Big Question: Request for Features overview

[cavesomething]

It is now a little over 9 months since I posted this list, since there doesn't seem to be much traffic on the forum atm, and I am bored, I figured I'd go back and look at these.

1 reorginize comm system to use channels

no, but see https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.p ... tid=363833

There are some implementation issues still. (basically not making it internally like parties but with two seperate interfaces).

2 add regions to game world

yep.

3 un-autopick maps (like in shops but configurable per player)

no

4 /me command (1)

no, but a 'me' command was there all along.

5 fix guuh head map

no.

6 make archtypes inherit properties from templates
7 seperate out dm powers, allow individual powers to be assigned, and to limited regions (2)

no, but I think these are probably bad ideas now, at least short to medium term.

8 get crossedit to behave, so I can use it

it works for me now, I assume this is an xlibs issue.

9 port crossedit to gtk and/or Qt

no

10 make a XUL client for crossfire

no, but see https://sourceforge.net/projects/jcrossclient/ for a java one.

11 Define quest and non-quest maps to prevent quest scumming
12 have a timeout for the raffle...

no

13 and for the training centres

Eracc fixed this a few months ago.

14 Honourary titles ('info player foo ... foo the bar, knight of scorn, slayer of dragons, blah de blah etc)
15 Optional constraints that are monitored (eg vegetarian, no picking up items, no killing animals, atheist, no spells, no rods, play naked...)

no

16 per god favour (each god tracks how much he likes you, will favour you more for not killing his chosen race, etc)

not in a state that it is actually useful, I have something vaguely heading in this direction that I've been poking at.

17 shops adjusting prices to reflect availability
18 no exact way to get value, estimate based on bargining skill (without bargining skill value is little, some, lots, etc)

Yes, effectively, implementation is a little different, but still....

19 telekenisis spell (with sorting by material type (ie 'invoke telekenesis granite, more materials at later levels)
20 orienteering skill, gives a chance to remember bits of previously explored maps

no

21 whereami command returns location of player eg 'whereami scorn (2)

yes

22 nameable equipment sets - ie dragon fighting kit, undead fighting kit, PK-ing kit)

no

23 nameable keybinding profiles (ie newb profile, dragon profile, a preset one to include some useful keybindings)=

Ryo did this, or something functionally equivilent.

24 follow command - allow to shadow movements of another player (yet another way to passively PK - yay
25 reduction in exp for repeated actions -down to 1xp after too long a time span (stop scripting) (29)
26 cooking skill, split from woodsman
27 farming skill
28 skill atrophy -over time knowledge in skills goes down if they are not used, rate should be slow (1/MAXEXP*EXP per second^2?) resets with each use of the skill

no

29 server side kills log

apparently this was there all along, just broken, gros was doing something to the plugins, so maybe this will be fixed.

30 PK table, giving char's relative score against all other players (29) (maybe just clone gravestones in a permenant location?

no

31 package post (charging some amount for value of item)

Ryo did this.

32 charge for boats, dragons and guild teleporters (per use)
33 timeout for raffle ~ 10 minutes (rework to be like a gameshow, think the running man, or level 3 of flashback)
34 newbie house and beginners 1 & 2 unique maps

no

35 timeout for TC's -reset after timeout - reduce rewards of TCs and have something valuable for getting to the end of the last four

Yes, eracc has done something similar.

36 no exp for TC kills (Training centre != leveling centre) (or else tokens for each entry, each subsequent entry, reduce exp value of monsters).
37 give each player in TC an item that gets exp redirected to it, have a hiscore table for exp players would've gained

no

38 charge for entry to TC (like mlab) top n on highscore list get in free

eracc is doing something similar.

39 mark items that are stolen with invisible attribute, roll against charisma, luck and shop greed to see if shops will fence items (41)
40 jail those who fail, until they pay back twice what they stole (ala aztec law) (yes *until* sucks don't it? )

no

41 shop greed, determines price spread in a shop (no value hacks in black market to scum bargining)

yes

42 nameable pickup profiles (3-sorta)
43 to re-worked raffle add a python sign outside n hours since last fatality.
44 allow teams to enter the raffle but include a split the prize room, where the prize is teleported and they can agree who takes it, or divide the cash equivilant between them.
45 new monsters: Bungle, Zippy and George - invulnerable until you throw a potion of rainbow wave at them
46 another new monster, sooty, make him a requirement to complete a quest by giving him a wand
47 new class merchant, starts with bargining, stealing, oratory, +cha, +dex +int -wis -str -con, starts with a random selection of scrolls describing item properties
48 per player ignore command (probably a string in the player object holding all the people being ignored, seperated by spaces,
49 better higher level golem spells, one which shows golems position, one which shows position and surrounding squares
50 make skills harder to learn (multiple scroll forms? personal tuition?)

no

51 history in client command window (ctrl-up?)

this was there all along, I just didn't know about it.

