Re: CF: Experiments

[Scott Wedel <scott@campy.Tymnet.COM>]

I'd limit a player to one Glowing Crystal by running an inventory check for
any other Glowing Crystals when the character picks up a Glowing Crystal.  If
another GC (glowing crystal) is found then create an object associated with
each GC that starts to heat up it's GC.  The rate of heat increase and the force
of the eventual explosion would be a function of the number of stored up spell
points in each GC.  I suppose once a GC "found" another GC to react with then
it would continue to react even if dropped and speed of the reaction would be a
function of distance between GCs.  Which could allow two GCs to be charged up and
placed on a square to blow up a monster as a creative solution.

I saw a comment on a "bug" of a player taking a potion of invulnerability and
then making himself into a walking bomb, walking upto a monster and then killing
it with the resulting explosion.  That strikes me as cleverness and smart gameplay
and not a bug.  Things like that should be encouraged and not removed from the
game.  I think it would be tremendous if creative solutions like that were required
more often and normal fighting was less often a feasible solution.

I'd think that the GC uniqueness feature could be largely implemented as a general
feature by giving GC (and other similarly affected) artifacts a uniqueness flag
which would do the stuff as above.  GCs would still have special code since the
rate and power of their interaction would be a function of stored mana points while
most other things could presumably just use value of the item as a gauge of it's
power.

I'd even be willing to entertain the thought that different items with that
uniqueness flag set can interact with the character and each other much like
item ego and so stop player from equipping the item or unequipping the item
depending upon the item's mood.  A lowish level player with too many good items
could end up being overwhelmed by the items and lose control of what is equipped
and so on.

									sdw

> Date: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 02:31:38 -0500
> From: David Andrew Michael Noelle <dave@Straylight.org>
> X-Accept-Language: en
> Mime-Version: 1.0
> To: Scott Wedel <scott@campy.tymnet.com>
> Cc: peterm@langmuir.EECS.Berkeley.EDU, crossfire@ifi.uio.no
> Subject: Re: CF: Experiments
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
> 
> Scott Wedel wrote:
> > 
> > RE:
> > > > - merging Glowing Crystals
> > 
> > Multiple Glowing Crystals is actually an item which I would like to adjust so
> > that a character may only have one of at a time.  Sort of like getting too much
> > Uranium 238 together in one spot in that they'd feed off of each other, overheat
> > and probably blow up or at a minimum break.
> > 
> > Limiting a character to one Glowing Crystal also has some nice gameplay effects.
> > First, it would no longer be as easy to walk around with unlimited Mana points in
> > reserve.  Second it creates the possibility of other dungeons having as a quest
> > item a more powerful Glowing Crystal (presumably with some negative side effects
> > such as STR -1 or such).
> 
>     Sounds good to me.  How do we enforce this, though?  With the current
> method of charging and draining the crystals, they aren't readied, and can
> be dropped in a bag and switched easily enough.
>     One solution would be to have players equip a single crystal so that it
> automatically charges at some rate.  Perhaps the player's spell point
> regeneration, once they've reached their maxsp, would start going directly
> into the crystal until it's full, too.  Then the crystal could transfer its
> energy back by doubling their regeneration rate as long as it has energy and
> its owner is below maximum.  That would mean that the player's spell point
> regeneration rate would determine how quickly they can charge a crystal and
> how quickly they can draw from it.
>     That would also allow crystals to simply lose their energy when they're
> unequipped, so there would be no point in having more than one.  This would
> completely change the function of the crystals.  Instead of mana batteries,
> they would basically add to the player's maxsp.  Is that the change we want?
> 
>     Alternatively, we could search the player's inventory (and containers)
> every time they apply a crystal, and have the crystals "short-circuit" each
> other if a second crystal is found.  That would make it *almost* impossible
> to use multiple crystals.  You'd have to carry the extras around seperately,
> leave them outside, and only carry one into battle.  Then when that one's
> empty, retreat and hope they're still where you left them so you can switch
> crystals and go on fighting.
> 
> 
> > In general, quest artifact items probably make sense being limited to one per
> > character.  Only because the game refreshes maps can players do the same quest
> > multiple times.  It is clearly nonrealistic for a player to complete a quest,
> > wait a day and then do it again.  It would be quite hard and require severe game
> > adjustments to absolutely prohibit a player from repeating a quest, but
> > limiting a player's ability to carry numerous quest unique items strikes me as
> > a reasonable gameplay solution.  Glowing Crystals are one of the few quest
> > artifact items where it does make sense to have a number of them.  Once a
> > character can do that quest then you repeat it a few times and suddenly life is
> > a whole lot easier.
> 
>     So, rather than enforcing the uniqueness of quest items, we're trying to
> make it pointless to own more than one?  Or two, in the case of rings, I
> guess.  I was definitely going in the wrong direction with making stacks of
> crystals *easier* to use, then.  They'll definitely need a change, but that
> wasn't it.
> 
> -- 
>             -Dave Noelle,                 dave@Straylight.org
>             -the Villa Straylight,  http://www.straylight.org
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