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Revision: 1.1
Committed: Thu Mar 23 09:01:56 2006 UTC (18 years, 8 months ago) by root
Branch: MAIN
CVS Tags: post_fixaltar, last_stable, post_fixaltar2, pre_coinconvert, rel-2_6, rel-2_7, rel-2_4, rel-2_5, rel-2_2, rel-2_0, rel-2_1, rel-2_72, rel-2_73, rel-2_71, rel-2_54, rel-2_55, rel-2_56, rel-2_53, pre_material_cfarch_normalize_run, rel-2_32, pre_fixconverter, post_coinconvert, pre_fixaltar2, pre_map_rename, post_fixconverter, pre_fixaltar, rel-2_61, rel-2_43, rel-2_42, rel-2_41
Log Message:
*** empty log message ***

File Contents

# User Rev Content
1 root 1.1 Design notes.
2    
3     Prince onefang's ice castle was designed as if Prince onefang designed it
4     himself. The general principle is that it is made from enchanted icecubes.
5     Like an igloo, this does not cause the internal temperature to be very low,
6     so everybody can quite happily live inside. The enchantment stops them
7     from being carried away, melted, or otherwise vanished. The floor at ground
8     level is also enchanted, to stop spells & prayers, and to make everybody
9     feel good. The layout is designed to make it look like the university face
10     used to represent the castle from the outside. The icecube face changed
11     between the server version I started this on and the version I am using now,
12     let's hope that the university face doesn't change. The icecubes looked
13     better in the previous version.
14    
15     The suites don't fit into the university layout, but I fixed that by putting
16     them above the clouds, with a very thin elevator going up to them.
17    
18     The icecubes use the same total internal reflection principle that make fibre
19     optics work. Like fibre optics, a 90 degree bend causes a flaw that lets light
20     leak out. Like fibre optics, light comes out of the ends. I may not have been
21     consistant. On the other hand, some places needed more light, so I either
22     put in a brazier or lit up an icecube as needed (provided a flaw for light to
23     leak out of). The source of the light is not on the map anywhere.
24    
25     No icecubes on the outside of the castle are lit up, because Prince onefang
26     doesn't want the place that easily found. For that reason, and the fact that
27     elves like living in the middle of large woodlands (Prince onefang is an elf),
28     the castle is in the middle of the Dark Forest, with no paths leading to it.
29     Moving the castle to somewhere else will be tricky, as there are many maps
30     with unblocked views of the forest.
31    
32     A lot of attention to detail went into this, I hope that players appreciate it.
33    
34     I ignore some of the map making guidelines, but so do a lot of the standard
35     maps. I ignore the shop guidelines because the high price of powerful items
36     provides balance, no need to keep them out of shops when PC's can't afford
37     them anyway, assuming the system calculates prices correctly. Prince onefang
38     wants his shops this way, gives him a reason to go shopping. It also represents
39     the kind of thing that the Prince will dump at the shops after his own
40     adventuring, he is their main supplier of +3 and +4 items.
41    
42     Yep, I created a town, but it is not your standard town.
43    
44     Some areas are for Prince onefang only. The lever that closes the main gates,
45     and the treasures on display (both in the same place) are the main ones.
46     Portals to these and other places are in the suites unique to onefang when
47     he is a PC. Prince onefang should be played by the DM, with DM privs set, but
48     you should not need them much.
49    
50     Some areas are designed to only allow access if Prince onefang opens the door.
51     This allows the Prince to be a rich and powerful patron to anybody that meets
52     his criteria. Currently, they must be elven worshippers of Lythander. A
53     quest or three may be added later, when I can think of some. These areas include
54     the part behind the temple that contains the standard equipment handed out to
55     onefangians, and the private magic library at the top of the mall. Force
56     "onefangian" is given to anybody that is let into the behind the temple area
57     via the door. Force "onefang" is only held by Prince onefang. The standard
58     equipment is all godgiven, so onefangians must carry it around always, or lose
59     it. The spell and prayer books in the private library are nailed down. Check
60     the quality of them though B-).
61    
62     One quest currently under construcrion is to find out what happened to the
63     party of onefangians sent to clean out the ants. While the Prince should
64     really clean out the dragon section himself, he could take the newly
65     baptised onefangians with him. See "Floyd of Pink" below for another quest.
66    
67     The altars to Lythander in the residential areas can be reconsecrated by anyone
68     with Wisdom 20 or higher. In the suites, the server operator should do that
69     with an editor.
70    
71     The strange looking flooring on the malls ground floor represents wear patterns.
72    
73     Sometime between server version 1.0 and 1.4, the nearby nest of dragons seemed
74     to have given up hope. Now they just sit there and let you attack them. While
75     probably it hasn't been updated since some server behaviour changed, it at least
76     fits in with the onefang plot. He cleared them out once, has now setup camp
77     close to them, and with the Whisker on display to rub it in, so now dragon morale
78     is low.
79    
80     The Imperial Post Office scripts don't work on my server, something dodgy with
81     the database stuff. Using a database for this is overkill, and everything else
82     in Crossfire is text based anyway, so I converted the scripts to use
83     text files, and renamed them so they can live with the originals.
