Online building.

[Pathor]

I've taken up the interest of decorating my appartment with various items I've found in the different parts of the crossfire world. But there are a few problems with this.

• * I can't invite anyone to see my beutiful home, complete with demon heads in the corners.
  * Many cool objects can't be stolen, it is not possible to pick them up. I want a throne in my home, but I've not found any that can be taken. I want my altar to be changed to a proper altar of my god instead of the generic, ugly altar.
  * I want to move the bed from the entrence to a better part of the room.
  * I want to change the floor boards to something that can stand my claws a bit better...
  * I want to add some fences around my weapon museum...

This can all be fixed by speaking to the server admin, sending files back and forth etc, but it would be a lot of work for the server admins if players were to do this. The admin would have to check the map area to see that objects' values have not been changed (a nice new spellbook with some impossible spell etc), that the area is still working and so on.

It would be cool íf there were some "light" way to perform online map creation. Perhaps a special shop where you buy map parts (new floor, thrones etc) and then some way to fixate the objects when you are done (those objects that shouldn't be moveable, like floorboards). This should work both in guilds (by the founders?) and in one's appartment. Even better would be some integration of the crossfire editor into the client so one could move things from the palette to the map without walking around, picking things up, scrolling through the inventory, dropping it etc.
There would of course have to be some kind of limit to this. Valueable objects (like spellbooks) can't be created unrestricted. All objects might cost some money to add to the map (if it is in your apartment that is).

It would also be nice if real area creation could be done online, in some special plane where time stands still and the creator is ethereal with xray vision... That way you can invite others to have a peak at it, "copy" it to some testing plane where you can actually play it (but not get any xp, nor take any objects with you perhaps?) and finally let the DMs copy it to maps/ and check it into CVS when it is ready. This would make it a lot easier for new players to graduate into full featured builders. Real DMs should of course be able to alter the real maps too.

[Ryo]

I think this has been discussed a few times already (or at least the realtime map building).

I'd sure like to decorate my apartment too Already picked a few bookshelves, but havent' sorted yet.

And why not extend the apartment farther, building rooms & such.
After all, we could let players build their apartment how they want, and make it as big as wanted. Ok that'd mean much room, but current rooms are already big enough (imo) to put as many items as wanted...

Agreed too on no item creation. Putting/removing walls though would be ok & fun.

Inviting people, I vote against. It's a kind of security risk, people could hack to enter other's apartments & steal items... On the other hand, true, in the real world, that risk exists

Just my 2 cents of €

[Pathor]

Inviting people, I vote against. It's a kind of security risk, people could hack to enter other's apartments & steal items... On the other hand, true, in the real world, that risk exists

Yes. If it were to happen, there would have to be some special way for them to enter (first via town portal to some entrence and from the entrence via a teleporter to the home perhaps?).

[Avion]

I am still working on somthing like this, (made some good progress recently too) but it has been way too long. I am working on the following premise (many old posts on this BTW):
Basically there are building 'templates' for different types of dwellings (most are multistory/ multimap templates) which are turned in to maps much like the current guild maps when a building is created. Creating a building happens when you take a pile of cash and purchase a blueprint for that building - then take it to a vacant lot and drop it - building your house.
Mapmakers or DMs will have to add vacant lots to the maps, but there is some server variability since once a house is built it is saved in unique items as a unique object.
There may be a zoning system in place to control what gets built where, but since I only have two types of building so far it's not worked out yet except to say that there will be different sized lots.

The houses are keyed by owner, but you can let others into the building too. There are also owner accessable areas where you can do stuff like display your trophies.
The same system works for multiple 'owners' so that it can be used for building either guild houses or temples. In this case there are 'owners' 'members' and public areas and the owners have ways to manage the buildings. This isn't as flexable as build your own, but adding new buildings should be as simple as sending up the map templates and adding a arch for the building type.

Still some way to go on this, I hope to get it usable this summer. Things that need to be done especially are handling clean up when people quit, the 'guild/temple' management stuff, and building more templates for different types of houses (something that people could do as well).

