposing > monster in a few seconds, or you don't have much hope. There are very > few combats which go on for any amount of time - this also makes > cooperation harder - if for example you have someone that backs you up > and casts healing spells, by the time you can tell that other person 'I > need healing', your probably dead. So all that person could really do is > just cast a spell on you every second or two and hope that pacing is > correct. Again, this depends on how you use spells. I've wandered around helping people get points by paralyzing heavy-duty monsters while they beat up on them. Net result is that the party system worked nicely. I can also cast protection and stat spells at the person before they dive through a door. This allows a wraith, say, to be useful around dragons (albeit at a safe distance). I can also stand around casting heal spells at certian rate; they may be somewhat wasted but will help whomever. It might help if things like x-ray vision could be cast at another char; would make for nice alliances between magic users and warriers/thieves. That or add a class of "party" spells which could only be cast at other players (e.g., speed). Certian mage/priest classes could learn these spells and form alliances with warriers. There are also useful alliances based on shared immuities (e.g., between fireborn and Quet'z who can burn things to their heart's delight). It might be that adjusting come of the god/char attributes to allow, say, elves immunity to some Devourers spells might allow elves and undead to form useful alliances. > Point #4 can be corrected pretty easily - easy enough to just add some > multiplier that is applied to all damage (eg, 0.50) - that would double > the length of combats for example. However, for fairness, everything > else that adjusts hp also needs to get hit by this multiplier > (regeneration, curing spells, etc). Could be just as easy to change that > multiplier for number of HP the characters/monsters have (if you double > everyones hit points, combats shoudl also take twice as long, and don't > need to much with regen/healing spell logic). Most of the issues really are with dungeons: there are several maps that require groups and support party play well. It may be that the biggest hurdle is the map design software, which encourages single-player maps. Fix for that might be to have some people who are really intersted in designing a top-notch map maker to go at it. -- Steven Lembark 2930 W. Palmer Workhorse Computing Chicago, IL 60647 +1 800 762 1582 From andi.vogl at gmx.net Tue Oct 8 02:32:33 2002 From: andi.vogl at gmx.net (Andreas Vogl) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:31 2005 Subject: [CF List] New experience system on metalforge References: <227830000.1034053686@[192.168.200.4]> Message-ID: <14231.1034062353@www26.gmx.net> First off, I think what was said about lacking multiplayer cooperation is true. The CF combat system is mostly too quick and too straightforward to get players cooperating. Lack of friendly fire does the rest. I have often experienced that chances to get killed during "party play" are way higher than for anything else. It is also true that most maps are designed for single-players. Naturally mapmakers tend to design maps in the same way they like to play them. Steven Lembark wrote: > Most of the issues really are with dungeons: there are > several maps that require groups and support party play > well. It may be that the biggest hurdle is the map > design software, which encourages single-player maps. This is interesting. :-) You think the CF map editors discourage creation of multi-player maps? How so? Do you have something in mind how to encourage creation of multi-player maps in a Crossfire editor? > Fix for that might be to have some people who are really > intersted in designing a top-notch map maker to go at it. I know my attempts are poor, but that's kind of what I'm trying to do with the CFJavaEditor. ;-)) Just say what you are missing in the editor, I'm always open for input. While I can understand your notion to create an all-new CF editor, please be aware that it would require tremendous amounts of work to do so. It might be wise to build on what we've got. AndreasV -- +++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more http://www.gmx.net +++ NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen! From joel at mamia.prninfo.com Tue Oct 8 08:51:33 2002 From: joel at mamia.prninfo.com (Joel South) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:31 2005 Subject: [CF List] New experience system on metalforge In-Reply-To: <3DA26390.4040607@sonic.net> from "Mark Wedel" at Oct 07, 2002 09:48:16 PM Message-ID: <200210081351.JAA08930@mamia.prninfo.com> > I note that the level 79 max for skills isn't truly a limit - it is only a > limit if you want 6 skills maxed out. If you decide to purely focuse on one > skill, you can get it to level 110. If you split your exp between 2 skills, > they both can be 100. Split between three skills is level 93. > > I will also note that if your purely focus on one skill and make it level 109, > you can still get all your other skills to level 55 or so. > > I personally do not have any problem with those restrictions - this new system > forces you to put some focus on your character. Do you want to be the best > fighter in the world? Fine, but your not going to be the best magician at the > same time. And what about the personality, agility, and mental skills? Those will be thrown to the side even more than they were before... I was training my character's personality catagory, but now I'm not so sure... I'll just end up weaker than everyone else if I do. Maybe this isn't to big of a deal to most, but I had fun training those other skills. However, I'd much rather be as strong as I can be. > At some point, weapons you can use, number enchantments, and all that is going > to get redone. No matter what skill you focus on, you sort of need to be able > to get improved weapons - this also discourages focusing on one skill (basically > means everyone needs physical simply to be able to enchant their weapons). At > some point, the item power stuff will get balanced out, and you'll perhaps be > able to enhant more than just your weapon, but you will have some limit on what > you can equip based on the total item power of your items. > Thus, you could make a really awesome enchanted weapon, but if you want to use > it, your not going to be able to wear all your other awesome items at the same time. > > > _______________________________________________ > crossfire-list mailing list > crossfire-list@lists.real-time.com > https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/crossfire-list > From lembark at wrkhors.com Tue Oct 8 09:45:40 2002 From: lembark at wrkhors.com (Steven Lembark) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:31 2005 Subject: [CF List] New experience system on metalforge In-Reply-To: <14231.1034062353@www26.gmx.net> References: <227830000.1034053686@[192.168.200.4]> <14231.1034062353@www26.gmx.net> Message-ID: <265330000.1034088340@[192.168.200.4]> > Just say what you are missing in the editor, I'm always > open for input. > > While I can understand your notion to create an all-new > CF editor, please be aware that it would require tremendous > amounts of work to do so. It might be wise to build on > what we've got. Doesn't need to be a new editor, just a number of people equally interested in the existing one to spend serious time making it flow. Thing to start with is asking how someone would use the editor to design a multi-user map, and what the difference is between that and designing a similar single-user one. -- Steven Lembark 2930 W. Palmer Workhorse Computing Chicago, IL 60647 +1 800 762 1582 From temitchell at sympatico.ca Tue Oct 8 11:17:43 2002 From: temitchell at sympatico.ca (Todd Mitchell) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:31 2005 Subject: [CF List] New experience system on metalforge References: <3DA19864@mailandnews.com> <000401c26e1d$36d48700$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> <3DA2608E.50807@sonic.net> Message-ID: <001601c26ee6$3cce9460$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> > The crossfire design probably isn't great for multiplay for the various reasons: > > 1) Many dungeons have narrow passages, so you really can't get two people side > by side bashing on that monster. > To be fair to the people making maps - this is almost necessary since the monsters would not stay put without walls to contain them and you would end up with a pileup around the player. Now this has been fixed somewhat since monsters have a limited sensing range - but this range is usually at least 1/3 of the size of a map (30X30 map) and seems to work through walls. Using attack_movement is one really good way to work around this making monsters that snipe and hit and run, another is using movers to give creatures pseudo-formation. Adding in more selective blocking (blocks walking, allows flying- for starters) would allow more open maps to be designed that encouraged more missile combat and more co-operative play. This is not a problem with the map editor, it is a problem with the available objects. Based on past conversations on this topic I think it wouldn't be too difficult to implement, especially compared to the amount it would add to map design and game play. > 2) Monsters vs player hp is a large disparity - this basically means that most > attacks players do will kill (or seriously harm) other players - thus, it > becomes very dangerous to get in the way of another players attack (be it weapon > or spell). > > 3) There isn't any way right now to cast spells over/around a player in front of > you. You can't use the tactic of big tough fighter stands in the corrider while > mage sits back and helps with offensive spells like many live RPG's allow (if > this was possible, point #1 wouldn't be as much an issue). > Again this is an issue when you have linear map layouts, but it wouldn't be so bad if maps were built more open and allowed the use of terrain (half-walls, barrels, water, rubble, elevation and pits - all this could be faked out with a no-walk, fly-pass type flag). Then maps could be designed that let players fan out a bit more and not impeed each other. Also this would allow players who are physically tough to go alone and smash through groups of creatures, while players who used more ranged combat techniques to band together using the terrain to keep monsters at a distance. > 4) most combats are over _very_ quickly - either you kill the opposing monster > in a few seconds, or you don't have much hope. There are very few combats which > go on for any amount of time - this also makes cooperation harder - if for > example you have someone that backs you up and casts healing spells, by the time > you can tell that other person 'I need healing', your probably dead. So all > that person could really do is just cast a spell on you every second or two and > hope that pacing is correct. > If you are using a melee model this is true, unless you use hit and run tactics. From lembark at wrkhors.com Tue Oct 8 12:56:46 2002 From: lembark at wrkhors.com (Steven Lembark) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:31 2005 Subject: [CF List] New experience