84    
85     SERVER CODE CHANGES
86    
87     common/button.c - fix inv checker object matcher
88     common/map.c - fix inv checker (FIXED in 1.5)
89     server/skills.c - fix written text not initialized
90     common/time.c - added tod_to_errmsg() to support web page
91     server/weather.c - creates weather image each tod tick and major tweaks
92     common/living.c - adjusted SP,GP per level
93     server/skill_util.c - adjusted exp from using skills
94    
95     TODO
96    
97     Finish ant farm.
98    
99     Make castle flyer friendly, if possible, tiling might do it. Replicate more
100     stuff upwards, tiling will do it. Tiling is limited to 12 squares between tiles.
101     Tiling would have helped a lot, but the LOS restrictions make it tricky. I
102     looked at tiling, lighting effects are broken, LOS restrictions have to be broken
103     (but only for one more map), and the maps would end up too fragmented. Next time
104     I need a break from serious programming, I'll try to add map stacking. That is
105     putting a smaller map on top of a larger map, and tiling effects as per usual.
106     The changelog mentions map overlay, which may be the same thing, but it is not
107     documented anywhere that I can find.
108    
109     The tiled dragon map consistantly crashed the server when the dragons attacked.
110    
111     Do junk mail B-). Do basic RFC headers, Python has RFC libraries, include
112     date, postmark (name of map sent from).
113    
114     Do money orders, cheques, interest, loans, ATM / card / PIN, B-Pay,
115     account keeping fees, credit cards, government tax, etc.
116     Use this as a source of income for onefang. Deposit boxes that can hold
117     jewelery, keys, scrolls, and other small valuables.
118    
119     Have an IPO in every major city, complete with long queues. In /onefang/suites
120     have Karen give writing paper with IceCastle letterhead as a free service. Have
121     a crazy postal worker in some post offices armed with a crossbow.
122    
123     Lets go crazy, pawn brokers, loan sharks, bank robbers, photo copying service.
124    
125     BIG WORLD
126    
127     Big map world_110_118 34,24 - 38,27 = university arch as before.
128     Extend the forest from the Dark Forest area, to around these lakes, and
129     to the other lakes to the south west. Basically, the entire north west
130     end of the valley. forest.pl will extend the forest, see it for details.
131    
132     While I have converted the ground level map to Big World, none of the other
133     maps have been converted, so we still have breath taking views of the small
134     world maps. Overlays may do the trick for these.
135    
136     For aome strange reason, when dynamiclevel is set to 1 or above, the Ice castle
137     will be invisible sometimes. I like it B-).
138    
139     The dragon lord maps look to be in about the same sort of position relative
140     to the new castle location, so everything should still link up. DragonLord
141     city is at world_111_117 31,43. AntFarm now becomes part of under_world. I
142     should double check the scale of things here.
143    
144     There is a bit at the top of the world that looks like an obvious place for
145     a protected harbour. I should search out such places, and also places where
146     people and animals would normally form tracks, then add harbours, harbour
147     cities, animal and walking tracks. Then we can setup trade routes, and have
148     a proper civilization grow.
149    
150     Write some animal foraging code, to form animal tracks the natural way, and
151     have animals changing the landscape like the weather does.
152    
153     FANCY MAGIC ITEM (Floyd of Pink)
154    
155     Actually, it's five magic items that combine to produce their effect. Basically
156     the effects of Amulet of Bling Bling, the left and right onefang rings, plus
157     speed and levitation boots. They all look identical (big pink / purple gem),
158     and have an identical name (opal of flawed beauty), but you have to put
159     them on in the correct order, in the correct place. Otherwise, all hell breaks
160     loose. You cannot wear them while sleeping, otherwise you wake up with one HP,
161     no SP or grace, not wearing the items, and something is summoned to fight you.
162     The correct places are - one on each foot, one on each hand, and one for the
163     soul (head, neck, or body). The various enhancements are distributed logically,
164     dex for the hands, speed for the feet, live saving for the soul, etc. Once you
165     have them placed correctly, a backpack of utopia appears on your back, and
166     disappears when you remove any item. There is a small chance that everything
167     in the backpack disappears with it. A bigger chance that it all spills out on
168     the floor, but mostly it all will remain in the pack for the next person who puts
169     it on. The items are scattered randomly at the end of ten of the most dangerous
170     maps. Rumours and clues detail the various attributes of the items, and all ten
171     locations. Sprinkle Pink Floyd lyrics into the clues.
172    
173     Each item has a story, as you look deep into the gem, you see a flaw in the shape
174     of "several species", "small, furry animals", "a cave", "a groove", "a pict".
175     That is their order, although the places each is worn are chosen randomly and stored
176     in a file. The five monsters carrying the gems are "Dave" (Dave), "Mr Wright" (wight+),
177     "Nick" (galeo troll+), "Syd" (cunning gnome+, and crazy), and "Roger" (Evil master)
178    
179     Don't rely on the unique flag to make sure there is only one of each. Each gem gets
180     a unique identifier, but only the first five are part of the item, the rest are
181     "opals of flawed beauty" and their flaws look like a cow, brick wall, prism, dog,
182     sheep, pig, worm, gnome, dark side of the moon, and other Pink Floyd icons.
183    
184     The story. A powerful ancestor of Prince onefang had them made for his own use.
185     His lover was kidnapped and killed by someone. Ancestor got drunk and went on a
186     rampage, where he lost each item one at a time. He didn't clear out the areas
187     he rampaged through, and they rebuilt stronger than ever.
188