52 make client honour timezones in the reset values for the 'maps command (better still give a time to reset, rather than a reset time)

no

53 port freeciv's 'no scroll on new data if not at bottom of window' hack

mwedel included this, at least in gcfclient2

54 female chars
55 more diseases, different transmission modes (touch, coughing (randomly, might affect creatures in direction faced, handkerchief in skill slot reduces effect))

no

56 pet management, 'listpets showing a numbered list of the pets you control, and their levels.
57 killpets taking a number corresponding to petnum (56)

yes

58 pet maintainence, don't feed them and they get cranky, and may turn neutral, even hostile. Likewise if you attack them.
59 nameable pets

60 killpet taking a name argument also

yes

61 no_comm areas, like no_spells, and unholy ground, would stop shout, chat, or tell (/me sees evil and twisted possibilities for that
62 status icons showing if you are unable to cast spells or prayers
63 gods to be able to require signs of devotion, removing hat, or shoes etc[/code]

no

[timbo]

I think that Exp loss for deaths needs to be drastically reduced. Even if the exp loss was 10% instead of 25%-40% it would make people be careful.

For example I went 'exploring' in the snake pits yesterday by lake country and I was wandering around and went down 2 holes and fell on some lava. All was good in the world until 3 fireballs came screaming at me from out of nowhere and I died instantly.

I lost like 200 million experience and 3-4 levels in almost anything of importance. That's just too crazy. This will probably take me like 6 hours to gain back what I've lost.

I can't see how people would want to go adventuring when if they open a door or fall down a hole they are gonna die instantly and lose hours of playing. It makes people just want to stick with their usual safe maps and ignore the rest of the world.

I think that this reduction would encourage people to go out and look around at more than the usual hunting grounds.

[cavesomething]

what do you propose as an alternitive approach?

Quite a few RPG games drop items on death. In crossfire that would be a /worse/ penalty, since quite a few items are only obtainable by risking (and often achieving) death anyway (eg, the wdsm).

Maybe something like what used to occur in the old amiga RPG Legends of Valour (anyone remember that?) would work. You could get life insurance, that would cost a fair amount of money, then, if you died, you would be resurrected at an undertakers, and the insurance expired.

Dying without insurance ended the game.

Probably in terms of crossfire, permadeath is something that is mostly disliked (most servers have it off) - so maybe the current penalty would apply to those who don't have insurance?

In that case, life insurance would be overpowered if it were permenent, so probably it should be sold on a per-hour basis, so that you could buy a policy which would operate for n hours.

in that case you would probably want to set up a charging system something like 10 platinum*level_of_player*time_in_hours^2

That would cost a lvl 1 player
10 plat for one hour
5760 plat for one day
282240 plat for one week
5.18 million plat for one month.

for a level 115 player.
1150 plat for one hour
662400 plat for one day
32.5 million plat for one week
596 million plat for one month.

obviously such a pricing structure would be designed to encourage short term purchasing.....

In game terms then, a python script could be used to give a special item of type LIFE_INSURENCE, with a food value that would decay at a constant rate. This would be checked for when a player dies, if present and with a positive food value, skip over the death penalty, remove the insurance item(s) and print an appropriate message.
if there is one with food zero, print something about not paying insurance premiums, and kill the player normally.

[timbo]

I'm just recommending something like 10% of anywhere from 25 to 40% as a penalty.

All good online games have death penalties...10% is still high enough to keep people from dying over and over again to obtain a goal, but low enough that warrants exploring new areas without fear of losing 6 hours of playing. 25% just seems way to high without anyway of getting a resurrection or something like that to gain back some of the exp.

Maybe make a level 10 prayer spell that if cast on your tomb gains back 80% of the exp lost in that death. Put it in a dungeon that is relatively hard to reach to make it more valuable.

[woo]

I don't think allowing you to gain back experience you lost by getting back to your body would help with exploring. In fact I think that the explorers (like yourself, dying to the fireballs) wouldn't get it back as they wouldn't be eable to survive what killed them from walking into a overpowered place. This would mostly benefit people who died from something they shouldn't have died from - i.e. they ran into the middle of the ogres instead of picking them off.

Don't get me wrong - I'm not fond of the current death penalty and I think it could certainly use something different - I'm just don't have a great idea for it myself.

Other RPG's have used a combination of these things - perhaps death results in all your items dropping in your corpse - except for the items you bought insurance for, which return with your revived body. Such insurance could be based on the price of the items so a ring of ruling is expensive to insure - after all, you need to hire some very legit people to make sure they don't just take the ring and run.

[bort]

I think adding insurance on items (e.g. plat cost for insuring item WDSM is (itempower)*(level) plat) and having them return with you is correct. That would make high levels spend more money, and low levels would actually try to get money.

[woo]

Although arguably item power isn't a valid source of value -> things like WDSM have a low item power as part of their appeal.