system on metalforge In-Reply-To: <001601c26ee6$3cce9460$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> References: <3DA19864@mailandnews.com> <000401c26e1d$36d48700$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> <3DA2608E.50807@sonic.net> <001601c26ee6$3cce9460$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> Message-ID: <300310000.1034099806@[192.168.200.4]> > To be fair to the people making maps - this is almost necessary since the > monsters would not stay put without walls to contain them and you would > end up with a pileup around the player. Now this has been fixed somewhat > since monsters have a limited sensing range - but this range is usually > at least 1/3 of the size of a map (30X30 map) and seems to work through > walls. Using attack_movement is one really good way to work around this > making monsters that snipe and hit and run, another is using movers to > give creatures pseudo-formation. > Adding in more selective blocking (blocks walking, allows flying- for > starters) would allow more open maps to be designed that encouraged more > missile combat and more co-operative play. This is not a problem with the > map editor, it is a problem with the available objects. Based on past > conversations on this topic I think it wouldn't be too difficult to > implement, especially compared to the amount it would add to map design > and game play. The existing map makers have done an excellent job of populating CF to date: the entire enterprise would be a complete waste if not for people who make maps! My point is that mapmaker's ability to control the items you describe should be built into the map making utility so that it can be used to make more effective maps. If controling the monsters more effectively is useful [I'll agree with that] then that should be part of the map editor. > Again this is an issue when you have linear map layouts, but it wouldn't > be so bad if maps were built more open and allowed the use of terrain > (half-walls, barrels, water, rubble, elevation and pits - all this could > be faked out with a no-walk, fly-pass type flag). Then maps could be > designed that let players fan out a bit more and not impeed each other. > Also this would allow players who are physically tough to go alone and > smash through groups of creatures, while players who used more ranged > combat techniques to band together using the terrain to keep monsters at > a distance. Ditto. -- Steven Lembark 2930 W. Palmer Workhorse Computing Chicago, IL 60647 +1 800 762 1582 From muzz at albatross.pond.sub.org Tue Oct 8 13:33:28 2002 From: muzz at albatross.pond.sub.org (Frank Muzzulini) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:31 2005 Subject: [CF List] New experience system on metalforge In-Reply-To: Mark Wedel's message of "Mon, 07 Oct 2002 21:48:16 -0700" References: <8765wf5lng.fsf@albatross.pond.sub.org> <3DA26390.4040607@sonic.net> Message-ID: <8765wcixvr.fsf@albatross.pond.sub.org> Mark Wedel writes: > I don't know why going from level 100 to 110 should be really > quick - that is an oddity - the curve keeps getting steeper at those > levels, so it shouldn't happen. Well, fact is that Puff on metalforge is now 110 with currently 1075M exp, while I remember him to be 99 with around 960M > I note that the level 79 max for skills isn't truly a limit - it > is only a limit if you want 6 skills maxed out. If you decide to > purely focuse on one skill, you can get it to level 110. If you > split your exp between 2 skills, they both can be 100. Split > between three skills is level 93. That is simply not what I found on metalforge. I just went to heaven for some minutes to raise my wisdom skill and again I found that I can not raise it beyond 350M/lvl79, although my other skills are quite behind. In spite of Joel however, I really like what you describe for two reasons. First this makes high level characters differ much more than they do now. Second it make alchemy less abusive, since do don't usually want mental skills take too much of a share. I surely will drive dex quite far however, because I like to be able to disarm any trap and steal from tough monsters. And some of these maniacs will surely max out personality, just to be able to get on everybody elses nerves with their cool pets again... Puff/Anvil -- ___ Frank Muzzulini <*,*> ... until the colour of a man skin is of no more [`-'] significance than the colour of his eyes ... Haile Selassie -"-"- From temitchell at sympatico.ca Tue Oct 8 21:42:24 2002 From: temitchell at sympatico.ca (Todd Mitchell) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:31 2005 Subject: [CF List] BIGworld Message-ID: <000801c26f3d$7ffa6640$0a02a8c0@kameria> I happened to pop onto Yann Chachkoff's test server to see how XP is being done there, and was confronted with BIGWORLD. Wow. I've heard about it, and I have looked at the gif's (should use png). It's big. I wandered for quite a while. It was a thrill just wandering and wondering what could go where in the little nooks and crannies. From dusk to dusk I wandered. Big indeed. So I got the CVS and cracked her open in the good ol CFJavaEditor. Well the tiling is sweet, no more goofing around with miles of invisible exits and overlapping maps (I love the way you can skip from map to map with the ctrl+arrow A.V.). Unfortunatly I had some problems with the sheer volume of worldmaps (editor couldn't handle it and blew up - am downloading JRE1.4.1 to see if this helps---*it did*). Perhaps splitting the world maps into a couple of folders would be more friendly - there are 900 maps. How does this work? I get it that all main level maps are plopped directly onto the world map (have to make some period piece street light arches to hold those lights - Scorn by gaslight) How much should mapmakers change the landscape? My first thought was to make a huge grassland since I didn't see much of that, then some rivers. It looks to be a pretty rocky and hilly place, even the forests are too small for my tastes. I realize I could generate my own map, but hey, it is such a big empty map and I wanted to contribute to the common pool. Also is there any snow happening? I believe the map was generated prior to the addition to winter terrain in the arches. How fixed is bigworld anyway? What about the elevation? If I was to make a desert that ran for many maps, would I set the elevation manually? How drastic could changes to the world maps be? Say I wanted to make a haunted forest with a ruined city and put all the mobs directly on the world map(where else would you put them - it is pretty empty) - would they run off? Is there some plan to be able to fence them in, (like a blocking arch with a connection flag you can set on the monsters to lay out encounter areas?) can they cross maps even? A few more questions in point form: -Any thought to making a smaller map initially (half the size? one third?) and then adding a second continent later on to make it a bit easier to manage and populate? Adding in new lands wouldn't be too hard, you could even generate them now and just have a keep off sign and no way to get there for the meantime until a certain density has been built up on the first area. - How about countries? The Imperial Empire, the three Kingdoms and surrounds - the Hegemony (coming fall 2004...? All the guards have new uniforms...) - Any ideas for a name? - is there a bigger plan here? Where is it posted? Anyway, I have asked enough questions. Looks cool from the ground. From mwedel at sonic.net Wed Oct 9 01:29:04 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:31 2005 Subject: [CF List] BIGworld References: <000801c26f3d$7ffa6640$0a02a8c0@kameria> Message-ID: <3DA3CCB0.7000908@sonic.net> Todd Mitchell wrote: > So I got the CVS and cracked her open in the good ol CFJavaEditor. Well the > tiling is sweet, no more goofing around with miles of invisible exits and > overlapping maps (I love the way you can skip from map to map with the > ctrl+arrow A.V.). Unfortunatly I had some problems with the sheer volume of > worldmaps (editor couldn't handle it and blew up - am downloading JRE1.4.1 > to see if this helps---*it did*). There are some options when you run java that may help this out: -Xmxmb increase the heap size the program can use. The default of 64 mb on unix (at least) is a bit small for these big maps. > Perhaps splitting the world maps into a > couple of > folders would be more friendly - there are 900 maps. Perhaps. If new continents were added, they should certainly be in different folders. Any split right now would be purely arbitrary (there aren't any clear lines on the map where to split them - for new continents, splitting them in the oceans works fine, but for what there is now..) Other than navigating the load pane, 900 files in one folder isn't that big a deal - at least the order is pretty straightforward, so isn't too hard to find the one you want. > How does this work? I get it that all main level maps are plopped directly > onto the world map (have to make some period piece street light arches to > hold those lights - Scorn by gaslight) How much should mapmakers change the > landscape? My first > thought was to make a huge grassland since I didn't see much of that, then > some > rivers. It looks to be a pretty rocky and hilly place, even the forests are > too small for my tastes. I realize I could generate my own map, but hey, it > is such a big empty map and I wanted to contribute to the common pool. > Also is there any snow happening? I believe the map was generated prior to > the addition to winter terrain in the arches. How fixed is bigworld anyway? > What about the elevation? If I was to make a desert that ran for many maps, > would I set the elevation manually? How drastic could changes to the world > maps be? It's fairly open. Before doing something big, you should certainly send a message to the mailing list saying what you want to do and where on the world that would be. The basic world map was computer generated, so isn't ideal. There are certainly areas that can be improved upon (remove that mountain, extend the forest, etc). elevation is a future enhancement - would get used for weather/other possible effects. There is no easy way right now that I know of to set that for large areas. There isn't really any winter terrain - those arch's were added after the basic world map was done. > Say I wanted to make a haunted forest with a ruined city and put all the > mobs directly on the world map(where else would you put them - it is pretty > empty) - would they run off? Is there some plan to be able to fence them > in, (like a blocking arch with a connection flag you can set on the monsters > to lay out encounter areas?) can they cross maps even? Monsters can cross tiled maps. Its unlikely they would run off (the map won't get loaded until someone visits it). But if someone was adventuring there, and decided it was time to go back to town, it is certainly possible that some monsters may follow him. However, unless the monster and playes speed are very near each other, pretty much the player will either have to fight them off, or will likely out run them. > > A few more questions in point form: > -Any thought to making a smaller map initially (half the size? one third?) > and then > adding a second continent later on to make it a bit easier to