Anyway I'm open to suggestions, but not to doing something totally different or widely out of scope on this.

[Pathor]

Basically there are building 'templates' for different types of dwellings (most are multistory/ multimap templates) which are turned in to maps much like the current guild maps when a building is created. Creating a building happens when you take a pile of cash and purchase a blueprint for that building - then take it to a vacant lot and drop it - building your house.

Cool!

Perhaps the blueprint & lot idea can be expanded into objects as well?
You buy a blueprint object (which creates a longtable for example) which you can put on a "lot"-tile (added everywhere inside your building). The lot arch could perhaps have some bitmap which says what kind of blueprints that can be put on it and the blueprint object have bits that tells what kind of object it will create ? That way you can add your bed to reality wherever you want it in the appartment.

When this gets done, perhaps it can be expanded to require items for the buildings too before the thing is build? Logs, boulders, etc. Those in turn can be gathered in woods, mountains etc if one has the right skill. The larger the building, the more objects are required... Some players could work as construction workers, selling logs etc.

[Ryo]

What about two modes for apartments?
Ie when you enter your apartment/building, you are in 'normal' mode, not being able to change walls & such or go through.

If you want to modify your apartment, step on some special thingy, and you switch into editing mode. In this mode walls are not obstacles (so you can stand on'em & destroy'em), and for instance teleporters don't teleport you (like a DM, but in your apartment only).
In this mode you could rearrange walls, put non-moving items & such.

That could be done with 2 maps, one containing the actual apartment, the other designed for editing. Switching to editing moves you to that 2nd special map, and when you commit your changes a script regenerates the 1st (keeping items of course!).

Imo the 'hardest' point in apartment building are the walls. When moving normally you shouldn't be able to remove'em
But yet, you could be able to trash some to reorganize your apartment...

Just my 2 cents of € (i'll get broke someday!)

[Lauwenmark]

Ah, dungeon building stuff, a long story...

I took the train last month. The travel was long and boring, but I had my ideas notebook with me. I browsed it and found some notes from 2001 about dungeon building. At that time, there were several problems I was unable to solve in a decent way, so I stopped working on it. I started toying with the idea again, and started working on it back home.

My attempt works so:

- Some areas are declared 'buildable' - A player can build whatever he can on it.

- Some areas are declared 'doorable' (weird name, but that's the train fault) - A player can create a connection to another map on such squares.

- The first time a player builds something on a square, that square gets an owner information. No one else but the owner can make further building on a square.

- Spells are available to change or to suppress the owner information from a square. The owner itself can remove that information with a user command (or maybe a spell).

- Books of Link are randomly generated in shops. Apply a book of link, and you get into a pocket dimension - a map generated from a template. (Books of Link are implemented using a Python script and are already an old affair, as the first one was created to test the old Scriptfire).

- Spell scrolls are available to build stairs, doors and so on. They use the same mechanisms as the Town Portal, but can be cast only on doorable/buildable squares and only if the square is free/your own.

- Building things can be achieved either by 1) casting 'build bla' spells (working like other creation spells, but only on buildable squares, and of course creating walls, floors, etc) or 2) buying tiles, becoming floor parts/walls whenever they hit a buildable floor.

- Custom dungeons could be populated with pet monsters - for that, I add two player commands: leaveme (pets following you are now staying on the map they're on) and comewithme (take back a previously released nearby pet).

The last point being the hardest one to make, as it requires quite a lot of work around monsters (monsters should be able to recognize friends and enemies. In the 2001 attempt, monsters were created like other building objects, and attacked everyone, owner included).

Comments ?

[gumbyscout]

I guess im not alone in making up ideas but you have to know how to program, *sigh*.

[Ryo]

FYI, map building code has been committed to CVS.

This lets players put walls, doors, levers, floors where they want, assuming the correct flags are set.

There aren't yet any map with this feature, but i think at least one plans on doing a buildable apartment in a new zone.

[gumbyscout]

How do you get the archs from cvs?