Re: crossfire problem/idea

[Kjetil Torgrim Homme <kjetilho>]

Happy New Year to you all..

Pascal Molli writes:

	In crossfire (and others games), all the monsters want to kill
	you, that's too simple.  For exemple, in litterature, dead
	monsters want to kill undead monsters, not you especially.  So
	you can use basic instincts of monsters to kill others.

I think this is mostly a CPU problem. Or maybe it is a Gauntlet
problem, since it is Gauntlet that has so great many monsters in the
first place. Maybe we should have fewer and slightly tougher monsters
(one kobold would be a challenge even at level 1).

	I think all monsters must possess a weakness that make them
	vulnerable, but dragon, demon lord and titan seems to be
	really strong.

Well, dragons *are* vulnerable to frost, and there's also the
Dragonslayer.

        A way to kill these monster may to draw them towards natural
        traps. For exemple if you have a levitate spell you can fly
        other a pit or you can shut dragon in place magic bullet wall
        but this action must increase your EXP points.

I agree this would be nice. You should be hurt if you jump down pits
(maybe a dex/con saving throw?), I think, and likewise monsters should
be able to die by falling down pits. I can't see how the game would
know who to credit the EXP, though.

Perhaps we should do away with EXP altogether. I would prefer treasure as
the chief award, it's easier to split among players, too.

	Perhaps EXP point should be relative to user level.

It is. Have you seen how much EXP you get for killing an ant at
level 2? :-)

	It may be a good thing to have memory of killed monster, so
        you can have extra-damage bonus during a second fight.

I like the monster-memory in nethack (or is it moria? I've only
watched others play those games), but is it really worth the effort to
do the extra-damage thing?

	It seems to me that treasures must be coherent with their
	guardians.  For exemple if you kill several pudding or slimes
	you must find item that can't be dissolved in acid.

This means Frank will have to put more into the hands of the map
designer again. He removed the capability to put special things into
the game because of abuse. I think this is a pity - no limits should
be placed on the designer's creativity, but there must be some control
before the map is put into the game. The path-system and access
control will be of help in the future.

	NOTE: i can't find great item (holy avenger +5, mythril armour
	+3) in version 0.88.0-001 of game.  Is it normal ? (i browse
	nearly all maps in DM mode)

They are supposed to be extremely hard to find, yes.

	It may be a good things to have for each generator a max limit

I agree, I suggested this to Frank a long time ago. I can't remember
why he didn't put it in, though.

	There is a problem when you take transporters and starting
	rooms is full when you want to come back.  Perhaps that's a
	feature, perhaps that's a generator problem, perhaps spell
	should operate throught transporter, perhaps it's a map
	construction problem ???

Spells do operate through transporters: If you throw lots of
fireballs, a few of them will enter the transporter. The current
situation isn't really good, but it's hard to know what should be done
about it. It can be avoided by the map constructor, but this places
limits on her.

	What do you think about spells to turn handles througth
	gratings ?  or magnetic repulsion so monsters can't use
	metallic weapons against you ? or more classic stone skin ?

I think things like these are forthcoming (the stone skin for sure).

	Perhaps it could be a good idea to have great scrolls (not
	corresponding to a spell), like 'kill, or 'invincibility and
	less of others.

Check the fuzzy potion...

	NOTE: How to indicate direction when using summon X scroll ?

The normal way: shift+direction. If you change spell, your X will
continue in the direction you set out, not disolve.

	Why can't we use bow, crossbow, spells throught gratings ?
	What do you think about the avabaility to turn handle whith
	arrow throught grating ?  or to throw item upon a pit to a
	button that open a door ?

Good ideas :-)

	In Ultima, each town possess its own personnality, magic shop
	of this town make great bracers, armour shop of that town
	produce enchanted mail ...

Nice, but how should it be done?
	
	I don't try to understand the code of crossfire but it seems
	to me that you keep visited maps in /tmp.  Why don't you
	consider this like a persistent state of the game. Suppose you
	keep them in the user directory and you don't clean them at
	the end of the session.  When the user restart the game you
	ask him for which game he wants to play and like that you can
	restart a game in the state you leave it ...

Someone else (sorry, can't remember who!) on the list suggested
something like this, he called one set of maps a campaign. There could
be many characters in a campaign, but a character could not be in many
campaigns. I think this is a *great* idea, but it will use quite some 
disc space...

  PS: Is it possible to have scroll enabled by default ?

Do you really want to? I think it is untolerably slow, plus it doesn't
do Expose events properly when it is partly hidden (the lines
remembered get messed up).

Anyway, crossfire.scroll is one of the few X resources used by
Crossfire (the others are "name", "peaceful", "berzerk", "scroll",
"title" and "chrfont"), so just put this in your .Xdefaults-file:

crossfire.scroll:	on



Regards,


Kjetil T.