manage and > populate? Adding in new lands wouldn't be too hard, you could even generate > them now and just have a keep off sign and no way to get there for the > meantime until a certain density has been built up on the first area. Making one continent was deemed a better idea - this way, it is all related together. Having a bunch of continents that seem unrelated doesn't make play quite as interesting. Also, changing the size later on would be next to impossible. Additional continents can of course get added. But there should be some reason to do so - it will probably be a while before the current continent gets enough stuff on it to warrant another continent. > - How about countries? The Imperial Empire, the three Kingdoms and > surrounds - the Hegemony (coming fall 2004...? All the guards have new > uniforms...) Certainly, the idea of countries has come up. Many of the cities aren't really tied together at all. For countries to be relevant, has to be some effect of the different countries; eg different passes to get into town, society structure, whatever. I certainly wouldn't want to go for different currency, even though it may be the most obvious, it would most likely just prove to be a pain for the players. > - Any ideas for a name? > - is there a bigger plan here? Where is it posted? No real name. No real bigger plan, other than the old continent was just way too small. From mwedel at sonic.net Wed Oct 9 01:47:41 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:31 2005 Subject: [CF List] New experience system on metalforge References: <8765wf5lng.fsf@albatross.pond.sub.org> <3DA26390.4040607@sonic.net> <8765wcixvr.fsf@albatross.pond.sub.org> Message-ID: <3DA3D10D.6080507@sonic.net> Frank Muzzulini wrote: > > That is simply not what I found on metalforge. I just went to heaven > for some minutes to raise my wisdom skill and again I found that I can > not raise it beyond 350M/lvl79, although my other skills are quite > behind. Yeah - I looked at the code. IMO, this is broken, and I'll fix it. What I think the code was trying to do was ensure that exp for all the skills would never overflow the characters total experience. IMO, it makes much more sense to just verify that the exp we are about to add won't make the characters total EXP to be above the upper limit. > > In spite of Joel however, I really like what you describe for two > reasons. First this makes high level characters differ much more than > they do now. Second it make alchemy less abusive, since do don't > usually want mental skills take too much of a share. I surely will > drive dex quite far however, because I like to be able to disarm any > trap and steal from tough monsters. And some of these maniacs will > surely max out personality, just to be able to get on everybody elses > nerves with their cool pets again... Could also be interesting to add scoring information based on skill. Eg, XYZ has the highest exp for wis, and ABC has the higest physical, etc. From temitchell at sympatico.ca Wed Oct 9 13:37:33 2002 From: temitchell at sympatico.ca (Todd Mitchell) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:31 2005 Subject: [CF List] BIGworld References: <000801c26f3d$7ffa6640$0a02a8c0@kameria> <3DA3CCB0.7000908@sonic.net> Message-ID: <000601c26fc2$efcfb260$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> > There are some options when you run java that may help this out: -Xmxmb > increase the heap size the program can use. The default of 64 mb on unix (at > least) is a bit small for these big maps. > Have to try that. I also noticed that the tiling in the editor worked until I hit the top corner of Navar or Scorn - then I would get a message that the editor is looking for the next map in the javaeditor directory and not the maps directory. By the way I am using the editor in Windows with a mapped drive to the maps on my redhat box so I bet this slows things down a bit. I will try upping the memory, but once the map is open it tiles quickly and the editor is not sluggish. > > It's fairly open. Before doing something big, you should certainly send a > message to the mailing list saying what you want to do and where on the world > that would be. > The map mailing list or this one? I do want to cut out a minor desert (maybe 3x3 of maps worth) just northwest of Navar to build some ruins in. I will also try to dig up some nice documents on world landscaping that I have found useful in the past - outlining good rules of thumb for social-geographical design (like deserts usually sit on the opposite side of mountains that the wind is hitting, dwelling usually are located near water or a passable landscape feature such as a mountain pass.) - this would be nice to add to the map making documentation. > > Monsters can cross tiled maps. Its unlikely they would run off (the map won't > get loaded until someone visits it). But if someone was adventuring there, and > decided it was time to go back to town, it is certainly possible that some > monsters may follow him. However, unless the monster and playes speed are very > near each other, pretty much the player will either have to fight them off, or > will likely out run them. > One problem I see with this is player a stirs up some monsters and player b comes walking by on his way to newbie map Alpha and gets eaten alive. One way to deal with this I can think of is to make the main roads 'safe'. The main road could be widened to two tiles (to make it easier to move along) and monster blocking could be done along the 'Imperial Highway' so that players are generally safe from attack there. (done with monster specific directors to push them back, could possibly add in no-magic tiles to the road as well) Of course not all roads would be like this - in fact most wouldn't. This could also be extended to some scattered inns and shrines and an area of influence around cities (like a patrolled zone). That would be pretty sweet - and make overland travel more fun if you wanted to wander off the main route. You could get some basic social structure out of this idea as well - The Imperial Highway does not go there - it is a strange and dangerous land. > I certainly wouldn't want to go for different currency, even though it may be > the most obvious, it would most likely just prove to be a pain for the players. > Nope wouldn't want to do that. From andi.vogl at gmx.net Wed Oct 9 15:56:55 2002 From: andi.vogl at gmx.net (Andreas Vogl) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:31 2005 Subject: [CF List] BIGworld References: <000601c26fc2$efcfb260$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> Message-ID: <14180.1034197015@www19.gmx.net> Todd Mitchell wrote: > > There are some options when you run java that may help this > > out: -Xmxmb increase the heap size the program can use. Yes indeed. If you want to open a lot of maps at once and/or huge ones, run it like "java -Xmx128mb -jar CFJavaEditor.jar". > > Monsters can cross tiled maps. [...] > > > One problem I see with this is player a stirs up some monsters and > player b comes walking by on his way to newbie map Alpha and gets > eaten alive. I agree it would be great if monsters relyably sticked to certain areas. Simple blocking squares could help there in several ways. Having certain mountain- and forest tiles block movement would allow a better structured worldmap: You can't always go straight, there can be hidden places, restricted areas, monsters can't rush around freely... It might be cool for example to encircle Brest with an unpassable mountain ridge. Players would have to walk through some underground dungeons to get to Brest, as it is a mid/high-level area. Also useful would be some kind of invisible "monster blocker" object that monsters cannot pass while players can. Movers don't do the job because groups of monsters always push each other across them. Basically any means to keep monsters sticking to a place would do. The main problem about it is to avoid monsters being kind of "trapped" and too easily killed. AndreasV -- +++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more http://www.gmx.net +++ NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen! From michael.toennies at nord-com.net Wed Oct 9 17:25:11 2002 From: michael.toennies at nord-com.net (Michael Toennies) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:32 2005 Subject: AW: [CF List] BIGworld In-Reply-To: <14180.1034197015@www19.gmx.net> Message-ID: As i like the tiled maps idea (i use it strong in daimonin), i must tell you that the code for it is mostly broken in the source and need alot of rework. In fact i had coded several days hard on it to make it stable. Moving on tiled maps is somewhat safe but nearly every other action will kick the server in the dust. Put monsters in tiled maps and try it out... It looks ok for the first moment, then the server will explode. Even try fire arrows around corner from one map to another. This is the reason (only one example function, used for tiled maps): int wall(mapstruct *m, int x,int y) { if (out_of_map(m,x,y)) return 1; return (GET_MAP_FLAGS(m,x,y) & P_NO_PASS); } Like this function from map.c are most other function broken (several dozen) which access maps. out_of_map() will look for tiled map. this will return true when there is a tiled map attached: out_of_map(m,-1,-1). GET_MAP_FLAGS() and all other macros will be out of bound and access memory somewhere. When you do a source search with out_of_map you will see alot and alot of this unsafe functions. The second more bad point is ... that out_of_map() and get_map_from_coord() are broken too! The fixed version i tested ALOT in daimonin ( and the server runs fine with it) looks like this. mapstruct *out_of_map(mapstruct *m, int *x, int *y) { /* Simple case - coordinates are within this local * map. */ if(!m) return NULL; if (*x>=0 && *x=0 && *y < MAP_HEIGHT(m)) return m; if (*x<0) { if (!m->tile_path[3]) goto y_test2; if (!m->tile_map[3] || m->tile_map[3]->in_memory != MAP_IN_MEMORY) load_and_link_tiled_map(m, 3); *x += MAP_WIDTH(m->tile_map[3]); return (out_of_map(m->tile_map[3], x, y)); } if (*x>=MAP_WIDTH(m)) { if (!m->tile_path[1]) goto y_test2; if (!m->tile_map[1] || m->tile_map[1]->in_memory != MAP_IN_MEMORY) load_and_link_tiled_map(m, 1); *x -= MAP_WIDTH(m); return (out_of_map(m->tile_map[1], x, y)); } y_test2: if (*y<0) { if (!m->tile_path[0]) return NULL; if (!m->tile_map[0] || m->tile_map[0]->in_memory != MAP_IN_MEMORY) load_and_link_tiled_map(m, 0); *y += MAP_HEIGHT(m->tile_map[0]); return (out_of_map(m->tile_map[0], x, y)); } if (*y>=MAP_HEIGHT(m)) { if (!m->tile_path[2]) return NULL; if (!m->tile_map[2] || m->tile_map[2]->in_memory != MAP_IN_MEMORY) load_and_link_tiled_map(m, 2); *y -= MAP_HEIGHT(m); return (out_of_map(m->tile_map[2], x, y)); } return NULL; /* Shouldn't get here */ } If you test all cases of map tiling you will find out why the old one is broken. When i remember right will you see the effect when you firing a arrow (fix the arrow function first) from map point 0,0 in direction northwest = to point -1,-1. Because the destination map is not direct attached to the map we stand, the out_of_map() function has moving through the other maps first. This will fail in some special cases with the crossfire function. Try the other positions too, you will see more bad effects. Also, you see i changed