map.thoughts

[Mark Wedel <master@rahul.net>]

 I've looked over the code, and a a few notes:

 An encounter can happen anyplace where there is a 3x3 area of terrain,
all of that terrain being encounter type terrain (which, as of now,
I believe is desert, forest, hills, jungle, mountains, plains (grass)
and swamp.

 The reason you usually don't get random encounters in town is that
few towns have a 3x3 area of this type of terrain.  However, the starting
city actually does have this, in the keep area in the lower left (south
west) area.

 There is a terrain type 'grass_only', which does not have random encounters.
No comparable archetypes exist for brush, jungle, etc.

 I've changed the encounter code so that random encounter maps can no longer
happen if the source map is difficulty 1 (which most every town is).  That
should solve problem of encoutners in towns.

 The problems I see with encounter maps right now is this:

1) At a certain level, some of the encoutner maps are just nuisance
encounters, and the map can provide a good place to rest.

2) A piece of terrain that did not have an encounter map may have one the
next time you step on it, provided the 3x3 rule above is not a problem
(note also that none of the hexes can contain a living object, or be
an encoutner map).  The problem this means is that you might have some
path through a forest, and just 5 minutes later, you get encoutner maps
on it as you re-tract your steps.

3) Encounter maps can happen a lot.  Right now, there is a 1:4 chance
that when you enter a terrain type that is of encoutner type, it will
create an encounter map (provided by the 3x3 rule).  I think in
the dtabb/church, probably about half a dozen encounter maps were created.

 A few possible solutions (corresponding to the numbers above)

1) Have the monsters on the encounter map of the same difficulty as the
map the encounter is on.  So that if the map is difficult 10 and a
random encounter happens, there are going to be some pretty tough
monsters.

2) When loading a map for the first time, determine which hexes will
be random encounter areas, and turn the rest into normal terrain.  This way,
once you find a path without any encoutners, it will remain like that until
the map is reset.

3) Decrease the chance of random encounter maps.  If #2 happens, this
will be less of a problem, because new random encoutners would not e
(be) created by walking ove the old terrain.

 I think as an immediate solution, I'll add an option in config.h that
allows/disallows random encounters.

 Another thing to do would be add a field to the map structure that
when set, means that no random encounter maps will be generated for that
map.  This way, many old maps would not need to have all the terrain
converted to have encoutners be disabled.

 --Mark