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Re: crossfire



>  I've just got crossfire-0.92.1, way cool.  I thought that perhaps it's
>time I provided my $0.02 since I've been playing for so long.
>
>  pouches:  money received in shops doesn't go straight in and shops don't
>            take money straight out when you're leaving.  These would be
>            handy.
>  keyrings: Keys in keyrings don't get used automatically; I think that they
>            should.

 Both of these can be considered features.

 I suppose in pouches, if the object is active, the money should be deposited,
as if it was picked up.  Actually, that part looks like it should be pretty
easy to modify.

 In terms of money or keys removed, as said, it is a feature.  If you have
your money in a pouch, and accidentally pick something up, and leave, do you
really want it to pull out that money?

 In terms of keyrings, I asked this before, and it is considered a feature
in that if you accidentally bump into a door, it won't be disolved (ie, key
rings become more of a safety feature).

 I suppose both of these could be set up via some option, but that would
require a bit of extra hacking, and I am not sure how big of a gain it would
be.

>  lightning: There are (as far as I know) only two electricity spells, which
>            rather under-utilises my handy Ring of Storm.  I was going to
>            send you some diffs for a new lightning storm spell, but then I
>            saw the code and thought that I should probably leave it in the
>            hands of the experts :)  Basically, the idea is a random cone of
>            lighning.  The regular cone would work, but I have another idea
>            which is neat (on paper, at least).  It involves forking the
>            electricity randomly, giving potentially very long or very short
>            bolts, and allowing several (perhaps many) bolts to run over the
>            same square.  I'm including a small curses program (not encoded)
>            below that uses the algorithm.  All the configurable random
>            bits are currently #defines; if you like the idea then they would
>            probably be changed to some formula dependant on level, spell
>            paths, and all the rest of it.

 Electricity is limited, but is also very powerful.  In terms of players,
there is nothing out there that lets you become immune to electricity, there
are things out there that let you become immune to fire and cold.

 But a quick look, there are 4 PATH_FROST spells (one is not normally
available, but I think some quest has a spellbook for it.)

 There are also 4 PATH_ELEC spells (one is ball lightning - once again,
no spell for it.)

 There are 10 PATH_FIRE spells (but a few are not player achievable)

 It should probably also be said that not all items are created equal.
Some things are better than other - protection from fire/cold/electricity
rings are certainly better than protectin from poison rings.

 The same can be said about the various ring of the elements (ring of storm,
fire, etc.)  Is that necessarily bad?  PRobably not.

 It should probably also be said that getting a spell path just increases
damage/duration/effective casting level of those spells.  So in all spells,
they aren't necessarily all that useful

 (An interesting idea might be to have some spells that you can only cast if
you actually have that spell path)

 All that said and done, additional spells are necessarily bad (but right
now, we certainly do have a lot of them).  I guess my one thought is that
lightning normally doesn't come in cones.

 I know that in AD&D, however, that the caster of lightning bolt can decide
to make the bolt twice as wide but half the length.  Something similar for
crossfire could be done.

 (another interesting idea would be to have more varied spell effects as you
are a higher level - a few spells do this (like create food).  But something
like at high levels, maybe the lightning bolt has 2 forks or something..
Don't know in how many cases this could be applied to most spells, however)

>Paul Hicks.