out_of_map() to get_map_from_coord() and deleted get_map_from_coord(). Its a bad idea to have both version. In nearly every case you use out_of_map() you will need the new map pointer... so its much better and faster and cleaner to call this function as pointer variant. btw, i have a way in mind, we can put moving multi arch objects on tiled maps. ATM, its is not possible to add multi arch monsters on tiled maps. If there is still a spell or something which can summon multi arch mobs, tiled maps will die horribly when the monster stay on map borders. Then the map will swaped out and the objects will released - but only parts. This can be avoided, when we use a kind of dirty flag. when inserting mob on a map, we will trace on which map we insert every part. We simply add a refcount to every map header where every multi arch add +1 when it adds a tail part to it and the head is in a different map. If the multi arch is removed/move or dead, the remove_ob decrease the refcount. Now a map can see there is a monster only partial on it. When we do the same for a map, where the head is but some tails on different maps, we can even avoid alot of dead locks. The map can say: aha, 2 mobs from me are on different maps, and on this different maps is not a player. So we can remove our objects and swap out. I will release daimonin 0.95 in some days. If you wait for it, you can grap the source and do a out_of_map search. Nearly every function i fixed is still source compatible to crossfire and can be copied 1:1. This can then be useful for both projects. Because it was really alot of work and i was not able to test every function or case. This remembers me to one more bad function... This time remove_ob()!!! First, i must say that this bug is very, very hidden. It will invoke very hidden side effects. Mainly 2 things: Some time, moving light sources are not shown right. The seem to "move behind the object" and drawn only every 2nd frame. Second, sometimes your pet or summoned golem leave for map window (the part you see in the client) and even you are sure it can return when you call him back (with range fire keys), it stucked somewhere. When you then moving behind him, you see it coming down from above. This effects will come and go, i don't was able to find out what it triggers. But i find out that the reason was not right set map flags - mainly IS_ALIVE. I traced it to remove_ob() and i find there this code part: .................. if (last==NULL) { /* set P_NEED_UPDATE, otherwise update_position will complain. In theory, * we could preserve the flags (GET_MAP_FLAGS), but update_position figures * those out anyways, and if there are any flags set right now, they won't * be correct anyways. */ SET_MAP_FLAGS(op->map, op->x, op->y, P_NEED_UPDATE); update_position(op->map, op->x, op->y); } else update_object(last, UP_OBJ_REMOVE); ........... This was looking very strange for me. In fact, i has never really understand what this code should avoid or do. I DELETED this code part and insert this instead: update_object(op, UP_OBJ_REMOVE); After this, the strange side effect never happens again for me. Todd Mitchell wrote: > > There are some options when you run java that may help this > > out: -Xmxmb increase the heap size the program can use. Yes indeed. If you want to open a lot of maps at once and/or huge ones, run it like "java -Xmx128mb -jar CFJavaEditor.jar". > > Monsters can cross tiled maps. [...] > > > One problem I see with this is player a stirs up some monsters and > player b comes walking by on his way to newbie map Alpha and gets > eaten alive. I agree it would be great if monsters relyably sticked to certain areas. Simple blocking squares could help there in several ways. Having certain mountain- and forest tiles block movement would allow a better structured worldmap: You can't always go straight, there can be hidden places, restricted areas, monsters can't rush around freely... It might be cool for example to encircle Brest with an unpassable mountain ridge. Players would have to walk through some underground dungeons to get to Brest, as it is a mid/high-level area. Also useful would be some kind of invisible "monster blocker" object that monsters cannot pass while players can. Movers don't do the job because groups of monsters always push each other across them. Basically any means to keep monsters sticking to a place would do. The main problem about it is to avoid monsters being kind of "trapped" and too easily killed. AndreasV -- +++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more http://www.gmx.net +++ NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen! _______________________________________________ crossfire-list mailing list crossfire-list@lists.real-time.com https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/crossfire-list From temitchell at sympatico.ca Wed Oct 9 22:08:24 2002 From: temitchell at sympatico.ca (Todd Mitchell) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:32 2005 Subject: [CF List] BIGworld References: Message-ID: <001901c2700a$4becf700$0a02a8c0@kameria> Well I think MT has a point - I bet I could fire an arrow form Scorn to Navar if there were no water or wasteland between. That could get dangerous (although I think it kills the server eventually). >Simple blocking squares could help there in several ways. >Having certain mountain- and forest tiles block movement would >allow a better structured worldmap: You can't always go straight, >there can be hidden places, restricted areas, monsters >can't rush around freely... >It might be cool for example to encircle Brest with an unpassable >mountain ridge. Players would have to walk through some underground >dungeons to get to Brest, as it is a mid/high-level area. This is the obvious solution - but it isn't the most elegant way to handle things since it really chops down on what you can do (if every area has to be fenced in, there isn't much point to having very large tiled maps.) That being said a lot of the mountains should be impassable and more rivers would help here too. >Also useful would be some kind of invisible "monster blocker" >object that monsters cannot pass while players can. >Movers don't do the job because groups of monsters always >push each other across them. >Basically any means to keep monsters sticking to a place >would do. The main problem about it is to avoid monsters >being kind of "trapped" and too easily killed. I think this is the real macoy here. In fact while we are talking about blocking, maybe we could figure out a way to beef up pass/blocking in general to accommodate some more sophisticated conditions (oh no he's gonna talk about flying again) - Blocks flying, blocks walking (but not flying...), blocks magic (stops spell effects from propagating), blocks player, blocks monster, blocks ? From temitchell at sympatico.ca Wed Oct 9 22:08:24 2002 From: temitchell at sympatico.ca (Todd Mitchell) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:32 2005 Subject: [CF List] BIGworld References: Message-ID: <001901c2700a$4becf700$0a02a8c0@kameria> Well I think MT has a point - I bet I could fire an arrow form Scorn to Navar if there were no water or wasteland between. That could get dangerous (although I think it kills the server eventually). >Simple blocking squares could help there in several ways. >Having certain mountain- and forest tiles block movement would >allow a better structured worldmap: You can't always go straight, >there can be hidden places, restricted areas, monsters >can't rush around freely... >It might be cool for example to encircle Brest with an unpassable >mountain ridge. Players would have to walk through some underground >dungeons to get to Brest, as it is a mid/high-level area. This is the obvious solution - but it isn't the most elegant way to handle things since it really chops down on what you can do (if every area has to be fenced in, there isn't much point to having very large tiled maps.) That being said a lot of the mountains should be impassable and more rivers would help here too. >Also useful would be some kind of invisible "monster blocker" >object that monsters cannot pass while players can. >Movers don't do the job because groups of monsters always >push each other across them. >Basically any means to keep monsters sticking to a place >would do. The main problem about it is to avoid monsters >being kind of "trapped" and too easily killed. I think this is the real macoy here. In fact while we are talking about blocking, maybe we could figure out a way to beef up pass/blocking in general to accommodate some more sophisticated conditions (oh no he's gonna talk about flying again) - Blocks flying, blocks walking (but not flying...), blocks magic (stops spell effects from propagating), blocks player, blocks monster, blocks ? From mwedel at sonic.net Thu Oct 10 01:52:04 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:32 2005 Subject: [CF List] BIGworld References: <001901c2700a$4becf700$0a02a8c0@kameria> Message-ID: <3DA52394.3000303@sonic.net> Todd Mitchell wrote: > It's fairly open. Before doing something big, you should certainly send > > a > >> message to the mailing list saying what you want to do and where on the > > world > >> that would be. >> > > The map mailing list or this one? I do want to cut out a minor desert > (maybe 3x3 of maps worth) just northwest of Navar to build some ruins in. I > will also try to dig up some nice documents on world landscaping that I have > found useful in the past - outlining good rules of thumb for > social-geographical design (like deserts usually sit on the opposite side of > mountains that the wind is hitting, dwelling usually are located near water > or a passable landscape feature such as a mountain pass.) - this would be > nice to add to the map making documentation. maps list is probably bettter, but probably doesn't make a lot of difference - as of now, I'm the only one that's done any work on the bigworld maps, so as long as I see it, thats all that really counts. > One problem I see with this is player a stirs up some monsters and player b > comes walking by on his way to newbie map Alpha and gets eaten alive. One > way to deal with this I can think of is to make the main roads 'safe'. The > main road could be widened to two tiles (to make it easier to move along) > and monster blocking could be done along the 'Imperial Highway' so that > players are generally safe from attack there. (done with monster specific > directors to push them back, could possibly add in no-magic tiles to the > road as well) Of course not all roads would be like this - in fact most > wouldn't. This could also be extended to some scattered inns and shrines > and an area of influence around cities (like a patrolled zone). > That would be pretty sweet - and make overland travel more fun if you wanted > to wander off the main route. You could get some basic social structure out > of this idea as well - The Imperial Highway does not go there - it is a > strange and dangerous land. I don't see any reasoning that the roads have to be perfectly safe. In most of human history, roads were the place bandits or others would prey upon others. It really depends on the monsters that show up, and the number. If you figure a player is going to be at least level 5, and probably higher before they need to go overland to another city, certainly isn't much an issue if things like ogres or not really monsters sometimes show up on the roads. Since players generally move faster than monsters, even if they see something, they are likely able to outrun it. Certainly, scattered buildings make a lot of sense - along some of the major road intersections, having a small town of a couple buildings could make sense, and just be convenient if there are also dungeons near buy (eg, a inn/food store to resupply). Its not currently possible, but it would also be nice to add multipliers for prices (eg, that store in the middle of no where charges more for what it sells and pays less for what it buys). One of the ideas for the bigworld maps is for monsters to get 'randomly' generated in the terrain. Eg, forests may produce occasional orc or whatever. > Well I think MT has a point - I bet I could fire an arrow form Scorn to > Navar if there were no water or wasteland between. That could get dangerous > (although I think it kills the server eventually). While maybe not enforced right now, in theory, most things should have a maximum range. an arrow should only go so many spaces, and not until it hits something. Thrown objects have a maximum range (stored in last_sp of the 'container' object that holds the thrown object). But yeah, the code as now could result in a shot arrow (or cast spell) travelling a very long area. It is certainly possible there are bugs in the code related to tiled maps - the diagonal map to map is something I need to look at. Of course, there are bugs all over crossfire. Until they get reported, its hard to fix them. > > This is the obvious solution - but it isn't the most elegant way to handle > things since it really chops down on what you can do (if every area has to > be fenced in, there isn't much point to having very large tiled maps.) > That being said a lot of the mountains should be impassable and more rivers > would help here too. Rivers really need to get done on the new world map. As part of the automatic generation, rivers were not made, so the only ones there are basically ones I've added for various reasons. Likewise, what is left to do is to place most of the dungeons that appeared on the old world map on the new one - pretty much all the towns (and dungeons they have) have been placed, but not individual things, like tower of stores, grukks, etc. > I think this is the real macoy here. In fact while we are talking about > blocking, maybe we could figure out a way to beef up pass/blocking in > general to accommodate some more sophisticated conditions (oh no he's gonna > talk about flying again) - Blocks flying, blocks walking (but not > flying...), blocks magic (stops spell effects from propagating), blocks > player, blocks monster, blocks ? I think refining the blocked flags is a good idea. Of course, there is a difference between a good idea and having the time to do it. Note that I don't think no magic actually blocks a spell from passing over it, it mostly prevents a spell from being cast on that space - there are some exceptions, things like dimension door make sure they aren't going through a no magic space. But there is a lot of refinement - with the tiled maps, ocean/water travel should be conceivable (you could literally fly to wolfsburg for example). So if this is going to get expanded, what is the wishlist of control attributes? What we have so far: no magic (wizardry) spellcasting no cleric spellcasting. blocksview (should be refined, see below) no_pass (should be refined, see below) What I would suggest is setting some flags that contain the 'type' of travel that the space blocks in terms of both movement and visibility, eg: no_walk_through no_fly_through no_swim_through As well as stuff like: block_walk_sight block_fly_sight block_swim_sight Thus, something like a jungle would have block_walk_sight, but not block_fly_sight - if you fly above it, you see all around In addtion to those above, probably flags like: block_player_pass block_monster_pass To control where monsters can move to/from. Adding blocking on slaying or other attributes really would need to get done via movers or the like - the above values are all just bits set in a field, and are thus very quick to check (and basically get or'ed together for all the objects on the space). Slaying is trickier, as now you need to do string combinations, as well as check against the object name and string for the space. Guess not really hard to do - a string pointer can be added to the mapsace, and if it is non null, check it against the object moving onto the space. However, given how frequently that is likely to get needed, I think the use of movers is probably more appropriate. From temitchell at sympatico.ca Thu Oct 10 12:50:38 2002 From: temitchell at sympatico.ca (Todd Mitchell) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:32 2005 Subject: [CF List] BIGworld References: <001901c2700a$4becf700$0a02a8c0@kameria> <3DA52394.3000303@sonic.net> Message-ID: <000601c27085$8c8e6a20$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> Mark Wedel: > I don't see any reasoning that the roads have to be perfectly safe. In most > of human history, roads were the place bandits or others would prey upon others. > Certainly, but I was thinking of emulating the effects of civilization. Most roads would not be safe at all, such as the road to Brest. Most roads would fall into this catagory since they would be part of the general area the map anyway, but to have the 'Imperial Road' or 'King's Hiway' or the 'Yellow Brick Road' which would partly protect travellers by blocking monsters (missile weapons would still be a problem and custom encounters could still occur) might be a good idea. This would just be the main overland route between major cities (the yellow road between Scorn, Navar, Santo D...) and some waystations and a small area around certain cities. This would expand the area that low level players can roam without hobbling higher level players from their explorations (a bunch of orcs in the forest would likely be more annoying than entertaining since you would be level 5 or so before you went out anyway, but a bunch of giants in the forest would be too nasty if they wandered onto the road. This way you could still create nifty encounters while allowing those of lower levels to have a small measure of safety (they would still be subject to missile attack, but they couldn't be surrounded anyway and would have a better movement rate than the monsters who couldn't get on the road to follow them.) It really depends on the monsters that show up, and the number. If you figure > a player is going to be at least level 5, and probably higher before they need > to go overland to another city, certainly isn't much an issue if things like > ogres or not really monsters sometimes show up on the roads. Since players > generally move faster than monsters, even if they see something, they are likely > able to outrun it. > > Certainly, scattered buildings make a lot of sense - along some of the major > road intersections, having a small town of a couple buildings could make sense, > and just be convenient if there are also dungeons near buy (eg, a inn/food store > to resupply). > > One of the ideas for the bigworld maps is for monsters to get 'randomly' > generated in the terrain. Eg, forests may produce occasional orc or whatever. > As a related thought - you could extend this a bit further if you could block monsters by level, then you could have expanding rings of difficulty depending on how far you were from a 'civilized' area. Then you could have some random dragons or other nasty monsters out there in the wild, trolls and giants could get a little closer, and finally orcs and gnolls fairly close to these 'civilized' areas. This would give more freedom for random encounters and would be pretty easy to implement if the blocking arches were available. An Imperial Highway would be a way to connect these small islands of civilization. Building in encounters in these areas would be a matter of determing the area 'level range', Random encounters could be a lot more variable since you wouldn't have to worry so much about nastier creatures getting away (hey it is supposed to be dangerous out there). It would be a guide to dungeon placement as well. > Its not currently possible, but it would also be nice to add > multipliers for prices (eg, that store in the middle of no where charges more > for what it sells and pays less for what it buys). Ya it would be good to have higher prices in the outlands, this same type of code could also be used to give members of certain guilds preferential prices at guild stores (making it better to belong to a guild) Of course, there are > bugs all over crossfire. Until they get reported, its hard to fix them. Well I for one appreciate the work done to fix bugs, no complaints there on the job being done, since I imagine it is not so much fun as working on your own ideas. > Rivers really need to get done on the new world map. As part of the automatic > generation, rivers were not made, so the only ones there are basically ones I've > added for various reasons. > > Likewise, what is left to do is to place most of the dungeons that appeared on > the old world map on the new one - pretty much all the towns (and dungeons they > have) have been placed, but not individual things, like tower of stores, grukks, > etc. Well here is something I can help with anyway. > I think refining the blocked flags is a good idea. Of course, there is a > difference between a good idea and having the time to do it. Totaly understood. No need for haste as this should probably be hashed out so that the soluton is widely applicable. > > Note that I don't think no magic actually blocks a spell from passing over it, > it mostly prevents a spell from being cast on that space - there are some > exceptions, things like dimension door make sure they aren't going through a no > magic space. I was thinking along the lines of blocking the effects of spells (like the flame from a fireball). THis could also provide a nice spell in itself - antimagic shield or antimagic wall by invoking this arch. This wouldn't block spell-like effects, just magic. This was just a thought and I have no idea how good or practical it is. > But there is a lot of refinement - with the tiled maps, ocean/water travel > should be conceivable (you could literally fly to wolfsburg for example). > > So if this is going to get expanded, what is the wishlist of control > attributes? What we have so far: > > no magic (wizardry) spellcasting > no cleric spellcasting. > blocksview (should be refined, see below) > no_pass (should be refined, see below) > > What I would suggest is setting some flags that contain the 'type' of travel > that the space blocks in terms of both movement and visibility, eg: > > no_walk_through > no_fly_through > no_swim_through > > As well as stuff like: > block_walk_sight > block_fly_sight > block_swim_sight > > Thus, something like a jungle would have block_walk_sight, but not > block_fly_sight - if you fly above it, you see all around > > In addtion to those above, probably flags like: > > block_player_pass > block_monster_pass > > To control where monsters can move to/from. Sounds great Mountain climbing could be changed to actually allow movement through mountains, but not all instead of just speeding up movement by adding in no_walk_through to some of the mountain arches and block_all to others. Some monsters could climb, some couldn't. Creatures who can only swim could be let loose in the water and couldn't come ashore. Maybe there could be 'deep swiming' and shallow swimming for the day when boats are available and seamonsters roam the oceans... From mwedel at sonic.net Fri Oct 11 00:47:49 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:32 2005 Subject: [CF List] BIGworld References: <001901c2700a$4becf700$0a02a8c0@kameria> <3DA52394.3000303@sonic.net> <000601c27085$8c8e6a20$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> Message-ID: <3DA66605.3010408@sonic.net> Todd Mitchell wrote: > Certainly, but I was thinking of emulating the effects of civilization. > Most roads would not be safe at all, such as the road to Brest. Most > roads would fall into this catagory since they would be part of the general > area the map anyway, > but to have the 'Imperial Road' or 'King's Hiway' or the 'Yellow Brick Road' > which would partly protect travellers > by blocking monsters (missile weapons would still be a problem and custom > encounters could still occur) might be a good idea. This would just be the > main overland route between major cities (the yellow road between Scorn, > Navar, Santo D...) and some waystations and a small area around certain > cities. This would expand the area that low level players can roam without > hobbling higher level players from their explorations (a bunch of orcs in > the forest would likely be more annoying than entertaining since you would > be level 5 or so before you went out anyway, but a bunch of giants in the > forest would be too nasty if they wandered onto the road. This way you > could still create nifty encounters while allowing those of lower levels to > have a small measure of safety (they would still be subject to missile > attack, but they couldn't be surrounded anyway and would have a better > movement rate than the monsters who couldn't get on the road to follow > them.) That all sounds good, but would seem to be a lot of work to do right - a lot of maps to get updated with these restrictions. I'm also a little concerned that you could get situations where players see the monsters but the monsters don't come any closer - first, this would seem a bit artificial, but second, also now allows the players a safe way to kill those monsters (hit them with range attacks, knowing the monsters won't approach closer). Certainly, using such things to keep monsters within the dungeons they are from makes sense. I'm not sure if its worth it to protect all the roads. Perhaps the ideal solution would be to store the 'home' location (eg, where the monster was created). The monster may wander from it, but not really far (unless under attack). > > As a related thought - you could extend this a bit further if you could > block monsters by level, then you could have expanding rings of difficulty > depending on how far you were from a 'civilized' area. Then you could have > some random dragons or other nasty monsters out there in the wild, trolls > and giants could get a little closer, and finally orcs and gnolls fairly > close to these 'civilized' areas. This would give more freedom for random > encounters and would be pretty easy to implement if the blocking arches were > available. An Imperial Highway would be a way to connect these small > islands of civilization. Building in encounters in these areas would be a > matter of > determing the area 'level range', Random encounters could be a lot more > variable since you wouldn't have to worry so much about nastier creatures > getting away (hey it is supposed to be dangerous out there). It would be a > guide to dungeon placement as well. I think that in general the outside world will never be that dangerous. Doing random encounters properly would be pretty difficult - knowing what is high level/low level/whatever would require quite a bit of updates. Also, I don't generally think such random monsters should be too frequent - it would generally just be pretty boring if you had to hack your way through 50 monsters to get to santo dominion. IMO, the many purpose of such random encounters would be to add a little life, eg, there are things that live in the forest/mountains/whatever. Not so much that getting from place A to B should be the major challenge - the quests/dungeons are what should be the challenges. > I was thinking along the lines of blocking the effects of spells (like the > flame from a fireball). THis could also provide a nice spell in itself - > antimagic shield or antimagic wall by invoking this arch. This wouldn't > block spell-like effects, just magic. > This was just a thought and I have no idea how good or practical it is. There are already spells that do that - counterspell and counterwall are supposed to block incoming spell effects. > Mountain climbing could be changed to actually allow movement through > mountains, but not all instead of just speeding up movement by adding in > no_walk_through to some of the mountain arches and block_all to others. > Some monsters could climb, some couldn't. > Creatures who can only swim could be let loose in the water and couldn't > come ashore. Maybe there could be 'deep swiming' and shallow swimming for > the day when boats are available and seamonsters roam the oceans... Perhaps in addition to the other stuff, add terrain flags (grassland, hilly, rocky, mountainous, forest), and thus the different skills get used to reduce the movement penalty. Thus, you could have something like pathfinding which lets you move through forest terrain pretty easily. This is basically just an extension to some flags that are current set. These skills could actually get associated with experience categories, and higher level you are, the less penalty (right now, it just reduces the penalty by 4. Maybe if your level 50 in mountain climbing, it really doesn't effect you mcuh at all) From temitchell at sympatico.ca Fri Oct 11 11:04:00 2002 From: temitchell at sympatico.ca (Todd Mitchell) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:32 2005 Subject: [CF List] BIGworld Message-ID: <001001c2713f$d1660e40$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> Boy am I a pest... I am enjoying this discussion very much. >That all sounds good, but it would seem to be a lot of work to do right - a lot of maps to get updated with these restrictions. These ideas about roads and areas around cities are mainly geared to avoid having monsters wandering into areas where players would not be able to deal with them. I don't really want to see random monsters being generated when you walk through the outside map, but I would like to see areas where there are some trolls or some goblins or some such. Some of these areas should have some pretty heavy duty creatures or it is just an annoyance/joke to players of higher levels. The problem is that unless you build a river or other blocking landscape totally around these areas, the monsters could well wander into places you wouldn't want them (like the Scorn city gates or lower level dungeon entrances or along the road to Navar) and where low level players should be able to go. Cutting up the landscape with blocking will take a lot of the benefit of having the bigworld maps - players would have to make huge detours around areas to find the entrances or to skirt the area and any single tile powerful creatures could get out the same way the player got in. People couldn't stumble into an encounter with a troll since they would have to find the entrance to the blocked off area (a pretty good indication that something it there). Since this is only on the world maps and there is not much on them currently, I didn't think it would be that much work and certainly it would be less work to do it as it gets populated than to do it later. Anyway it was one suggestion, there are otherways to achieve the same goal. Having monster blocking tiles would help since certain 'ranges' could be blocked off that the monsters would not leave but players could cross into these areas without knowing. I would suggest that the level of monsters in an area like this should take into consideration the distance from a road or town (a band of orcs in the forest could be alongside the main road or just outside of town, but a troll in the woods should be a bit further into the wilds. I guess it makes more sense to block in the monster ranges than to block in the players. This way you could have a troll in the forest without worrying that some level 3 player is going to get eaten up on his way to Navar. Now if he leaves the road then he could be in trouble since he might stumble onto dangerous territory - but that is cool. This is pretty easy to do too if there are the appropriate arches for map making. This second way is probably the better way to handle this actually. >I'm also a little concerned that you could get situations where players see the monsters but the monsters don't come any closer... This is a problem, but it is often a problem currently as well, many monsters are trapped in rooms with small doors already. At least with monster blocking tiles the monsters could fire ranged attacks back at the players - giving them more chance than they have if they are blocked by walls. Map makers have to take these things into account when they are building stuff. Perhaps a monster movement method would work to encourage the monsters to avoid hanging around such areas. (check if they can move towards player- check if they can attack player- if not - run away...?) >There are already spells that do that - conterspell and counterwall... - Yes, but if it there was an arch that had this property would be nice for map making (one idea: triggered magic forcefields)- I suggested the spells as a bonus side effect of having the arch available. >Perhaps in addition to the other stuff, add terrain flags... That could be ok so long as it wasn't too simple to get proficient in every skill. It would be a bummer for all the terrain effects to be in effect meaningless to players at level 30. I don't think the rate of impedance is so great now, so cutting it down more may not be so good since terrain should have an effect on movement, combat and life in general to make things interesting. I was suggesting all the different pass/nopass conditions I could think of (like mountains (mountain climbing), shallow water (swiming) deep water (pass for boats and sea monsters)) so that if someone was to change the blocking code (and the monster movement code) there would be as much on the table possible to make the changes as robust and useful as possible. From andi.vogl at gmx.net Fri Oct 11 14:13:02 2002 From: andi.vogl at gmx.net (Andreas Vogl) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:32 2005 Subject: [CF List] BIGworld References: <001001c2713f$d1660e40$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> Message-ID: <7583.1034363582@www41.gmx.net> > Cutting up the landscape with blocking will take a lot of the > benefit of having the bigworld maps - players would have to make > huge detours around areas to find the entrances [...] In my opinion a worldmap where you can move freely in every direction is really boring. A worldmap containing only lowlevel monsters would be even more boring. My idea about a big worldmap was to have the possibility to create something exciting on it. More than just a colored bunch of walkable floors. When players have to search for their path, wouldn't that be much more exciting? Players could find adventures there. I believe there should be more to a worldmap than just connecting cities. Roads can do that. They require only 0.01% of the space - So why not use the rest for something more meaningful? Putting random monsters (of varying difficulties) on the worlmap won't keep anyone entertained for long either. I have designed a lot of maps, and I tell you that it is impossible to have an interesting map without any kind of "structure". When you can move just in any direction, that is comparable to a blank sheet of paper. Now don't get me wrong. I do like the bigworld maps, but I'd consider them only a nice base to start from. AndreasV -- +++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more http://www.gmx.net +++ NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen! From mwedel at sonic.net Fri Oct 11 23:44:02 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:32 2005 Subject: [CF List] BIGworld References: <001001c2713f$d1660e40$0802a8c0@ott.ca.dmr> <7583.1034363582@www41.gmx.net> Message-ID: <3DA7A892.40303@sonic.net> It should be noted that the current bigworld maps are certainly just a starting point, and not a finished project. I agree that there should be more blocking terrain. The bigworld maps do have a lot more wasteland (which blocks movement) than the old map did. This does mean that you can't march of major mountain ranges. However, the bulk of terrain is crossfire allows you to move through freely - jungle, swamp, hills, forest, etc, just impose a move penalty - none of those by default say you can't physically go through them. For some things, that should be the case. The movement penalties can be argued that it takes extra time to hack through forest, scale mountains, or whatever else. Maybe most of the slow move stuff just isn't signifcant enough to really notice. Maybe the fact that you know what you want is 'in that direction' means it is faster to go straight their rather than to try and circumvent the forest/mountains/whatever. The reduction by 4 in the penalty also makes most of the slow penalties irrelevant - the slow penalty in objects is basically the number of extra ticks it takes to get through (or conversely, how much slower it is - if it has a slow_move of 4, it takes 5 times longer to move through. However, if you have the appropriate skill, slow move is now 1, so it only takes twice as long to move through (this n+1 is because there is still the 1 tick always imposed to move a space). So if your speed is pretty quick, yes, it slows you down to 50% the rate, but that is still pretty dang faster (move every other tick). If your speed is slow, this seems very severe (might go from 1 every 3 ticks to 1 every 12 ticks of movement). The following ideas were some of the things postulated for the new world map: 1) Weather effects - not sure exactly what they were going to be, garbled was going to work on that. 2) Random plants showing up based on various factors (elevation, weather, type of terrain). Thus, if you that belladonna root for alchemy, you might search the appropriate place and find some. 3) Paths/trails getting made as people wander in certain areas, with some decay rate. Actually, not that hard to do - just need to store a counter on each space for the number of times a player visits it. If it is beyond some number, you look at the surrounding spaces to see if any of those are also above that count, and choose the appropriate arch the has trails going in the right directions. As part of the weather, these visited values go down, and if the go below some point, trails get removed. As for monsters, various thoughts: 1) Value in map header could determine if random monsters get generated at all on that map, and if so, how powerful they are. This provides an easy way to get basic monster power on the map (ones nears city wouldn't gen monsters for example). 2) Type of monster might get based on terrain. Monsters may have favored terrains (elves like woods for example), and thus would typically not leave them. In some sense, this would control monster movement, as well as what shows up. Thus, roads through grasslands would be pretty safe, roads through mountains could be dangerous. If such a scheme is well known by the players, then as they see those mountains loom closer, they may rethink their travel plans - maybe I shouldn't go there after all, maybe I should go around them, maybe I should pay the dwarves some gold and they let me travel through their safe cave system instead, etc. 3) While I can understand the worry of hoards of monsters congregating outside the gates of the town, I'd rather not worry about that until it really happens. Right now, the same can in theory happen in dungeons (eg, player gets in over their head, leaves, but now a whole bunch of monsters right by the exit), but I don't hear about that happening very often. More interesting than roads being 'magically' safe, might be more interesting to make patrols - if you give the guards the 'friendly' flag, monsters will come and attack them, and they will attack in return. I wonder how hard it would be to write some basic scripts, eg, for a guard outside of town, go to space X,Y, then X+20,Y, then X+20,Y+20, then X, Y+20, then X,Y. Or basic road following scripts for guards. From muzz at albatross.pond.sub.org Sat Oct 12 06:17:10 2002 From: muzz at albatross.pond.sub.org (Frank Muzzulini) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:32 2005 Subject: [CF List] New experience system on metalforge In-Reply-To: Mark Wedel's message of "Tue, 08 Oct 2002 23:47:41 -0700" References: <8765wf5lng.fsf@albatross.pond.sub.org> <3DA26390.4040607@sonic.net> <8765wcixvr.fsf@albatross.pond.sub.org> <3DA3D10D.6080507@sonic.net> Message-ID: <87hefryki1.fsf@albatross.pond.sub.org> Mark Wedel writes: > Frank Muzzulini wrote: > > That is simply not what I found on metalforge. I just went to heaven > > for some minutes to raise my wisdom skill and again I found that I can > > not raise it beyond 350M/lvl79, although my other skills are quite > > behind. > > Yeah - I looked at the code. IMO, this is broken, and I'll fix it. What about the experience to reach levels above 100? If I understood you correctly, one should need 2100M exp, or at least something near that, to reach 110, but that's not the case either. Puff -- ___ Frank Muzzulini <*,*> ... until the colour of a man skin is of no more [`-'] significance than the colour of his eyes ... Haile Selassie -"-"- From trhyne at MIT.EDU Sat Oct 12 22:43:27 2002 From: trhyne at MIT.EDU (Vernon T Rhyne) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:32 2005 Subject: [CF List] New New Experience Scheme... Message-ID: <200210130343.XAA03111@cathedral-seven.mit.edu> Total max: 2.1 billion... "sphere" max: 1.02 billion. This means that getting exp in some skills becomes detrimental QUICKLY. I'm all for allowing players to hit level 110 again in each sphere, but forcing them/me to delicately avoid getting certain types of experience or even occasionally kill themselves to maintain an accurate distribution is annoying. Admittedly, it is more annoying since I learned the total max cap by hitting it, and hit it by maxing out mental XP, a truly useless waste of time and experience. I feel like I log on each day wondering what next... Variety is nice. Inconsistency is grating. From trhyne at MIT.EDU Sun Oct 13 07:25:30 2002 From: trhyne at MIT.EDU (Vernon T Rhyne) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:32 2005 Subject: [CF List] New New Experience Scheme... In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sat, 12 Oct 2002 23:43:27 EDT." <200210130343.XAA03111@cathedral-seven.mit.edu> Message-ID: <200210131225.IAA30290@m56-129-28.mit.edu> Uh... on second thought... Dying adds another 300 million to my mental xp, to a total of 1.3822 billion, and changes my total xp to -2.02 billion, a somewhat lesser score than perhaps I'd hoped :) From andi.vogl at gmx.net Sun Oct 13 09:54:08 2002 From: andi.vogl at gmx.net (Andreas Vogl) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:32 2005 Subject: [CF List] BIGworld In-Reply-To: <3DA7A892.40303@sonic.net> Message-ID: <000601c272c8$65cc03d0$c86ebb81@gizmo> Thought I might comment a bit on the Bigworld ideas... :-) > 1) Weather effects - not sure exactly what they were going to > be, garbled was going to work on that. So this code for map-overlays has somehow made it into CVS and at least it seems to consume memory and appears a lot in the logs. Is it true that there is no use for it till today? Are there still plans by anyone (Garbled?) to keep developing on this particular part in the future? > 2) Random plants showing up based on various factors > (elevation, weather, type of terrain). This is a nice idea. I like it. > 3) Paths/trails getting made as people wander in certain > areas, with some decay rate. I'm not so sure about that one. Wouldn't that consume a lot of effort storing all this information about roading somewhere? And the outcome might be road-tiles appearing everywhere, including places where they are unwanted, potentially burrying some nice maps around cities. Roads would look totally uneven, making players loose orientation... AndreasV From trhyne at MIT.EDU Sun Oct 13 10:07:30 2002 From: trhyne at MIT.EDU (Vernon T Rhyne) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:32 2005 Subject: [CF List] BIGworld In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 13 Oct 2002 16:54:08 +0200." <000601c272c8$65cc03d0$c86ebb81@gizmo> Message-ID: <200210131507.LAA30852@m56-129-28.mit.edu> >> 3) Paths/trails getting made as people wander in certain >> areas, with some decay rate. >I'm not so sure about that one. Wouldn't that consume a lot >of effort storing all this information about roading somewhere? >And the outcome might be road-tiles appearing everywhere, >including places where they are unwanted, potentially burrying >some nice maps around cities. >Roads would look totally uneven, making players loose orientation... Seems like this could be overcome with an algorithm to restrict path placement to things upon which it would make sense (not mountains, stone, etc), and with some level of cleverness an algorithm could be achieved to ensure "temporary" paths are clearly different than permanent ones... However, this seems a lot of effort for minimal gain. More general newbie question. Where do I find the procedures and restrictions for entereing into the code generation/alteration team or cycle? -- Tolamar From mwedel at sonic.net Mon Oct 14 01:40:15 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:33 2005 Subject: [CF List] BIGworld References: <000601c272c8$65cc03d0$c86ebb81@gizmo> Message-ID: <3DAA66CF.2070308@sonic.net> Andreas Vogl wrote: >>1) Weather effects - not sure exactly what they were going to >> be, garbled was going to work on that. > > > So this code for map-overlays has somehow made it into > CVS and at least it seems to consume memory and appears a lot in > the logs. Is it true that there is no use for it till today? > Are there still plans by anyone (Garbled?) to keep developing on > this particular part in the future? Since the code isn't really used for anything, it shouldn't consume any memory (save for the few K of compiled code.). I eventually see replacing some of the unique map code with this - the files it generates are in 'standard map format', where as the unique items files are not - this means you could load overlay maps into the editor just to see status or if something is messed up. > > I'm not so sure about that one. Wouldn't that consume a lot > of effort storing all this information about roading somewhere? > And the outcome might be road-tiles appearing everywhere, > including places where they are unwanted, potentially burrying > some nice maps around cities. > Roads would look totally uneven, making players loose orientation... The way I would do it: 1) Store number of times this space has been visited in the lowest floor space. This actually wouldn't cost much - since check_walk_on is called whenever something moves onto a space, and it looks at all the objects on the space to see if any have walk_on set, just put code in there to increment the counter. 2) The weather code, which periodically runs, would be modified to do the following (this doesn't need to be in weather - anything the periodically 'visits' the maps could do this: a) reduce the visit count set in #1 below (decompose space). b) Look at above value, and do one of the following: If space has high enough visit count, and doesn't already have a 'path like' object, at one. If space visit count is too low and it current has a path, remove the path. The trickiest part is the adding and removing of paths, and the spaces around need to be examined to see their state to know what type of path to add. For example, if you have spaces like: 123 456 789 (presume the spaces around those all have high enough visit counts to warrant paths) If space 2, 4, 5 have high enough visit counts, then on 4 you would add a horizontal path, and 5 a curved path (from 4 to 2), and 2 a vertical patch. If in addition to the above, 6 was also high enough, then 6 would get a horizontal path, and 5 T path. If for example 4 and 5 only had enough visit values, then 4 would get the horizontal, and 5 and horizontal dead end. If my math is right, and we only do 4 directions, 24 path objects would be needed - however, most of those are just rotations or mirrors - what you really need is a straight, dead end, curve, T, and 4 way - this is only 5 images. The hardest part is dealing at the map edges (tiled with others) - you need to know what that tiled map is doing on your connected spaces to know how you should arrange your spaces. Probably the best way to do this is for say map A to make all its paths. For spaces along the edges that tile with another map, it looks at the adjoining space on that tiled map, and see what to do (make an path in that direction or not). If we are changing the behaviour on the map we are updating, we also update the one on the tiled map to link in right - when the tiled map gets processed for its weather, it might further redo these (as some of those spaces get aged out). The 'biggest' thing is to try to do this processing when the server is idle, or mostly idle (eg, player hanging out in town), not when someone is in the middle of a combat. From mwedel at sonic.net Mon Oct 14 01:53:06 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:33 2005 Subject: [CF List] New New Experience Scheme... References: <200210131225.IAA30290@m56-129-28.mit.edu> Message-ID: <3DAA69D2.9070700@sonic.net> Vernon T Rhyne wrote: > Uh... on second thought... Dying adds another 300 million to my mental > xp, to a total of 1.3822 billion, and changes my total xp to -2.02 billion, > a somewhat lesser score than perhaps I'd hoped :) The 'best' thing to probably do is make characters overall exp independent of skill exp. Without that, it will never be possible to maximize all your skill levels to the same (or even close) to your overall level. IT only sort of worked in the old system because there was a massive gap for the final two levels. Actually, as I think about this, this probably makes a lot more sense - it means you can give characters exp which helps their overall level without trying to figure out what skill it goes into. This would probably be a saner approach to party exp, as well as exp for using magic items to kill something (no reason you really shouldn't get exp for that, but hard to determine a category). May actually make attack wands/rods more useful again. From mwedel at sonic.net Mon Oct 14 01:42:52 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:33 2005 Subject: [CF List] BIGworld References: <200210131507.LAA30852@m56-129-28.mit.edu> Message-ID: <3DAA676C.1080709@sonic.net> > > > More general newbie question. Where do I find the procedures and restrictions > for entereing into the code generation/alteration team or cycle? General pointers: Look at the doc/Developers directory in the server - that has some information. The general practice is then for the new developer to make a patch, supply new things (archetypes, maps, etc). If deemed acceptable after a few such submissions, and developer wants and requests read/write CVS access, they generally get it. For read/write access, you need to get yourself an account on sourceforge, then send mail to typically me request read/write (include your account name on sourceforge in that e-mail) From mwedel at sonic.net Mon Oct 14 02:01:28 2002 From: mwedel at sonic.net (Mark Wedel) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:33 2005 Subject: [CF List] New New Experience Scheme... References: <200210131225.IAA30290@m56-129-28.mit.edu> Message-ID: <3DAA6BC8.80602@sonic.net> Vernon T Rhyne wrote: > Uh... on second thought... Dying adds another 300 million to my mental > xp, to a total of 1.3822 billion, and changes my total xp to -2.02 billion, > a somewhat lesser score than perhaps I'd hoped :) The 'gaining' exp on death should now be fixed in CVS. Take the next restart on metalforge for it to run with the new code. From andi.vogl at gmx.net Wed Oct 16 11:05:19 2002 From: andi.vogl at gmx.net (Andreas Vogl) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:33 2005 Subject: [CF List] New New Experience Scheme... Message-ID: <3922.1034784319@www39.gmx.net> Mark Wedel wrote: > The 'best' thing to probably do is make characters overall > exp independent of skill exp. > > Without that, it will never be possible to maximize all your > skill levels to the same (or even close) to your overall level. I think this is a great idea. If the overall skill exp was seperated from the "specialized" cathegories, that would have a great benefit: We could create a lot more specialized skill cathegories. Currently we can't do that because every new cathegory would make it significantly easier to gain overall levels. It would be a LOT better to have seperate cathegories for things like thievery, alchemy, literacy, trap-skills etc. With overall exp seperated, some "specialized" cathegories could give less overall exp, others even none. For example: Melee combat could give melee exp and overall exp at equal ratio 1:1. Also magic and wisdom. A "rogue" skill cathegory (thievery, hiding, lockpicking) could give only half overall exp, ratio 1:2. Literacy and alchemy for example might not give any overall exp, only the specialized exp. This would mean skills which don't give overall exp are less rewarding to train - but they still have their own use. When literacy skill has it's very own cathegory, that means players actually have to *read* something to gain levels there. This again would imply that literacy level 50 really means *something*. So there could also be maps which seriously reward having a high literacy skill. This again would motivate players to train literacy... and so on. Besides, with more skill cathegories there's more work to do in general, because there are more different skill-cathegories to train. It also allows more exciting character development. AndreasV -- +++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more http://www.gmx.net +++ NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen! From trhyne at MIT.EDU Mon Oct 14 15:28:24 2002 From: trhyne at MIT.EDU (Vernon T Rhyne) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:33 2005 Subject: [CF List] New New Experience Scheme... In-Reply-To: Your message of "Mon, 14 Oct 2002 00:01:28 PDT." <3DAA6BC8.80602@sonic.net> Message-ID: <200210142028.QAA14857@cathedral-seven.mit.edu> How stands the current exp scale, then? From leaf at real-time.com Tue Oct 29 00:32:05 2002 From: leaf at real-time.com (Rick Tanner) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:33 2005 Subject: [CF List] New New Experience Scheme... In-Reply-To: <200210142028.QAA14857@cathedral-seven.mit.edu> Message-ID: I put the New/Harder(Metalforge?) EXP system in table format along with the classic EXP system, along with the difference between the two. http://crossfire.real-time.com/exp.html If anyone sees any corrections, please let me know. - Rick On Mon, 14 Oct 2002, Vernon T Rhyne wrote: > How stands the current exp scale, then? From andi.vogl at gmx.net Tue Oct 15 15:54:50 2002 From: andi.vogl at gmx.net (Andreas Vogl) Date: Thu Jan 13 18:04:33 2005 Subject: [CF List] New New Experience Scheme... References: <3DAA69D2.9070700@sonic.net> Message-ID: <17801.1034715290@www26.gmx.net> Mark Wedel wrote: > The 'best' thing to probably do is make characters overall > exp independent of skill exp. > > Without that, it will never be possible to maximize all your > skill levels to the same (or even close) to your overall level. I think this is a great idea. If the overall skill exp was seperated from the "specialized" cathegories, that would have a great benefit: We could create a lot more specialized skill cathegories. Currently we can't do that because every new cathegory would make it significantly easier to gain overall levels. It would be a LOT better to have seperate cathegories for things like thievery, alchemy, literacy, trap-skills etc. With overall exp seperated, some "specialized" cathegories could give less overall exp, others even none. For example: Melee combat could give melee exp and overall exp at equal ratio 1:1. Also magic and wisdom. A "rogue" skill cathegory (thievery, hiding, lockpicking) could give only half overall exp, ratio 1:2. Literacy and alchemy for example might not give any overall exp, only the specialized exp. This would mean skills which don't give overall exp are less rewarding to train - but they still have their own use. When literacy skill has it's very own cathegory, that means players actually have to *read* something to gain levels there. This again would imply that literacy level 50 really means *something*. So there could also be maps which seriously reward having a high literacy skill. This again would motivate players to train literacy... and so on. Besides, with more skill cathegories there's more work to do in general, because there are more different skill-cathegories to train. It also allows more exciting character development. AndreasV -- +++ GMX - Mail, Messaging & more http://www.gmx.net +++ NEU: Mit GMX ins Internet. Rund um die Uhr f?r 1 ct/ Min. surfen!